Act Now! Speak Up for the Fruit Trees

Aug 10, 2014

Time to make history!

With your support, on August 28, City Council members will join our grassroots movement for the first food forest in an Austin Public Park by voting to approve the Festival Beach Food Forest as part of the Holly Shores Master Plan! We’re so close!

In this installment of East Feast News, check out how you can act fast, learn more, and catch up on juicy updates from the East Feast network! (click on the links for details):

Act Now! By 8/13, email your support for the Festival Beach Food Forest!
Stand up for the trees! Join the party at City Council, August 28.
Food Forest 101! Movie night and panel August 17, Sustainable Food Center
The latest buzzz: Festival Beach Community Garden
Get planting with Blackshear Bridge

Short on time, but ready for action?
You can help forward the action just by forwarding the news! Please share this newsletter with other neighbors and friends who are interested growing food and community in our neighborhoods. And take a minute to send an email to PARD and Council for the Festival Beach Food Forest 🙂

Looking for a way to change your world?
If you want to get involved with a grassroots effort to make organically grown food accessible to the masses – our Outreach teams are meeting bi-weekly. Email us, here, for more details.

Give 5 minutes: Speak For the Fruit Trees!

Got five minutes? Send an email! The Parks and Recreation Department (PARD) wants to know what you think about the Festival Beach Food Forest in the Holly Shores Master Plan – their compiling comments up until AUGUST 14.

Click here for a sample email!

Email PARD at: HollyShoresMasterPlan@austintexas.gov
You can send an email to City Council too! Click here

If you want to speak out on other parts of the PARD plan, please check out the details and fill out a comment form.

Food Forest Fest @ City Council

Come out wearing green to support the Festival Beach Food Forest and Festival Beach Community Garden at City Council Thursday, August 28!

Please RSVP and stay tuned for details on the Facebook Event Page.

The Holly Shores Park Master Plan will likely be scheduled at 7pm, but we’ll be checking the Council agenda first.

Food Forest 101 – workshop series

Our last two Food Forest 101 open house meetings were great! Thanks to everyone who came to the table – with your ideas, questions, and talents.

Have plans yet for Sunday, August 17, 2pm-4pm?
We’re excited to invite y’all to a Food Forest 101 Movie night, hosted by the Austin/Central Texas Backyard Poultry Meetup, the Sustainable Food Center, and the Austin Permaculture Guild!

You can sign up and share on Facebook.

Here are the details:
What is a food forest, and what does it look like in our backyard? Our neighborhood? Our community? What role do our feathered friends play in this perennial food system?

Bring a finger food snack to share and join us for a summer food movie and discussion at the Sustainable Food Center headquarters. We’ll be watching excerpts from the Establishing a Food Forest with Geoff Lawton dvd (with permission for public viewing granted from the Permaculture Research Institute and EcoFilms Australia).

After the movie excerpts, we’ll have a panel to provide additional insights on food forests. Our panelists include Kirby Fry with Permablitz Texas and Southern Exposure; and Elizabeth Walsh and Zach Herigodt of the East Feast Coalition.

We will also have Daryl Stewart of the ape99 Permaculture Meetup and Jon Van Lowe of the Food is Free project to share their experiences of food in a community.

Look forward to seeing you and your delicious snack there!

Festival Beach Community Garden News

The latest buzzz from the garden is that the city approved bees for community gardens!

The Festival Beach Community Garden received 10 hives from Walter Schumacker of Central Texas Bee Rescue! Beekeeping demos and classes to follow! http://honeybeekind.com.

FBCG had several workdays with middle school students mentored by the Breakthrough program which helps students become first generation college graduates. The program includes community service, and they helped garden leaders mow, weed and mulch at the garden. http://www.breakthroughaustin.org.

Alexandra Castaneda led garden tours in July for the Texas Mamma Jamma Bike trainees, The Texas Mamma Jamma Ride is an annual bike ride that raises money for 10 local organizations providing breast cancer resources. Riders can register through the ride date at the ride or online at http://mammajammaride.org .The Texas Mamma Jamma Ride also needs volunteers for finish line and ride support.

Community garden work days are the second Saturday of the month. All are welcome, we also offer garden tours at that time!

Get planting with Blackshear Bridge!

Ready to plant a little forest of 40 new trees on top of La Loma, Prospect Hill? Where is that, you may ask. Blackshear Elementary School sits atop the significant rise that’s the namesake for the historic African American and Latino neighborhood of Blackshear-Prospect Hill. It’s right across the street from Huston-Tillotson University, HT where the faculty are striving to become the nation’s greenest and most progressive, historically black university. Any bicyclist can tell you about pedaling up Comal to reach 11th Street. Once you’re there, head east to Austin’s new Fine Arts Academy at Blackshear Elementary School where the Campus Green Team and Blackshear Bridge have a forest in mind for the crest of the neighborhood.

We hope you will join us for the fun on Friday, November 7 when Treefolks and Austin PARD bring on the trees. Come help us plant them!

Email hello@blackshearbridge.org for details or to volunteer. We also welcome lead volunteers to help with the permaculture design process. In the meantime, stay tuned to East Feast and follow Blackshear Bridge on Facebook for news about other community garden and park days at Blackshear in September and October.