Despite the cold, turnout for this event was good, with guests joining us from all across Chicagoland. Guests came in from the snow bearing delicious dishes, including creations ranging from Butternut Squash soup and carmelized onion puff pizza to gourmet gluten-free cookies. We still need more friends to join us from the neighborhood, but we hope that once the temperature rises, so will curiosity about our mission.

I also gave my first-ever cooking demonstration, which featured recipes for a Raw Apple Pie and Oat Walnut Date Balls. Apparently it wasn't too bad, considering the crowd polished off a pie and a half, all the date balls, and took copies of the recipes home. After an unfortunate delay due to technical difficulties, a few remained for the screening of the powerful and compelling documentary, Food Inc. Following the film, several stayed behind to discuss. Since we were not able to screen the film to as large an audience as we hoped, Growing Home plans to schedule another viewing at Wood St in February.

Stay tuned for the third installment of Englewood Nights...

Thanks and Eat Well!
--Seneca Kern



• Urban Farm Assistant
• Rural Farm Assistant
• Administrative Assistant

You can find downloadable .pdf job descriptions here.

We're honored to be in the company of so many other fine organizations.

Kaaren was also very committed to organic agriculture. She was always pleased to share with us news of her daughter and son-in-law's organic farming efforts in North Carolina.

Kaaren will be sorely missed by all of us.
 
--Harry Rhodes, Executive Director and Valerie Denney, Board President on behalf of the entire Growing Home Board and Staff

I've been at Growing Home as an intern for about two months. I like to tell people my job is to Google. My time so far has been spent researching a few different things- since I work at the Wood Street Urban Farm in Englewood, my first assignment was to find population demographics on Englewood and West Englewood. It's incredibly difficult to find information, let alone CURRENT information. Through this, I've learned how high the unemployment rate is, which makes the work Growing Home is doing so much more important.

I've also been finding potential employers for our program participants, as well as other training programs in Chicago. Essentially, I'm building contact databases so that things can run a little more efficiently.

In spite of all this time spent at a computer, I have gotten to play in the dirt a little. I got to go to the Les Brown Memorial Farm and help bag and bushel and weigh things for the CSA program. It's amazing how much work it takes even AFTER vegetables are picked! I learned to clean one of my favorite foods- scallions- and found that this will inevitably make you smell like onions for the rest of the day.

I've also spent some time learning about Growing Home's history and about organic produce. Most of the former came from the Growing Home website, while the latter mainly came from a documentary called "The Future of Food."

"The Future of Food" taught me a lot about the dangers and problems in industrial agriculture, and that organic agriculture is a good solution to these problems. I've also learned about the problem of access to healthy food- especially here on the south side of Chicago. All this ultimately makes it easier to understand the mission of Growing Home, and to work toward their goals- even if it's just Googling demographics.

--Katee

In addition to the presentation of graduation certificates, a number of interns read from pieces they had written in a writing workshop offered by the Community Writing Project. Wanda read "Caring for Other People," Lavert read "A Good Father," amd Rebecca read "Caring for Someone and Someone Caring for You." (Sign up for our  newsletter in the navigation bar on the left if you'd like to get pictures and stories from the event.)

Plus, we enjoyed the warmth and scenery at the Garfield Park Conservatory.