Start your own garden this year, maybe in a couple of planters on the front porch, or maybe add a few square feet to that special space – for the beauty you’ll create, for the hope you’ll inspire and for the stewardship of our environment you’ll provide. And please support the Vegetable Project when you do by buying High Mowing Organic Seeds from us from now until Friday, March 20.
Please click here for a printable list of our offering brochure and order form, invite a few friends to take a look with you and push those winter blues away with visions of warm spring breezes that are just around the corner. Please get orders to us at Albany High School or Myers Middle School, in an envelope marked “Vegetable Project.” Or mail to the Vegetable Project at 10 North Pine Ave., Albany 12203, with a check payable to the Vegetable Project.
The Vegetable Project receives half of all sales in this, our 10th annual seed sale, fundraiser. You will have your seeds in time for the coming season’s planting. And you will be supporting our work to create hands-on teaching and learning opportunities in Albany schools, by providing us with funds for supplies, tools and equipment.
And rather donate the full cost of seeds or more? That’s okay, too. Just click on the Donate button at our web site to start your transaction.
High Mowing’s seeds are organic and free of genetically modified organisms, which we value. And based in Vermont, many of its seeds were raised in the Northeast, meaning they’re especially suited to thrive in the kind of conditions that we have.
The Vegetable Project reaches out especially to kids with the greatest needs. These are kids in Albany schools who are challenging and disruptive, who do not respond well to being told “sit still in your chair” and “look up at the board.” We garden, prepare tasty dishes with what we grow and teach about scientific method. But most of all we engage kids. Working at two Albany schools so far, we have four programs: a year-round after-school and summer evening Garden Club at Stephen and Harriet Myers Middle School, development and assistance with plant-related classroom activities and curriculum at both Myers Middle School and Albany High School, a paid garden assistant internship mentoring program for at-risk students at Albany High and a work site for a city summer jobs program that gives high school-age students a first exposure to employment.
In addition, we are building development plans for an outdoor classroom at our middle school home, with a greenhouse, a shaded sitting area, a fruit tree orchard and naturalized space where science classes would conduct meaningful scientific investigations. The completed space should be as irresistible to art or history teachers as it is to science teachers, thus increasing kids’ time outdoors in fresh air and amid greenery, which research indicates supports wide ranging healthy outcomes.
Happy gardening. And please help us spread word about this great offer.
–Bill Stoneman
