Good Morning – what storms we had last night! The rain was much needed – and now with “extra” time – when we would have been watering our new plants and seeds – we can work on marshaling resources and communicating about our new ventures. This is Tisha, at ASPI, and I’ve got chickens, bees, and afternoon tea on the brain.

This is our first year assisting our participants with chickens! On the first paperwork of the year, there is a little section about others things in which you might be interested – and lots of folks checked chickens. So I thought, well, we’ll see who comes to the first chicken meeting. Everyone. So we are brainstorming – first we have some participants helping others build tractors from found and salvaged supplies. A community member donated heat lamps. A hatchery donated over $100.00 in chicks when we bought as many as we thought we could afford. So now everyone is busy – building, cleaning out old barn stalls, hoarding newspapers, drying leaves and grass, and planning out what can be grown for chicken feed. About 2 more weeks and they will be here.

We attended our first bee workshop – at Laurel County African American Heritage Center – thanks y’all! And when we were done, we made arrangements for an expert to come help us set up the first hives and then we looked at each other – we are really going to do this – bees! So when I finish I will start calling – it is late in the season, we know, but we are in a mood, so we’ll find a way!

Finally, we are hosting an Afternoon Tea. Local snacks and tea, seed and plant giveaways, exhibits from the nature center, craft activities. . . We had a very small Tea last year – this year we expecting quite a few more folks. And though this is a lovely, fun, and educational event, we are using this to explore generating revenue. We grow out so many of our own seedlings – and have so many seeds from donation, that the cost to us is minimal. We don’t have the staff to organize longer-term programs yet, so perhaps our one-day events will add to our books a bit.

We’re branching out – maybe since it is spring, we’ll call it blossoming!

Afternoon Tea in the Organic Garden – May 7th, 2:00 -5:00 p.m. at ASPI
50 Lair Street, Mt. Vernon, KY. RSVP: 606-256-0077 $10.00/family of 3, $2.00 additional members