Working Group - Woodstock Organic Waste (WOW)

Our next Garden Share meeting will be on Wednesday, March 13th at the home of David and Joy Gross, 24 Wardwell Lane, Woodstock, NY. It will be a POTLUCK.
We have as our guest, Becky Fullam, co-owner with her husband, Joe, of Old Ford Farm in Gardiner, NY. Hopefully she will bring some of her products, including varieties of Sauerkraut that I love.Below is a bio and topic of discussion for the evening.
Please do your best to attend and support our local farmers.

Our guest will be Kathy Puffer. She owns Hudson Valley Vertical Farmshttp://hvvf.net and is involved with a non-profit called Solar Citieshttps://solarcities.solutions dedicated to Global Biogas Education. “Bringing free fuel and nutrient dense fertilizer to people around the world”. 
Kathy emailed me the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) Climate of Change Winter Conference Program, https://nofany-winterconference.squarespace.com/program/ at which she is giving a 1/2 day intensive on the subjects, 1. Introduction to Home Scale Biogas and 2. Homestead Success with Fertilizer from Biogas. The Conference is in Saratoga Springs at the Saratoga Hilton and City Center from Friday January 18th to Sunday January 20th, 2019. Her presentation is Sunday January 20th from 8-10:45 AM.
Please note that at the conference you can also see some of our favorite past speakers Andrew Faust from the Center of Bioregional Living, Megan Denver and Jorick Phillips of Hudson Valley Bee Supply, Steffen Schneider from Hawthorne Valley Farm and Ken Greene from Hudson Valley Seed Supply.

Our January 9th meeting will be at Dan Levy’s home from 6-8 PM. It will be  POTLUCK.
Our guest will be Eileen Banyra. She is the owner of Community Compost Company https://www.communitycompostco.com and Hudson Soil Company,  http://www.hudsonsoil.com Eileen is the woman who Mary McNamara talked about at our November meeting. Eileen’s Company is the hauler for the Saugerties Composting Initiative.For further information about Eileen, her bio and businesses, please go to her websites.

Exciting news. Starting November 1st, there will be a new composting program at the Saugerties Transfer Station and we have as our guest speaker the woman running the program, Mary McNamara. 

Mary McNamara, is co-founder of Sawkill Watershed Alliance and Lower Esopus Watershed Partnership, and on board of directors in water related organizations, Hudson River Watershed Alliance, Esopus Creek Conservancy, and chair of advisory board of Riverkeeper.  As a volunteer have leveraged the voice of water and waterways as an important part of community policy and planning. Currently, Town of Saugerties, Organic Recycling Coordinator.

For a decade ran a multi-faceted family business, Parnassus Square. An earlier career was involved with art editing and cataloguing, in Taipei, and New York City. Received a B.A. in Political Science and East Asian Studies, University of Colorado; additional courses at SUNY Ulster in Water Chemistry and Environmental Studies. 

Grew up in Texas near the gulf coast, after returning from four years in Asia, moved to NY, where eventually moved to the Catskills and the Hudson Valley that have been a natural fit, and a wonderful place to raise a family.
In my conversation with Mary, she made 2 things clear.1.

Kudos to our own WOW organizer and facilitator, Jo Yanow Schwartz, for being the driver behind the community composting movement in our area.2. Whether it succeeds or not, will depend upon the community’s participation. Even if you compost in your own backyard, there is an opportunity to save items that you can’t compost like bones, pizza boxes, meat, food soiled paper and shells, and bring it to the Saugerties Transfer Station.
The meeting will be on Wednesday, 11/7/18, at Toni Wiedenbacher’s home from 6-8 PM. It is a POTLUCK.