We have conquered another week here in Southeast, Iowa. Our week started off very busy on Monday with our library program in Danville and a farmer’s market in Fort Madison. At the library, our goal was to promote local strawberries that we got from the prison farm here in Mount Pleasant. We had everyone try a store-bought versus garden-grown strawberry and then made a fruit salsa with the strawberries and some homemade cinnamon chips to dip. It was a huge hit and we didn’t have any fruit salsa left by the end of the hour! It was kids’ night at the Fort Madison Farmer’s Market so we brought along our pea shoot growing kits. We let the kids try different parts of the pea, gave them a quick run-down on how to grow their own pea shoots, and then let them take home their own kit to grow themselves. It was another huge success seeing that we only had 3 out of 35 kits left! Who knew it could be so much fun to promote local fruits and veggies?!
We went back to the Christamore Family Treatment Center on Tuesday to see how the kid’s salsa garden was doing that we planted in May and mentioned in our week two blog. After they had some gardening refreshers from Morgan Hoeing, we made a fruit smoothie and hummus using the blender bikes! Most of the kids had never seen a blender bike before, and if you haven’t either, well it’s exactly how you’re imagining it. It’s just a stationary bike with a blender attached, and all you have to do is pedal for the blender to work. We added the ingredients to the smoothie or the humus blender container and let the kids pedal to blend the ingredients together. Most of them loved the strawberry smoothie and some of them had never tried hummus before, so it was a day full of new experiences and tasty foods!
We went back to Fort Madison on Wednesday to help out at the RSVP Garden. This garden is unique in the sense that all the produce grown is donated to the Fort Madison Food Pantry. It was a rainy morning, but we still got out in the mud to pull some weeds and harvest a few radishes. Tammy, the woman in charge of the garden, gave us a tour of the Fort Madison Food Pantry, which we hope to be volunteering at in the near future. She explained the various programs that they do within the community and how these programs are making a positive impact. Tammy is very passionate about her job and we are looking forward to volunteering with her at the food pantry or in the garden again this summer.
Thursday morning began with another library program in Mount Pleasant. We discussed the differences between the locally grown strawberries versus the ones you can get in the store, and made the fruit salsa. Again, it was a huge hit and the kids really enjoyed cutting up the ingredients with kids-safe knives. Thursday evening, we got the opportunity to attend the Des Moines County Extension Council Meeting. We were able to introduce ourselves to the Des Moines County Council members and explain the various projects and activities we are doing this summer to promote local foods. It was another fulfilling week here in Southeast, Iowa, and we are going to be very busy next week so make sure you keep up to date on all of our social media pages to follow what we are doing.