The information to make your room reservations for the Spring National Meeting in June. You’ll find the links and instructions on the main web site. Please pay careful attention to the instructions so that you can successfully complete your room registration.
Click Here to go there now.
“And when I went to sleep, I dreamed a dream but the dream was not in my
head: it seemed to come through my open bedroom door and settled on my
comforter for me to watch”
Angalina Luongo
Our Dreams sometimes elude us yet they linger some where in the backs of our busy minds …
Little snippets of memory that tend to color our thinking and actions, even though we aren’t consciously aware of it. You, as leaders in our organization, should take pride in the dreams of Woman’s Farm and Garden, for our dreams have fared well in 2009.
Our bee project has been successful. The Greenhouse Welcome Center is almost complete and in the next few weeks we will be working on our book and on plans for our June Meeting. Kathy Beveridge, our Sparkling editor, not only is helping with the book but working on a new branch in the Amber area.
On a personal note; if any of your have before worked in the postal system and the telephone system, relying on e-mail, I have to report to you that I have received no e-mails since November first.
The Chief Financial officer of our company, Edward Huppi has been in hospital and is only now, on Jan 6th at home under care, due to a very grave complication resulting from his cancer chemotherapy. This has been a most serious time for us; he is our nephew, and at Thanksgiving his step-father died so along with unremitting pressure at our plant for delivery of electronics to our troops in Afghanistan, sometimes over-night, you can imagine that our normal 8-5 lives are expanded and stressful. If you need to communicate with me, please write or telephone.
My dream for us at Farm and Garden in 2010 will be our finished greenhouse project, ready for the big, historic anniversary ahead, our book and a new emphasis on doing things locally. Next time I will be writing about the new trend in the United States, and we will want to be ahead of, or on the curve of this trend as were with the bee project, as we deftly close the door on our 2009 dreams.
Faith
“AN INSIDE LOOK AT WNF&GA: IT’S HISTORY AND LEGACY”
Founder’s Day was celebrated by neighboring branches Juliet, Troy and Warren having combined their meetings to share in the significance of the day.
Opening remarks to the 76 in attendance were made by Michigan Division President, Carroll Thomson and a defining letter was sent by National President, Faith Tiberio:
“Our founders certainly knew the importance of a system of independent Branches which are connected with each other and become one under a unifying umbrella known to us as “National.”
“National” provides legal protection, guidance and goals. Branches by themselves do wonderful, important work within a limited circumference of service. Together, the Branches multiply and extend service and influence.
Consider National’s “Bee Project”. Each Branch succeeded in doing what it could to ease this terrible nation-wide agricultural crisis; together all the Branches, all the members communicating, exchanging ideas and plans of action under the leadership of National truly made a difference.
I congratulate you. I thank you and cheer you on. Your founders knew that your combined Branches truly made a “Tree of Life.”
My name is Kathy Maestas of Techkat Web Services and I’ve been your webmaster for the past couple of years. I want to take this opportunity at the Holidays to thank you for the opportunity of serving your excellent organization. It has been a joy to redesign your site and “meet” some of your members.
I also want to thank you for including me in the distribution of the Farm & Garden Magazine. It is lovely and I always enjoy reading up on what the branches are doing and seeing who has won an award. I’m starting to feel like I know many of you. The recipes, stories and poems are fun as well.
I noticed in the last issue of Farm & Garden that you are looking for someone from within the membership to take over the web site. I thought it would be appropriate for me to give a bit more detail about the technical requirements for working on the site for anyone who is interested in taking over the position.
The following are the basic skills that are required to maintain the site:
Much of the site can be maintained using a graphical HTML editor like Dreamweaver or Kompozer, but knowing HTML will come in handy in seeing where the JavaScript elements are and also for editing the JavaScript.
I wish everyone a beautiful and happy holiday season and a prosperous New Year.
Kathy Maestas
Webmaster
“Come little leaves,” said the wind one day,
“Come ‘ore the meadow with me and play,
“Put on your dresses of red and gold”
”For summer has gone and the days grow cold”
Do you remember that nursery song? And as we reflect this holiday season, how much we have for which to be grateful, even all those piles of leaves, which can turn good use, for our gardens.
Kathy Beveridge, our own wonderful magazine editor, has opened a new business called Spark, a nonprofit consulting firm which may be of use to you as you consider ways of fund raising.
Many of our branches are busy fund raising; Rochester Branch is going all out with their “Greens Market.” Their outstanding newsletters continue to inform and involve members into taking an active role in all the opportunities this busy club offers. Constant communication among the members helps keep branches alive and giving to their communities.
Claudia Scioly is on top of “green” speakers, most importantly involving school programs and promises one for our June meeting, while Mayflower Branch is meeting this week to plan along those lines on a local farm, which has offered to become involved in a project.
Sylvia Anderson is looking for delegates for ACWW. See the magazine for further information. Audrey Ehrler reports that New York and Mayflower have combined for purpose of getting enough member numbers for voting delegates at the Triennial Conference of ACWW. Kay Engelhart is working very hard as the Chairman of International Cooperation Focus to educate our membership.
More stories have come in for “The Book”. Please sit down for ½ an hour or so and put down some memory which your children / grandchildren will read sometime in the future. How surprised I was to read in Thomas Hardy [1804-1928] that bees were being transported by horse and cart from place to place even then, for it was in taking hives to market that Tess of the d’Urbervilles experienced the accident with the mail-carrier’s horse which cost the life of her family’s only means of livelihood, the faithful horse Prince. Luckily for her, the mail carrier was a good and honest man who got the hives to market and saw to it that she got safely home.
Summer really has gone and the days do grow cold, but our gardens will awaken; plans for next Spring and lovely canned, frozen and root cellar vegetables warm us now.
Faith
“There were three crows”
It is the time for me to crow…to crow first; about the marvelous work of the Tri-County Branch and their festive, accomplished 80th birthday party in Hartford, NY, home finally of our beloved Mrs. E. Frances King. Audrey Ehrler and Betty Monahan waited in the warm sunshine at the local firehouse for us to arrive. Within the branch and mounted several articles and clippings from their 80 years of work that included photos of Henry Ford, awarding a Ford tractor to the winner of a horse pulling and plowing contest, and Mrs. King along with Mrs. Ford, helping with a flower show. They are, I believe, the only branch still mounting a flower show, annually. And behold, on a table was a collection of rocks, for our Ambler project. As you remember, each branch is asked to furnish a local rock to go into the rock garden or path, at the Headhouse / Ambler project. Members shared recollections of branch history.
After the meeting, presided over by Janie Thomas, we visited the home of Mrs. King on Route 40. The young couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Waring are struggling to keep it going but her gardens have all but disappeared. Mr. Waring greeted us most hospitably and gave us a rock for the Ambler project from the grounds, and a white rose bush from what remains on a slope. He promised that the bush would thrive and the fragrance divine. I’ll report to you if it survives the New England winter.
Crow number two; I’ve just returned from the “Bee-Fest” at the Ambler Branch a huge crowd had paid $35 each to attend the lecture, displays and lunch along the garden tours at Temple / Ambler, our official home. It was a most successful fun-raiser which had been painstakingly planned by Mrs. Jenny Rose Carey, our Vise-President, Linda Lowe, our liaison and development at Temple Ambler, Grace Chapman, staff there and all in partnership with the Montgomery County bee association. Part of this effort is to re-establish a bee keeping course there. Every Booth had a T-shirts with a bee-keeping themes, and all kinds of honey, tulip and iris bulbs, displays with live bees in conjunction with 4-H. Not only was this great financial, but a lasting gift to the community.
Crow number three; Mary Bertolini has come up with a final and favorable reckoning of our June, Natick meeting and is well advanced toward next June in the Niagara Falls area. Michigan, as usual has been doing its wonderful things. Now sorry I was to miss the International Tea, which was such a grand success. The up coming, the Greens Market, just past, a Pumpkin Festival. Soon you will be getting your magazine, filled with good information edited by our talented Kathy Beveridge, and with an orchard cover from Jean Ehlinger’s collection of Orchidae.
And now, like those three crows, I shall flap my verbal wings, and fly away.
FAITH
Several branches in the New York Division of WNF&GA are celebrating milestone birthdays this fall and next year and a special event took place on September 23, 2009 to mark the Tri-County Branch’s 80th Birthday and the NY Division Founders Day. You can read all about the planned festivities in the Autumn 2009 Edition of the New York Division Newsletter.
Also included in the Newsletter are a message from the Division President, Audrey Ehrler, some reminiscences from the archives about clotheslines (remember those?) and reports on recent and ongoing projects like the Ambler site project. There are some charming photos from recent activities, a schedule of upcoming events and a really amazing bee story.
Be sure to check out the new issue of the New York Division Newsletter right away. You’re sure to find something to make you smile.
“Curses…an unidentified plant…..”
Under all trees and plants in Heaven, (or whatever your thoughts on final destinations for us farmers and gardeners) I’m sure there are plant labels with names and even Latin ones. Ideally we should all have on our bookshelves, a copy of “Gardener’s Latin” or a similar volume. Eleanor Perenyi, writing in her “Green Thoughts” (1981) wishes she had ordered her Lavender plants using Linnaeus…that way, she would have avoided the “Lavender Swindles.”
Deer cure…or so someone claims…two cups of water, two eggs and a teaspoon of dish detergent. Spray on plants.
We are most grateful to Julie Siefker for offering to handle Registration for the next June meeting. Jenny Rose Carey is swamped with her work at the Ambler Arboretum for the coming months but will of course be available if needed.
Congratulations once again to the Tri-County Branch on their 80thyear. I will be there to help them celebrate, along with Audrey Ehrler and her husband. I hope to see many of you, then.
I mentioned in my message to you in the forth-coming magazine, of the death of Norman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Father of the Green Revolution and native of Iowa. He was important to all of us, although many people had little knowledge of him and his work with wheat that provided untold millions of families with food. He said later in life that it was his boyhood on the farm that motivated him to pursue his career in intensive modern agriculture.
As the Green Revolution continues, whole towns such as Franklin, Massachusetts have applied new techniques to help nature. Franklin discovered how to deal with storm water pollutants, by using “tree pit areas,” which catch storm water. The trees capture the pollutants, filter them and the clean water goes back into the soil. The town has chosen an ornamental flowering tree for its tree-centric storm water drains.
These could save thousands of dollars and help to beautify the streets of this New England town.
Don’t forget to send me your memory stories for our book.
I suppose, like a good labeling gardener, I should label this message with something Latin. Hmmmmm.
We were off yesterday with our country cousins to the Armada 4-H county fair. We drove the moo….d setting back roads to arrive in time for the kids competition with wild life, there ages varied and it was sister against brother but all with a sense of accomplishment. The displays of sunflowers and corn stalks where as high as an elephant’s eye. The impressive displays of canning produce, baking and quilting was quite a sight. The VFW featured Road Kill for dinner but no fresh scooped ice cream so on our way back we stopped at Cook’s farm who offered COW to CONE.
Editors note: A perfect picture of a summer afternoon in Michigan and a first time visit to a rural 4-H County Fair. If you’ve not had the experience, put it on your list of Things To Do!
