Green Mountain Center for Sustainability Notes for March 2024
Submitted by Laird Christensen and Eleanor Tison, Co-Directors
Hosting the annual Seed Mania event at Prescott College is one the most powerful ways to engage with the local community, as we saw this past weekend when over 370 friends and neighbors visited campus to prepare for spring gardening. Co-sponsored by Slow Food Prescott, the Prescott Farmers Market, and the Green Mountain Center for Sustainability, Seed Mania 2024 featured tables from eighteen organizations, sharing books on gardening, bags of mushrooms, a scion exchange, and seeds of all varieties, shapes, and colors. Local food experts taught participants about seed starting, water-efficient gardening, tree planting and care, mushroom cultivation, and pruning. A “Kids Activity Zone” featured seed harvesting from sunflowers, compost critter identification, and a “chicken play-pen” outside the adjacent garden. The afternoon of activities culminated in a community meal of “three sisters” chili with cornbread, kale slaw, seed cookies, tea, and coffee.
While enjoying the communal meal, we were honored to have alumnus Angel Martinez of the Yavapai-Apache Tribe provide an invocation over the meal and the day’s festivities. Angel spoke about the “seeds” planted inside us by our ancestors and asked that we consider how we nourish the roots that connect us to our communities, as they will have lasting intergenerational impacts. Another alumnus, Shanti Rade, gave the keynote address. Her internship at a local farm in the 1990s led her to dedicate her life to growing food and, eventually, flowers. She and her husband Cory were at the first farmers markets in Flagstaff and Prescott, and after 25 years, their Whipstone Farm is now one of the region’s most established and popular vendors. “It’s definitely not easy,” Shanti admitted, “but it is always worth it.”
While students and staff at Prescott College turn their attention to our campus gardens, the Green Mountain Center has begun preparing for the Worldwide Climate and Justice Education Week, the first week in April. Prescott College has been a participant in this global event since it began in 2022, and this year, we invite students, staff, and alumni living around the world to share challenges and solutions from their own regions. If you would like to be involved, please contact Zach Czuprynski at [email protected].
If you’d like to help support our work, we appreciate any assistance you can offer. We’ve included a button for gifts on the Green Mountain Center website. You can even specify what you’d like your contribution to go toward when filling out the form. And don’t forget: we love sharing news from our GMC alumni, and so we hope you will reach out and let us know where the path from Poultney has led you. It’s as easy as sending a message to [email protected].