From officemanager at svionline.org Mon May 17 14:47:27 2010 From: officemanager at svionline.org (Sequatchie Valley Institute) Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 13:47:27 -0500 Subject: [Sviannouncements] Sequatchie Valley Institute - Newsletter available, including a review of 2009 activities and events Message-ID: 2009-2010 Newsletter and Review of SVI Events and Activities Our newsletter is available now... Download by clicking the image or link below... Earth Matters 2009-2010 ? download now 2009 Review of SVI Events and Activities Our tours on the third Saturday of each month have been very successful with many happy visitors. Thanks to Alex Fear and Chris Gilligan for conducting the tours. Ulinawi Ulinawi, the neighboring community started by our former interns, Nada and Bradley Jones, is becoming well established now, with some great people helping out. An impressive earth bag and pole framed home is moving upwards, and several other temporary and permanent structures have been built. Projects include gardens, chickens, goats, and a gravity-fed water supply. SVI building workshops are now being conducted at Ulinawi, which has more in-progress structures than SVI at this time. Barking Beetle Conference Center This beautiful three-floored structure, built in part with a grant from the Community Foundation of Chattanooga, is becoming a vortex for SVI events. It provides a unique shelter high in the trees when rain prevents outdoor programs. The structure also provides room for large groups. Moonshadow is a beautiful venue for meetings and workshops, but has been bursting at the seams when numbers reach 30 to 60 people. Now we easily have capabilities for over 50 people who can meet in comfort under shelter. We have even used it as a ?campground? for scouts and students when the weather was too inclement to stay in tents. Plans for the Conference Center Retreats, conferences, non-profit meetings, workshops, parties, and more. A current idea is to host weddings. The Wedding Rocks, where Joel and Michelle were married, is a beautiful outdoor site, and the Conference Center provides an alternate location in case of rain as well as an excellent reception area. One of our restrictions for large groups is our small parking area, so we are considering establishing a new location for parking. January January 10. Webb School Outdoor Class Visits January 26. Home School Day at the Tennessee Aquarium January 30. Johnny and Carol celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary by traveling to New Zealand and Australia for three months, hiking, camping, and learning about new bioregions, leaving SVI in the capable hands of Asha, Patrick, and Chris. February February 24. UTC Sociology class field trip. February 27. Sewanee Creek Community representative visits. The Board visioning workshop helped determine SVI goals and activities for the year. A seed exchange and spring celebration was led by Cerulean. Randall, our gardener for 2008, was joined by Trish for the beginning of Spring gardening . March March 9. Tour group visits. Mountain Justice Spring Break Program with 27 student activists visit and help out with projects here. This group came to discuss strategy and planning for the upcoming year in the struggle to stop the use of mountain top removal for coal mining in Appalachia. March 28. Spring Wildflower Hike. March 29. Shiitake Mushroom Workshop with 15 participants who worked enthusiastically to inoculate over 40 logs. Each person took home a lovely inoculated log and enjoyed a delicious shiitake-filled luncheon. April April 7. Class from University of the South visits for a tour. April 12. Second Spring Wildflower Hike. April 15. Visit from 6th-8th graders from Chattanooga Montessori School, including a 3-hr tour, lunch, and a hike. UTC Earth Day presentation. April 21. David Brainerd School Senior Class visited for hike and tour April 25. Party for the Planet at the Tennessee Aquarium. April 27. Co-Sponsor of the Beehive Collective?s Presentation in Chattanooga about the Mountaintop Removal Poster. Trish worked with the Bethlehem Center for children in Chattanooga from April to June helping to plant a garden with the children. SVI joined the Buy Fresh Buy Localorganization in Chattanooga with participation in the Buy Fresh, Buy Local Food Guide. May May 14. Collegedale Academy Senior Ecology Class Visit. May 17. Patrick taught a workshop on Fermentation in Chattanooga. May 21-31. Food For Life had 96 participants. Programs and workshops were presented by 23 great speakers, including Sandor?s fermentation workshop and Carol?s food preservation and native edibles and medicinal plant hike, a shiitake inoculation workshop, and more. Appalachian Voices, a story and portrait project about Appalachia, interviewed and drew portraits of the SVI staff and Food For Life participants. June June 1-5. The Warren County School Honors Summer Program. Fifty kids from Grades 1-6 came to us each day for 5 days for a three-hour hike and tour. We broke them into 3 groups, each with an experienced guide, and took them up separate trails. The kids were great! We hope they will be able to come back next year. June 9-15. Bonnaroo. SVI again participated in Planet Roo, the ecovillage section of Bonnaroo. We built a lovely straw-bale house, as usual, with very elegant clay slip designs. See our website for photographs. We shared our love of sustainable building with over 90,000 music lovers, many of whom were entranced with our goals and our unique building skills. We?re fond of telling the story about the young man who left Bonnaroo early. According to his girl friend, he went home to start building a clay house! Asha and friends performed on the solar stage. Our staff sold their handmade crafts. This provided much-appreciated income, as none of us are salaried. June 23. Creative Discovery Museum Scientist in Residence Program. Carol and Johnny took buckets of clay, sand, and straw to the Museum and, with the help of passing kids, built a cob house! See the web for pictures of this exciting and educational event. Gardens. Our interns, staff, and gardeners were busy planting, weeding, and harvesting. We shared our knowledge of the enduring skills of canning, drying, and freezing, producing lots of delicious healthful products, including apple & pear butter, apple & pear cider, dried shiitake mushrooms, grape and muscadine juice, mead, wine, and tomato sauce. July- August Building Workshop at Ulinawi sponsored by SVI. Gardening and food preservation projects continue. September Sept. 26. Tennessee Environmental Education Association Annual Conference, Nashville, TN. Session: Use Mud to Build Green-Inside or Out! Carol and Johnny presented a workshop for SVI on use of cob building in the classroom and schoolyard, to encourage creative thinking and understanding of green sustainable building. See pictures on our website. October October 3. National Solar Tour. Thanks to Chris for organizing the tour this year. More and more people each year are interested in alternative energy systems. October 30. Wine in the Woods. Over 40 people attended our yearly fundraiser, this year with a Halloween costume theme. We were honored by seven donors with donations of wine from Tennessee vineyards. Of course, our own wines, champagnes, and meads were featured. Over 40 people had an excellent evening, with lots of wine and food. Our new conference center, Barking Beetle, provided plenty of space for tasting sessions, accompanied by an excellent band from Chattanooga. A number of people spent the night with us, and awoke to discover that heavy rains had brought down our creek. People who parked on the SVI side of the creek were trapped till the next day! Not many wine tastings end like this. We provided meals and our unexpected visitors helped with clean up and hiked on our trails. Potlucks. We began joining with our neighboring friends and communities in the Sequatchie Valley for monthly get-togethers and potluck dinners. November-December December 11-13. Solstice Party and Open Studio. This annual event attracted many revelers. We combined the party with a work day to begin raising the roof beams for the new wood-fired kiln shed in Sassafras Flats. Artists in our community displayed their work in Barking Beetle. Carol presented an Open Studio event at Sweetgum, with her pottery on display, and provided hot herb teas, cider, and Johnny?s famous fudge to visitors. Chris Gilligan Board of Directors - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Sequatchie Valley Institute 1233 Cartwright Loop Whitwell, TN 37397 (423) 949-5922 tel svionline.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: newsletter-image.png Type: image/png Size: 116824 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 4198397555_ee7e62c54a_m.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 39125 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: download_018.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 62155 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: P5310271.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 93732 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Message-ID: <0140C540-844A-4AE5-9DC4-96C4EC361EF3@svionline.org> We've added more presentations, discussions etc. to the schedule for Food for Life! Please check it out... http://svionline.org/svi/778/food-for-life-gathering-2010/ Food for Life is for families! Fun workshops for kids all weekend! Food for Life is for foodies! We have 2 PhD's on the schedule, plus plenty of experts in herbalism, edible wild plants, chocolate, ice cream, butter, cheese, gardening. Food for life is for friends! Encourage your friends to attend and learn how to find, grow, and prepare healthy, life-giving food! Help us publicize the event, downloadable/printable flyers are linked at the bottom of the event page on our website... http://svionline.org/svi/778/food-for-life-gathering-2010/ We hope to see you in June! Chris Gilligan Board of Directors - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Sequatchie Valley Institute 1233 Cartwright Loop Whitwell, TN 37397 (423) 949-5922 tel svionline.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: