It's been about 2 months since we've had our rental tractor onsite, and if you've been out here you can see that this machine is transforming the face of our farm on weekly basis.

We are in the midst of an online campaign to purchase this tractor, and as the Farm Director  I wanted to explain to you all why this investment is so important and what it means in terms of labor saving. 

With the help of Nvidia corporation, we began planting our orchard last week and thus far have planted about 100 fruit tree, mostly citrus and stone fruit. In a few days, our new water line will be hooked up to the meter and there will be water flowing for our back field and we'll be ready to begin working our new field.

As I roll up the greenhouse doors, I am greeted by warm air and carpets of green seedlings - kale, green onions, and broccoli, all neatly lined up in their soil block flats, as well as our first batch of summer crops - eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers (oh my!). 

February weather has arrived. We've got warmer air and some trees are even blooming. I checked in with some of the community gardeners from the front of the park this week and the word is that it is time to seed peas. If you haven't gotten your potato seed yet you better hurry because in our area it's best to plant them third week of February. We began seeding tomatoes and eggplants a couple of weeks ago. It's a great time to seed or transplant Brassicas and other cool season crops that don't require too much heat to germinate. 

As we enter the new year we are preparing for our next round of Cooking Matters, a free cooking and nutrition course taught in Spanish by our wonderful peer educators, Los Promotores. This session we will have a class every weekday that the farm is open, Tuesday-Friday from 10am-Noon. Classes are recurring weekly and will run for a total of 6-weeks.

Phew, Project Inspire was quite a whirlwind! Our 1500 NVIDA and Veggielution volunteers got an incredible amount of work done last weekend.

Thanks to Project Inspire, we will more than double the amount of food we grow in 2013, and many more community members will learn to cook and eat healthy food. 

Project Inspire got quite a bit of press! Here are links to all the photos, videos, and articles – please let us know if we missed anything.

The food we eat tells the story of who we are and the society that we live in. What story does the food in your kitchen tell?

In our ideal world, the food our community eats would tell a story of people who are healthy, provided for, culturally diverse, and connected to the land and each other. We want to create that ideal story, and together, through our work at Veggielution, we have the power to build a food system that nourishes and connects our community.