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Baker Open House – Community Input Needed – Swimming, Sledding, Fun!

Today, Saturday February 1st, St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS) and the Friends and Amigos of Baker are sponsoring a community Open House at Baker Center, 209 W. Page Street 55107.  There will be swimming, sledding, seed starting workshops hosted by Growing West Side,  and Greenhouse tours given by Youth Farm.

The Community Education department of SPPS will be soliciting feedback from community members on how the space can best serve the needs of the West Side.  As ownership of Baker has changed from the Parks & Recreation department to SPPS we are at a starting point of how the center can best be utilized.

Hope to see you there, it’ll be a lot of fun!

Baker Open House Invite

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Greenhouse Party and Mini-Field Trip

To celebrate our final greenhouse class of the fall the Youth Farmers decided we should have a party.  With music, decorations, dancing, courtyard soccer, gummy worms, and guests, we celebrated the past seasons accomplishments.  This fall there was a lot of be proud of.  Led  by Farm Steward Teng Lee, the greenhouse after-school group successfully harvested, saved lettuce, radish, basil, and bean seeds, started head lettuce (that we’ll eat in January), became worm wranglers (vermicomposters), turned the compost, and put the Cherokee School garden to rest for the year.  The previous week we made the trek across the Smith avenue bridge to a small park, climb atop the Huge chair and made observations about the Mississippi below.  All in all a lot of fun.

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Fall Highlights on the West Side

This past fall was full of lots of fun and many milestones.  After the past growing season there was a lot to celebrate and we gladly carried that momentum through the changing seasons.

October was a very busy month, we started our school year LEAD program along with 4 sets of after-school classes: Cooking, Gardening, and 2 separate Greenhouse classes. Additionally we worked with various work groups to help us clean-up and prepare the gardens for the winter and flip the beds so they are ready for early spring plantings.

We thanked both La Puerta Abierta United Methodist Church (gardens) and Cherokee Park United Church (summer kitchen) with big sunday brunches at each location.  The staff got together early on two separate Sunday mornings to thank the church communities for supporting YFMP (Thanks again).  Lastly we started working on a new mural in the “main” garden.  The project is being managed by Alice Martin, a long-time WS youth farmer, LEAD staff, and now Farm Steward.  Working with LEAD staff and Youth Farmers, we successfully primed and painted the first few layers before it became too cold.  Please be sure to check out all the photos.