Vashon Resilience

Community Teach-In on Resilience, New Beginnings, and Gardening 

After a (mostly) mild winter on Vashon, the spring gardening season is upon us already!

It's time to start garden starts, nurture soil, and prepare for sunnier days ahead.  Spring is also a gateway for personal renewal and rebirth.  This month's Teach-In has it all.

RSVP below to receive the Zoom link. Come and go as you like throughout the morning.

Saturday, February 20th, 9am-Noon

SCHEDULE:

• 9AM - "Getting Started in the Vegetable Garden"  - with Karen Biondo (La Biondo Farm) and Michelle Crawford (Pacific Potager) 

• 9:30AM - "Regeneration: Using Fire to Grow Food" - with Biochar Czar Ken Miller

• 10AM - "Resilience: Matsuda Farm Update" and growing de-commodified food on Vashon - with Caitlin Ames of Matsuda Farm/Vashon Maury Island Land Trust (Learn how time bank members can get time credits by volunteering on the farm.)

• 10:30AM - "Refresh: Garden Medicinals - Growing Plants for Skin Care and Wellbeing" - with Rachel Sursley (Deer Fern Herbals)

• 11AM - "Rebirth: How I Rebuilt My Life Post-Wrongful Conviction" - with Amanda K.

• 11:30AM - Community Resources: Vashon Island Growers Association - with Catherine Johnson, VIGA Board President

Karen and Michelle are incredible farmers and passionate about sharing knowledge, ideas, and energy with the community.  

Ken Miller has been around food and farms since his youth and remembers walking beside his grandfather plowing his fields with a team of mules. In 1970 he learned about compost and has been making biochar since 2007. 

Caitlin Ames works as the Manager of Matsuda Farm. They hail from New York but have been on the west coast for 14 years, the last 7 of which have been spent farming on Vashon. At Matsuda Farm, Caitlin cultivates vegetables for the island with a goal of contributing to the creation of a more equitable food system here. 

Rachel Sursley is a mother, nature connection mentor for the Vashon Wilderness Program, folk herbalist, medicine maker and traditional sheepskin tanner. She loves the ways plants and humans have been intertwined since the beginning of time and how we are much alike, each carrying within us a variety of gifts to share.

Amanda K. is an exoneree, journalist, and author of the New York Times best-selling memoir, Waiting to Be Heard (HarperCollins). Between 2007 and 2015, she spent nearly four years in an Italian prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn’t commit. Together with her husband, Christopher Robinson, she writes, produces, and hosts Labyrinths, a podcast with iHeartMedia.

Free and open to all Islanders

This event is a project of our community's time bank, to bring us together during this challenging time of isolation, share resources for resiliency, and show that Islanders have the skills, resources, and knowledge to thrive!

Check out VashonTime.org.  It's free to sign up, and as a member you can peruse the many offers of Island skills, time, and opportunities for connection, in Covid-safe ways. 

After you sign up for the Teach-In below, the Zoom link will be emailed to the address you use to sign up. If you do not receive it immediately, please contact Amy, [email protected].

Thank you!