I intend to feed some hungry children this summer. What are you doing with your summer?

[Snoutport]

I have a pretty small city plot but I am putting in a little more gardening space this summer. I took out a lily bed and am planting zucchini, cucumber, peppers, tomato plants and a couple of other high yielding plants. I have some raised beds that produce enough for my family. The extra bed is for Outside In, the local teen homeless shelter. I figure with a minimal amount of effort I can drop off a box of fresh vegetables weekly.

I am 100% sure that there are people near you who would be just as grateful for a box of fresh food.

If you can't do that--you could always bake them a cake or some bread.

There is only one thing that will balance out the corporate greed that is overtaking the country...and that is individual acts of generosity and kindness.

Join me, please? (or share your own ideas!)

[Teaser]

1. makes my sex tourism plans sound downright selfish

.

[Snoutport]

6. LOL

perhaps you should consider a nice cantaloupe instead?

[antigone382]

27. LMAO...if you've ever read the Cormac McCarthy book "Suttree," this is a priceless response.

Suffice it to say a particular character finds love...or at least release...in strange places.

Edit: and I am doing a two month internship at a school which focuses on ecological design and construction, hoping to acquire skills I can use in my rather distressed community one day.

[Snoutport]

28. I haven't read it, but anyone who grew up on a farm knows what I meant :0)

Your program sounds interesting. What all do they teach? I've got my regular beds but I'm putting in more raised ones (in rocks...I've been collecting rocks for ten years to make a fence base and I've decided to use them for raised beds instead. I've been searching for good reference materials.

[antigone382]

30. It's hard to describe exactly, but I will PM you the name of the school.

I'd like to preserve at least an illusion of anonymity ;)

It sounds like you would be more interested in agricultural/landscaping than construction stuff; I don't know as much as I'd like to about either, but I'm vaguely aware of a few resources. I know Square Foot Gardening is based on the use of raised beds. I know of another book called "Lasagna Gardening"; I don't know that it necessarily focuses on raised beds, but it's a method of getting good soil fertility, which I think is applicable to raised beds.

[Fla_Democrat]

31. Perhaps, but a hell of a lot more interesting.

:evilgrin:







:smoke:

[hlthe2b]

2. I'm going to try to help some of the families forced to abandon pets

due to foreclosure, loss of jobs or other--with pet food and veterinary care donations and continued work to encourage more apartment/housing managers to allow renters to have these pets.

[Snoutport]

9. Very nice! We have a pet food donation center here in Portland.

[slackmaster]

3. Get a major medical problem fixed, then clean up and remodel my house

Thank you for your service to hungry children, Snoutport.

[Snoutport]

8. take your leftover building stuff to Habitat for Humanity and you can help people too!

[slackmaster]

10. If I have any surplus floor tile, I'll do just that.

Save a small supply for future repairs.

[Snoutport]

11. excellent. Habitat here also employs special needs people and does a lot of good.

:0)

[slackmaster]

16. The H4H surplus store is also a good place to go shopping for fixtures, windows, hardware, etc.

;-)

[Snoutport]

18. That's where I got my sink!

[nc4bo]

4. I always grow extra for my friends at a cancer center I go to every Friday as well as

my senior citizen neighbors.

I pulled up the last of my winter kale and filled a black trash bag full of it and took it down to the cancer center along with a pile of plastic grocery bags, said help yourselves and left :)

Neighbors always get turnips, kale and collards fall/winter and tomatoes, squash, cukes, eggplants, etc. through the summer.

During the Census and after interviewing obviously poor and needy families, I'd pick stuff from the garden and drop it off at their door before my workday.

FEELS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD!!!

[Snoutport]

20. :0) I never thought to grow winter crops to give out. I don't eat many winter

vegetables (yech!) but I could certainly keep growing food for other people. Funny, not once ever has it crossed my mind to plant winter foods just to give away. :0) See, sharing our good deeds is good! We'll inspire each other!

[Le Taz Hot]

5. I'm going to put out my extra

veggies/fruits/herbs for whoever wants to take them. I'll include a donation jar for those who can afford to donate a little something but if they can't, it's certainly not required.

Oh yeah, and get a job so we don't have 2 hungry middle-aged people to worry about. ;-)

[Nye Bevan]

7. Going to Disneyland (nt)

[midnight]

12. Great idea... I'm also feeding some small children this summer with my

garden....

[Snoutport]

21. yay! have you done it before? any suggestions on what yields a lot?

[nc4bo]

25. Tomatoes, squash, green beans, peppers - lots of people LOVE hot peppers

eggplants (asian variety. Smaller eggplants but lots of them), cukes are great. Sweet basil, sage, rosemary are good herbs that people seem to like.

[Snoutport]

26. I didn't think to do extra herbs. They are pretty easy too.

[pipi_k]

13. Probably not a huge deal, but...

for the past few years I've been knitting and crocheting little hats and blankets and burial gowns to donate to a local hospital's NICU.

Doesn't feed their bodies, but I hope it does feed their souls knowing that someone out there cared enough about their poor little babies to make those things.

I'm somewhat disabled and it's one of the few activities I can still do. Used to like gardening, but...just can't do it anymore. :(

[Snoutport]

19. I think that is WONDERFUL! My mom makes little quilts for unwed mothers at her church

I am a firm believer that you should think small sometimes!! When you look at the big picture it is numbing. When I think of all the hungry kids I KNOW I can't help them. BUT, I've taught myself to look at the little picture. I can get together a box of food and do that much. And then I just hope that other people are thinking similarly and doing the same thing.

Like making a little hat for a little baby. You can't make sure that every kid in your town is warm and loved tonight. But you can make sure one of them has a hat to keep warm. But then suddenly someone like my mom comes along with a quilt and now there is a hat and a quilt. And some booties from someone else, and some donated clothes and pretty soon there is a HUGE difference...and your hat is part of the big picture. :0) lucky baby to have such a nice hat from such a nice person.

[pipi_k]

23. And that's all we can do, really....

just try to make things better for at least one person in our little corner of the world.

:)

[WinkyDink]

14. My husband and I tithe (to charities) monthly.

[Snoutport]

24. Very good! We have two kids we sponsor through PLAN and we have a KIVA account

Kiva is pretty fun--it is micro loaning. We put in $25 the first time (lent to a lady in africa who had a little shop. A few months later she paid it back so then we lent it to some people who were buying used shoes from goodwill to sell in their village in africa and when that got paid back we lent it someone for a cow...I think that we've relent the same $25 now four times (and we've added another $50 so every month or two we reloan the money again.

[mrcheerful]

15. I'm going to pretend I'm a hungry child and eat some free food?

Living on bare bone SSDI payments and eating once a day and skipping days towards the end of the month so food lasts until the 3rd sucks. But hey the good news is after 2 years of payments to RAC the refridge is mine at a cost of almost $2,500 for an $800 refridge on the 3rd. I would have some extra cash except I need to make repairs on the house because of winter damage, the deck to my back door has sever water damage from snow and ice melting on it.

[Snoutport]

29. I would happily share some veggies with you!

[Swede]

17. Drinking heavily.

That's my plan.

[bobbolink]

22. Good on you for helping a teen homeless shelter! These teens have so few resources, and

they are in mortal danger on the streets. The tales of what happens to them would curl your hair.

In all of Colorado, there are only TWO teen shelters: One in Denver, and one in Colorado Springs. And that is IT.

Plus, they can only stay two weeks before the shelter is required to call the police!

However, I will disagree with you that it is all you can do. I often speak against charity because of this belief... and charity doesn't change the problem...

You can ALSO do what you can to be involved at the level where changes are made. It is criminal that the richest country in the world has so many homeless people, and that we have children and teens on the street with no way to even be safe, let alone healthy!

We CAN change that, and we must. It means all of us educating ourselves about the issues, and doing just as much as we would on any other issue.

[The Blue Flower]

32. Opening a clothing bank

A couple of friends who volunteer with me at our neighborhood food bank decided we needed a project, so we partnered with a church and another agency and will be opening a clothing bank the first week of June. It will be for people who can't afford to shop at Goodwill or the thrift stores. We're pretty excited.