Meeting Minutes April 26th, 2010

Meeting place: Veronica’s House, 7:00 pm

Attending: Fireweed, Mike, Bob Vosburgh, Lyndsey Jennings, Jan Murphy, Sharon Walberg, Veronica Timmons (facilitator), deNeen Baldwin (notetaker)
Regrets: Rae

Welcome to our new member, Sharon Walberg.

Hay acquisition:
Bob Vosburgh says Doug Wright is donating 25 bales of hay which need picking
up very soon. Bob, Jan, Lyndsey and Mike will help getting the hay to the field.

Financial Update:
Mike says $100 in new memberships have been received, which brings the total
number of memberships to 16 (14 family/group and 2 individual).
The account balance is $182.17. Tilling the field this spring will cost $50 and the tap will cost $40.
It was suggested we consider having online access to the bank account. Mike to investigate and report back.
Sharon suggested Mike check if we can get a donation bin at recycling.

Field Update:
Cleanup of the field has yet to be done; needs to be done before tilling.

Tilling: The field is not ready yet; too wet. After turning over the cover crop, the field needs 2 weeks prior to planting.
Planting Date Possibilities:
We have tentatively slated two time frames for planting: either Saturday May 22 (Sunday 23rd if it rains) or Saturday May 29th (Sunday 30th if it rains).

Cover Crop:
FireWeed researched getting the best seed possible for the coming cover crop of Red Clover and Hairy Vetch. She will look into purchasing the former from South Country Feed, and arrange to split an order of the latter with Ironwood Farm in Fanny Bay.
Jan and Lyndsey may be able to pick up some seed in Ladner early in May.
Regarding the storage of the seed potatoes—Thanks to Mike for picking them up from Bob Parsons and moving them to Rod and Vlasta’s cold storage. The group thanked Rod and Vlasta for the use of their space.

Grants:
Veronica to meet soon with Louise Bell on a grant possibility from the Union of B.C. Municipalities. She will also work with Bob to explore a Home Depot/Evergreen grant for a structure for water catchment and hay storage. Veronica will submit the application.

Other Business:
The Islands Trust is hosting a meeting of the representatives from the various Agricultural interest groups which have recently been forming on the island. The meeting, which is partly designed to assure the groups are not working at cross purposes, is on Monday,May 10 at 10:30 am at the Old School. FireWeed will attend for SPUDS.

Next Meeting:
Let’s hope the next time we meet it is for planting! No meeting scheduled.