WNFGA News

As the old year closes and the new year begins, you are probably marking your 2010 calendar with the important events that are coming up.

Please be sure to set aside June 2 – 6, 2010 for the WNF&GA Spring National Meeting in  Grand Island, New York. A summary of the meeting schedule can be found on our main web site along with information  and a reservation form for the Bus Tour. There’s also a link to the hotel if you’d like to make advance reservations.

As soon as the Spring Meeting Reservation Form is ready we’ll update you again. In the meantime, reserve those dates!

Wishing you all a blessed Christmas and a Happy Healthy New Year.

Best, Faith 

                        “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

   Celebrating In Style!

Foreground L-R: Bamberlee Barnes, MaryJo McInerney, Kim Vance, Elly Wilson Background L-R: Mary Hemmer, Marilyn Karpicke, RaeAnn Krauss

  The Saginaw Branch of the WNF&GA had a tea on the 31st of August this year celebrating the 80th Anniversary of this Branch! The tea was held at the historical Castle Museum here in Saginaw. The Castle Museum was at one time Saginaw’s stately post office in downtown Saginaw. It is a beautiful building with its majestic turrets and marbled halls designed after a French Chateau. The castle was completed in 1898 and was saved twice through the years from demolition. Just visiting the castle is a pleasure in itself. Walking through the castle is so much of Saginaw’s past. You can almost imagine yourself standing there in the past at those places all but forgotten by the people of the here and now. It was such a fitting place to hold our anniversary tea.

     We were pleased to have two guests from outside our branch attend our tea, Carroll Thomson (the Michigan Division WNF&GA president) and Claudia Scioly, who gave us a very remarkable and interesting recount of her Frysinger Exchange to Iceland at a lunch we held last year. It was so nice to have guests from the Division!! I think the tea topped everyone’s expectations of an old-fashioned tea. Each table was decorated by a different member of our Branch. Some were very fancy while others reflected a simpler tea you might have at home with your best friend. Each table had its own individual centerpieces, table settings, and teapots, provided by the table hostess. Finger foods were provided by members and their own recipes for the most part. They were amazingly good! Everyone had their best dresses on, some of us with hats and gloves. What a site to see! I think the ladies who founded our Branch would have been so proud of us! 

    “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 80^thyear.  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.

On Saturday, October 10, 2009, a first of its kind event is taking place and you don’t want to miss it!

The Pennsylvania – Mongomery County Beekeepers’ Association and Temple University/Ambler Campus & Arboretum are joining together to sponsor the first ever public Honey Bee Symposium.

There will be plenty of great opportunities to learn about

• Honey Bees & Beekeeping
• Honey and Products from the Hive
• Bee-friendly Plants
• Chemical-free Gardening
• Native Pollinators
• Colony Collapse Disorder
• Pesticides and Other Threats to Honey Bees

PLUS …

There will be Guided Garden Tours, Guest Speakers, Books, T-shirts, Beekeeping Supplies, Seeds and lots more!

Space is limited, so be sure to Sign Up Now ( Registration Form in PDF format will open in a new window)!

You can look over the Bee Fest Schedule (or print it out to share with fellow gardeners) HERE
(PDF Schedule will open in a new window).

For all the details and a great-looking Bee Fest Flyer that you can print and share with your club members, Click Here. (PDF Flyer will open in a new window).

For More Information including Speaker Biographies and a Synopsis of each talk, visit the Pennsylvania – Montgomery County Beekeepers’ Association web site.

This sounds like such a fun and informative event! Hope you can make it.

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!

            “Summertime … When the living is easy…”

                Such a telling, a beautiful line from Gerschwin’s Porgy and Bess.

                Summer gives all of us time to enjoy the abundance around us and the blessing showered on us.

                All the wonders of the garden become available to us, not only to eat, but I hope that some of you are not only storing, freezing and canning your harvest, but will write some of your memories down for our book. Public Broadcasting is so eager to promote agriculture that it is running series on the importance of farm and garden life.

            Trees are a great part of our lives. Kay Engelhart touched upon this subject which deserves our attention … the awareness of trees as part of nature’s life cycle. Few people realize the value of their trees from just a monetary decorative point of view. But there is much more than that.

                For instance, The Arbor Day Foundation reports that the largest white oak in the U.S. is in Lawrenceville, VA, 86’ high and 5’ diameter. The Foundation stated that it would cost over $84,000 in a season to replace the storm water control provided by this tree. It removes 24 pounds of pollutants each year.

                So we can sympathize with Kay’s mother-in-law, who has been keeping alive against all odds, an elm tree nearly 17’ in circumference, alas, despite all she could do, the tree succumbed, leaving Kay’s mother-in-law devastated.

            So, from trees to bees – 60 Minutes had a sobering section on a recent broadcast, concerning bees; there was nothing on it that you haven’t already read about and discussed, except that a prediction that the U.S. would shut down for lack of bees if we don’t succeed in fixing things.  I’m so proud of all of you and what you have done, are doing and will do, concerning bees.

                In fact, I’m just plain proud of Farm and Garden members.