Spencer

 
Chard Your Yard

Do you love walking past beautiful vegetable gardens in the neighborhood, decked out with juicy tomatoes and delectable lettuces? Do you wish you could bring some of that garden freshness into your own home? Transition Longfellow, your neighborhood sustainability group, would like to help neighbors jump on the home-grown veggie bandwagon. This fun community activity allows neighbors to meet neighbors while sharing their love for fresh, locally grown food.

Sign Up HERE.

DEADLINE for sign-up: April 30

Transition Longfellow will help you:

  • Install a 3’ x 5’ raised bed garden ($65)
  • Fill it with soil, compost and mulch
  • Connect with a skilled garden mentor (matches made based upon availability)
  • Connect with neighbors who are gardening
  • Get more seeds and plants through neighbor exchanges
  • With classes and activities throughout the growing season

The Gardening Matters Local Food Resource Hub will help you:

  • Get seeds and plants to fill your garden bed (f you choose this option)

In exchange, we ask that you:

  • Pay for the garden you have chosen
  • If you can, participate in “garden mob” event to get new gardens set up. Many hands make light work! Our first Garden Mob event is on May 11 when we help two neighbors set up a mini-CSA garden.
  • Display a Chard Your Yard lawn sign by your garden
  • Commit to maintaining your garden through the summer and fall
  • Share your enthusiasm with your neighbors!

Who Can Participate?

  • Any Longfellow resident (if child must have parental permission, if renter, must have landlord permission unless you want to do a container garden)
  • Some area on your property that receives at least 4 hours of full or partial sunlight a day (you may need more, depending upon what you want to grow)
  • If you do not have a yard but want to do a container garden, sun requirement still applies
  • No previous gardening experience necessary

NOTE: If you have physical limitations that would make gardening at ground level difficult, let us know. Our garden advisers may be able to come up with a solution that works for your abilities and your yard.

Already have a garden? 
GREAT! Let’s see if we can reduce our garden costs through group buying. Consider sharing your knowledge and enthusiasm and get answers to your garden questions.

SEEKING VOLUNTEERS
We welcome help with garden installations and offering classes and expertise. If you like to get your hands dirty, enjoy working in the warm spring air, meeting enthusiastic and friendly new people (who are your neighbors!), this would be a great way to spend a weekend day in May.

We are particularly looking for garden volunteers to help with:
•    Garden installation – putting garden boxes in place, filling boxes
•    Garden mentors – past gardening experience
•    Garden musicians – hey, what’s a garden mob without music! A tune always makes the work go faster.
•    Dinner preparers – the best way to end a work day is a shared meal
•    Handy people to help with group building events – basic carpentry skills and knowledge of tools, or knowledge of rain barrel or irrigation systems, willingness to help those who have no experience building

 

 

 

A Fun Home Improvement Event for the Whole Family

Whether you are giving a room a “make-over” or starting from the ground up, you’ll find answers to all of your questions at the 19th annual South Minneapolis Housing Fair.

FREE and Open to the Public

This event is FREE and open to the public and will be held Saturday, April 13, 2013, from 10 AM to 3 PM. With its convenient NEW location in the Minneapolis Sports Center, 2121 East Lake St., Minneapolis, centrally located in South Minneapolis, the Housing Fair is easy to find. (Behind the Midtown YWCA, parking on site or across the street.)

New this year! Co-located with the Fair for the first four hours (10 a.m.-2 p.m.) will be a Hennepin Fix-It Clinic. You can bring easily carried home appliances, electronics, toys, etc. that are not working properly, and get help fixing them. Bring instruction manuals and any tools you think might be helpful, and prepare to help. A great learning experience for kids, too, to watch with their adults. For more information on Fix-It Clinics, CLICK HERE.

Great Local Exhibitors and Door Prizes

We’ll have almost 100 amazing exhibitors and vendors to make your dreams come true with expertise and advice on home remodeling, basement finishing, kitchen and bath transformation, landscaping and much more.

All exhibitors are located in the Metro area and provide the highest level of professional services. In addition, you’ll enjoy making connections with local bankers, real estate agents and a broad range of community experts in a low-key conversational setting.

Volunteers – You can get involved!

A grass-roots neighborhood produced event like the South Minneapolis Housing Fair is built on hundreds of hours of volunteer time. Your efforts could help to insure the success of the Housing Fair and the improvement in the safety and value of your neighborhood. For more information on how you can get involved contact the Event Coordinator, Margo Ashmore MANAGER@HOUSINGFAIR.ORG or call 612-867-4874.

 

Join us for he March Environment & Transportation Committee meeting, 6:30pm to 8:00pm at the LCC Office! We will have project engineers attending to discuss two projects, including a planned Open Streets event in Longfellow and the reconstruction of Minnehaha Avenue scheduled for 2014. Full agenda below:

 

 

Metro Transit is looking for community and business representatives from Longfellow to help guide the 46th Street/Ford Pkwy/Snelling Avenue Bus Rapid Transit project. Bus rapid transit, or BRT, is a package of transit enhancements that adds up to a faster trip and an improved experience on Metro Transit’s busiest bus routes. To learn more about BRT plans for the Snelling/46th corridor, check out this helpful fact sheet: Snelling BRT Fact Sheet

The Snelling BRT Community Advisory Committee (CAC) is an advisory group composed of community members representing residents (both owners and renters), businesses, property owners, and organizations with diverse knowledge of the Snelling Avenue/Ford Parkway/46th Street corridor (shown below), including experience using public transportation. The role of the CAC is to bring community voice and continuity to the Snelling Avenue BRT project development process.

The primary role of CAC members is to learn about the project and ask thought‐provoking questions while providing insight from the perspective of the community they represent. The Metro Transit Project Management Team values the community perspective and will consider the information provided by the CAC when it guides the overall direction of project development and makes final recommendations to the Metropolitan Council.

Responsibilities

CAC members have the following responsibilities:

  • Engage in thoughtful and thorough deliberation of the issues brought before the CAC.
  • Represent and advocate for the interests of his/her constituency.
  • Share relevant information (historical, background) with the CAC and Project ManagementTeam (PMT) members.
  • Assist in informing constituencies about the Snelling BRT project and recommend appropriateavenues for engagement with the community.
  • Attend all meetings. If an alternate is sent, ensure that the alternate is informed and up‐to‐dateon the project and ensure that they are, in turn, updated by the alternate.
  • Work to identify solutions to issues that arise, and openly/objectively discuss and evaluatethose options.
  • If members discuss the project with the media, they should be clear that they are representingtheir own views and not speaking for the CAC or the PMT.
  • Additional information on the CAC, including planned meeting schedule can be found here: Snelling CAC Packet

Are you interested in serving on the Advisory Committee for the project, or do you know someone who is? Contact Spencer at spencer@longfellow.org or 612-722-4529 (ext. 5). You may also apply directly to Metro Transit via this application form: CAC Nomination Form. Application deadline is March 20th.

 

 

A recent segment of Eating and Drinking with James Norton on The Current featured Longfellow, and in particular new restaurant Parka. You can listen to the segment here!

 

Stop by Longfellow Park this Saturday morning for a legislative update from Senator Torres Ray and Representative Davnie. Details below:

Senate District 63 Legislative Town Hall

Please join Senator Torres Ray and myself this Saturday, March 2 at Longfellow Park, 3435 36th Avenue South from 9:30 – 10:30 a.m. for a legislative Town Hall. We’ll update you on goings on at the Capitol and take questions from residents.

I hope to see you there,

Jim Davnie

 

 

Save the date for the 2013 Longfellow Garage Sale Day: Saturday, June 1st!

Additional details coming soon.

If you are interested in hosting a sale, send Spencer an email so he can follow up with registration information: spencer@longfellow.org

© 2011 Longfellow Community Council Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha