Do what you can to keep a longtime, small non-profit in our community!  Our 19+ year-old non-profit organization needs your support.  Little Artshram is working to regain it’s little square-foot of awesomeness this summer supporting and offering programs like this:
Share the news:  We’re Taking Shares!  We invite you to become either a Sponsor or Share-holder of our 2012 Market Garden & O’k CSA! Youth 16 years and older, work “green-collar” jobs as LLOOFers (Learning Local on Organic Farms) with O’k CSA,  growing food at the community garden and four urban garden farms in Traverse City.    

This year, we are offering Full and Half-size shares of fresh vegetables, herbs and flower bouquets, as well as sponsorships, beginning June 29th, through the season (We predict 12 full weeks) with pick-up on Friday’s at the O’k Market at our Peace Patch garden farm site on the corner of 7th and Oak St., Traverse City.

Our Market Garden CSA goals:
~To create green collar jobs, through the LLOOF program, working with and eating REAL, fresh, local, food.
~To learn and apply permaculture and perennial growing practices in our garden.
~To help our business grow and continue successfully into 2013 and beyond.
~To assist and inspire growing more garden farms in the TC area.
~And, to provide good food for good people!
About the Market Garden, CSA and LLOOF Program                                                    This program is based on the concept of CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture. On a CSA farm, buyers invest up front in a full season of vegetables. The commitment of the sponsors and shareholders to the farmer stabilizes the farmer’s income, assures subscribers of fresh, healthy, local produce, and distributes agricultural rewards and risks fairly within the community.  This popular economic model establishes a practical and mutually beneficial relationship between farmers and subscribers, building a strong community as a result.

The LLOOF program (Learning Local on Organic Farms) has four main areas of experiential learning:

Education. Youth, 16 years through adults will participate in securing commitment of sponsors and shareholders, receive hands-on training in basic intensive urban gardening and permaculture techniques, including soil preparation and conditioning, seedling cultivation, use of nutrients and organic fertilizers, composting, irrigation and water collection, pest and weed education, harvesting and preparing and marketing food for sale. Some of the Gardening and recycling methods, that will be initiated this year, and are common to permaculture include edible landscaping, keyhole gardening, companion planting, trellising, sheet mulching, chicken tractors, solar greenhouses, spiral herb gardens, swales, and vermi-composting.

Production and Profitability.  More than just a teaching garden, the garden farm sites are cultivated by O’k CSA and LLOOF participants and will be designed for production and profitability, hence demonstrating the viability of “green collar” jobs in small-scale agriculture. And we will eat from our garden, tasting and understanding what we are growing!

Mentorship.  Participants will be mentored in gardening and permaculture practices and further develop those skills as they work alongside younger students in special field trips by the Summer Camp program.

Sustainability.  O’k CSA and LOOFers will work together to design this year’s program to feed into and support next year’s market garden through record-keeping, and, develop a sustainable business plan, with ample startup funds. The LLOOF crew will work with O’k CSA, understanding the organizational structure and framework that Little Artshram provides as the non-profit sponsor.  All LLOOFers will be participating in a special work-exchange Intro. to Urban Permaculture training, June through August 2012.

To learn more about the Urban Farm Project, or, to become a share-holder or sponsor of the Market Garden and O’k CSA program, sponsored by Little Artshram, contact us for a brochure:

231-510-3491
penny@littleartshram.org