“Is growing your own food worth it?” To those in the Milan community, the answer is yes. They have seen firsthand the value of having great tasting and healthy food that they grow themselves.
Over thirty students from New London-Spicer, Yellow Medicine East, Lac qui Parle and Litchfield attended the Milan YES! Winter Workshop and had the opportunity to see and experience the amazing things happening with passive solar greenhouses in this area of the state. Teams were fortunate to benefit from many great thinkers during this workshop.
The day started with an introduction to passive solar design with Chuck Waibel. He was kind enough to share his knowledge and open the doors of his passive solar greenhouse to YES! teams looking to build and improve on greenhouses at their schools. Teams then made their way to Tim and Shelly Elkington’s new passive solar greenhouse. By seeing how Chuck’s greenhouse design was applied and adapted to the Elkington’s site, students were able to visualize how they too can put these concepts to work at their schools.
The last stop was at Moonstone Farm where Audrey Arner helped students take in the big picture of local foods projects. Audrey, having helped Montevideo school practice holistic management at their little garden, is keen on the many systems that need to synchronize to make a functioning whole. Upon returning to the Milan Community
Center, Bob Ryan talked with the teams about the work he is doing to promote local foods through education and creation of a distribution hub for this project using a grant he was awarded through the USDA. Last but not least, Ann Thompson, board member of the Milan Sustainable Energy Utility, shared some tips and tricks for finding funding for projects.
