by Nancy Larson, Adult Services Manager, West Bend Library
Things are really moving along nicely and I think this affirms that our patrons are looking for more ways to learn about gardening and cooking. One of the first things we did was to form a Garden Club in March. We started with 10 people at our initial meeting and have already grown to 28 members by the end of April. One of the missions on our grant was to encourage and inspire people to garden and grow things, especially food items. After researching various ways to create a Seed Library, I chose to go with the tried and true way that was recommended by Eau Claire Library. We used a portion of the Ideas to Action grant to purchase seeds to repackage and giveaway. The newly formed Garden Club jumped right in with the repackaging project to help create our very first Seed Library.
We set up a total of 6 dates to give seeds away, and the Garden Club volunteers staffed the table and answered many questions. Luckily, our club is made up of a number of seasoned gardeners. We included small seed starting pods so people did not have to purchase anything to get started. We really didn’t advertise this for our first year as we wanted to test the waters first. We had a lot of interest with our popup project from our patrons of all ages.
A second focus of our grant is to inspire people to return to basics as a way to create more healthy options for themselves and to save money. We decided to host two youth cooking programs over the summer and focus on adults in the fall. There has been a lot of talk lately about youth who have not grown up with gardens and home prepared meals. We will be hosting two youth cooking programs over the summer in conjunction with an Aurora Advocate Nurse Educator. The two programs will be designed to get kids interested and comfortable with cooking – learning how to measure and follow a recipe and prepare foods. We plan to create at least two cooking kits for youth to check out in order to keep their enthusiasm fueled. We will use the Ideas to Action Grant to purchase youth cooking materials.
We know that cooking and food is important to our adult patrons just from the number of cookbooks that get checked out every week and because traditionally our most popular adult programs are cooking and baking programs. In order to get a better idea of what people might be looking for, we created a survey and collected responses during March and April. We offered this survey both in paper format and in a digital format. While the response rate wasn’t tremendous, we did get enough responses to see some consistency in what people might be looking for in a food education program. The survey responses are available here. I plan to work on a food series in the fall, partnering with community educators from our two local hospitals, the YMCA, ADRC, and the County Health Department to create both structured and passive opportunities to learn new skills and build more intentional choices.
Lastly, after a lot of research and consideration for classes that we are thinking about teaching in the Fall, I have finally purchased a few items that will serve as main pieces for our teaching kitchen. They include a portable kitchen island, a multipurpose tabletop oven, and an induction cook top. We plan to add to this collection with either grant funds or through community donations.
I am sure that we are doing a good thing by lowing barriers for access to healthier living information and resources, as well as fostering interests to inspire people to live their best life!
