Tag Archives: community

Get your Garden on with Fairpark Community’s First Annual Plant Sale!

Got Garden?

We have just what you need to fill it up!

After months of hard work by volunteers, the Fairpark Community Council’s First Annual Plant Sale is almost here! Almost 4,000 veggies and herb plants are being cared for by dedicated volunteers. The seedlings are growing like wild and will be sure to enhance any garden in our neighborhood with culinary delights.

Read more here (http://fairparkcommunity.org/?p=814) about how to pre-order your plants and pick them up as early as the end of April, and view full catalogs of the availalbe varieties of vegetables and herbs, as well as a full color listing of the vegetable seeds that will be given away at the May 14 event.

How did this all start?

The FCC Board decided to take advantage of the Salt Lake City annual Signature Event Fund application in fall of 2015. The FCC Board decided that a fun event would be a plant sale and education event. The scope of events that happened after that was amazing!

A donation of a structure that looks very much like a bus shelter was timely. Volunteers dismantled the structure over a weekend in late February and the following weekend rebuilt it at All Chay restaurant (1264 W 500 N), the proprietors of which graciously donated space for the project. The next 6 weeks were busy with fine tuning the structure with materials to make it a functioning greenhouse, planting seeds, separating seedlings, watering the plants and generating interest in our community for the project. Tom King, project lead, appeared on KRCL Radio’s Punk Rock Farmer show on April 15 to discuss and promote the project.

The next few weeks will be spent continuing the care of the plants, advertising and promoting the event, taking pre-orders with the culminating plant sale event at Northwest Community Center, Saturday, May 14 at 10am.

As a special incentive to get people to attend the May 14 event, we will be offering free seeds for lettuce, carrots, zucchini, cucumbers and more! There will fun be activities for kids of all ages.

View the full color listing of the vegetable seeds that will be given away here.

Left over plants from the May 14 event will be taken to the Get Into the River Festival from 5-7pm, at the Fairpark Amphitheater, 155 North 1000 West.

We are very excited about this community building/enhancing project. We hope residents will become more interested in growing their own food, sharing their stories about gardening, sharing samples of their edibles, and develop sustainable habits that will improve health and lifestyles for years to come.

Garden on dude!

Dirt2Table: A Great time of year!

Don’t you love it this time of year? I certainly do. Everything from the buds swelling on the fruit trees, dandelions blooming, willows and others flowering, to the birds getting more active, it sure feels like spring.

I just hope that a late frost doesn’t get some of our fruit trees this year. As you may know if you read these columns, the Fairpark Community Council is hosting it’s First Annual Get your garden STARTED Plant Sale. We are starting dozens of varieties of peppers and tomatoes. Lots of heirlooms as well as several varieties of Basil. In fact, as of March 7th some of the Lettuce Leaf basil is already up from seeds planted 8 days ago.

Continue reading →

Dirt2Table: Save the Date – Fairpark Community’s First Start Your Garden Plant Sale!

Announcing ¡Viva los Vegetales por Comida!

The Fabulous First Annual Fairpark Community Start Your Garden Plant Sale, May 14, 2016

That’s right, this year will mark the first in a long succession of annual plant sales that will help enrich and grow our community with the shared experience of successful gardening. The plan is to make it both easier and more fun for folks who are already growing some of their own food as well as to encourage and support those of our neighbors that aren’t yet growing delicious food right in their own yards.

Details about the event and how volunteers can help will be available in a future Gazette and on the Fairpark Community website.

Join the event at our Facebook page
This event is made possible through a grant from Salt Lake City’s Signature Event Fund, which provides funding to support community events in Salt Lake City.

West Side Spotlight: Jorge Fierro, owner of Frida Bistro and Rico Brands

“We all have a story, and America loves stories — stories of success, humbleness, working hard. I am the epitome of the American dream. It doesn’t mean I’m a rich guy, on the contrary, it means that the more I have, the more humble I become.”

As a 30 year resident of Utah, Jorge Fierro has become a respected leader in both the Latino and business communities and is a proud homeowner in Fairpark. We were able to sit down with him for our February edition of West Side Spotlight. Jorge serves our community on several non-profit boards including Locals First, the River District Business Alliance, and the Burrito Project. He is very proud of the fact that volunteer members of the Burrito Project have been delivering hand rolled burritos to the homeless for over four years. Jorge is also on the board of the Lowell Bennion Community Center for the University of Utah, the Utah Microenterprise Note Fund, and American Heart Association Go Red Por Tu Corazón. “This is a cause that I’m very concerned about. Latinas are dying and we need to do something to raise awareness,” he said.

“One of the things I love about living on the Westside is the diversity. I LOVE how diverse it is. It makes me feel comfortable, like home,” he said. Jorge is very passionate about ensuring that the Latino population on the west side is involved.

“I would like to specifically tell the Latino community that the main reason why I’m so involved in non-profit organizations and volunteering projects is because we Latinos need to be MORE involved in our community. This is OUR community. Even though we may not have been born here, this is where we live; this is where our kids go to school. We NEED to take care of our community. In the morning when we wake up, we wake up here; and at night when we go home, we come home here. This is our home and we need to take care of it. I’m always looking for a place where I, Jorge Fierro, can make a difference. There is always more to be done. America has offered and given me so much. What I do, I do it because I have to share the success and I feel very strongly about making sure there are no injustices that happen and that everyone has a fair shot to a good life and a good education.”

We couldn’t agree more!
Continue reading →

Education Corner: “Operation Warm” SLC Firefighters to the Rescue

Each year the Salt Lake City Fire Department chooses an elementary school whose 2^nd and 3^rd graders will be recipients of brand new winter coats. This year’s school: Backman Elementary.

“Backman Elementary School in Salt Lake City has been chosen by the Professional Firefighters of Utah (PFFU) and IAFF Local 81 (Salt Lake City) to receive coats for their students. Backman Elementary School was chosen based on the needs of their students. 98% of their students qualify for free or reduced meals. “ (Salt Lake City Firefighters, Local 81 website. http://www.1645.org/mobile/index.cfm?highlightId=287)

Multiple media agencies reported on the event. Links are provided below to those articles.

Salt Lake City Fire Fighters Local 81 has a Go Fund Me page for community members to donate funds to support this project.

“This is a very low impact fast and easy way to raise the funds to make it possible to provide coats to provide coats. Continue reading →

Have a Heart: Community Coat Exchange

Annual Community Coat Exchange

The Annual Community Coat Exchange promotes principles of community and re-using the day after Thanksgiving.

Every year people all over the United States spend the day after Thanksgiving kicking off the holiday season by taking advantage of the many opportunities offered by retail outlets. The 11^th Annual Community Coat Exchange provides an opportunity for people to reflect on their own shopping habits as well as provides a service to the community.

The Community Coat Exchange is a collection and distribution of winter coats and other winter clothing items. The event is held every year the day after Thanksgiving between 10am and 1pm. This year’s event is being held at Pioneer Park, 400 South, 300 West.

Deanna Taylor, co-founder of the event, reflects about past coat exchange events: “This event is brings the whole community together. We have schools participating, businesses and community organizations. The coat exchange has become an annual event that people look forward to. ” Taylor adds that there is no prediction about how many coats are received and given away. “It varies from year to year. Some years we have had upwards of 700 coats and other years as few as 200.”

Several locations around the country have organized Coat Exchanges besides Utah’s events, in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Oregon.

Coats can be dropped off before Thanksgiving or brought to the event itself.

At the event, no questions are asked: If you need a coat, come get one. If you want to exchange a coat, bring the coat you want to donate and take one in exchange. If you have a donation of coats, we know people who can use them.

Left over coats are donated to the Crossroads Urban Center Thrift Store, a project of the Crossroads Urban Center which advocates for low income and homeless people. The Crossroads Urban Center Thrift Store gives clothes away to low income people and also sells clothes and other goods in its retail shop to the general public to help fund the Crossroads Urban Center programs.

Information: 801-403-0121 or 801-502-1991; coatexchange@blueskyinstitute.org; http://www.coatexchange.org

Adopt-A-Spot: Beautifying Fairpark

Fairpark Community residents are participating in Salt Lake City’s Adopt-A-Spot Program, which is an “Open Space Lands Program to allow Salt Lake citizens to show pride in the vibrant ecology of their city by stewarding a set location over the course of one year.”

The first Fairpark Adopt-A-spot event, held in October, was a great success! It was so fun to see people in our community out working hard to improve and protect our gorgeous open space along the Jordan River. We had a lot of positive feedback from people walking and riding bikes that day. A big shout out to Earl, Butch, Artis, Will, Rob & Friends, Mike, Romello & Eddie!! Thank you so much!!

If you’d like to volunteer for future events please contact us. We would love to see you out there! Next event planned for November 29th. 11-1pm. Please contact Brook at 801-604-1895 to volunteer.

According to Amanda Anderson, Volunteer Services Coordinator for SLC:

Between January 1^st and November 1^st 2014:

125 Adopt-A-Spot volunteers gave 570 hours of service;

Over 550 gallons of trash, covering 5 miles of trail way and over 100 acres of open space area was collected;

One dozen park benches and one bridge were painted, seven trees planted , over 100 gallons of noxious plant species pulled and two trail way park areas were re-mulched .