Members of the Northwoods Food Project hosted the first Northern Gardening program of the year at WTIP Community Radio Feb. 4. The program will be aired the first and third Thursdays of every month at 4 p.m. Pictured with a few of the vegetables left from their summer gardens are Olya (front) and Jeanne Wright, Cook County Extension Director Diane Booth, and Melinda Spinler.
The Northwoods Food Project (NFP) is going great guns this year. It’s hosting the Northern Gardening
show on WTIP Radio, organizing the second year of community gardens and the GardenShare program, developing a wild and locally grown foods cookbook and growing vegetable transplants for sale this spring, as well as helping with the youth after-school gardening program.
That’s a lot of things on this small board’s plate, but everyone is really excited about the projects, said Melinda Spinler, who co-chairs the NFP board with Jeanne Wright.
“Our purpose is to develop Cook County’s long-term food sustainability,” she said. “Almost 100 percent of Cook County’s food is trucked in along a single route. There’s been a number of times we’ve lost contact with the lower part of the state— not just when the fiber optic cable went out last week. I remember a number of years ago when a mud slide closed the road for three days. We want to get people into growing their own food. It’s fun, it’s healthy—it’s good allaround for us.”
Here is how NFP is helping make that happen:
• T he Northern Gardening Show
on WTIP Radio
Theshow is aired on the first and third Thursdays at 4 p.m. on WTIP and will feature all kinds of gardening topics. This month, the hosts will focus on how to start seeds, and what vegetables grow well in Cook County. Diane Booth, Cook County Extension, has developed a local catalog of varieties that thrive here. It is free and available at the Extension office
in the Community Center as well as at the Cook County
Library and WTIP.
• Community Gardens and GardenShare
Last year, NFP and WTIP collaborated in building a community garden at the radio station, and this year, a community garden is in the works at the Rec Park (stay tuned for details). The Food Project also matched up gardeners with landowners who wanted help with vegetable gardens in their back yards. That match-up continues.
To learn more about this project and other information about “growing your own” in Cook County, there will be a community
meeting at the 4-H Building at 6:30 p.m. Monday, March
1. Thepublic is invited.
• Vegetable Transplants
The Food Project is in the process of starting seeds and will offer the vegetable transplants to local gardeners: Peppers, tomatoes, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, squash and more. Gardeners can order their plants beforehand and the order forms will soon be available at the Extension Office, the Co-op and the Library. • Cookbook
Food Project board member Kristine Bottorff is coordinating the cookbook project. The theme is locally grown foods and wild foods, including such things as blueberries and trout, chicken and venison. The cookbook will include a good selection of recipes as well as preservation techniques and a good bibliography. Bottorff said she’s looking to set up a committee to work on the project and welcomes great recipes and volunteers
to test them in their kitchens. She can be reached at
387-2113, 387-3363 or by emailing kkrpha@yahoo.com.
• Y outh After-School Gardening Program
Thisprogram is open to children in the second to fifthgrades from April through October. Last season, the children grew everything from carrots to nasturtiums as well as made soups
for the Empty Bowl fundraiser out of some of their vegetables.
For more information about these and other NFP projects, call Diane Booth at 387-3015.
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