Smokin’ Yard Sale and Hot Pepper Sauce!
We hope you are taking good care with the smoke and having to hunker down again, due to fires. We, along with the rest of the community, are learning that it’s time to surrender to Nature and shift our lives accordingly. Our hearts and prayers go out to all in the mountains most impacted by the fires.
As an antidote, we are doing our best to continue to create community around growing food and to continue to celebrate each other and all that’s wonderful about this special place on the planet.
Best local resources to revitalize the land are Ali Meders-Knight at Chico Traditional Ecological Stewardship Program, and the folks at Camp Fire Restoration Project.
Please check out the events section below for details on Butte Environmental Council’s Forum on Wild Fire, Climate and Our Future.
We’re having our First Annual Yard (and other) Sale!
When: Saturday, Aug. 21 from 8am to noon at Vecino Victory Garden, 1535 Laburnum Ave. in Chico. Please note that we LOVE worms, but in this case, Early Birds won’t get any. We’ll need the extra minutes to get set up!
What’ll be there: We’ll have regular yard sale re-homing stuff, 2×2’ mini garden boxes (using up wood from previous BLITZs), baked goods by Near and Dear Vegan Bakery, Silent Auction (for the nicer or new crafty stuff and services), music by Kyle Williams. Some of the items: 2 Chrome books with extras, shoes, old school burning man outfits, household stuff and much more. It’s looking like it’s going to be quite the event! Feel free to bring a bucket of compost and be sure to learn all about our Community Composting Program.
We’ll also be handing out seed packets in the spirit of a Mini Seed Swap. You are welcome to bring your own to share if you have some extra to give to the community.
Not to be missed so stop on by and stay for a few minutes or a few hours and soak in the community.
This is a perfect time to clean out your storage units, closets and garages! Got a donation to drop off or arrange for a pickup? Or have questions about the composting center? Call Amy at 530-828-0676.
Our Farm To Fork dinner, La Vida Es Buena, from last month was a resounding success! We are so very grateful for all of it!
Thanks to the amazing Volunteers who came despite heat, depsite the hard work, the inevitable crazies of putting on an event like this and…more heat. So much goes into these events, each piece and part is equally important and we give thanks we live in a community that both thrives in and shares huge doses of LOVE!
And thanks most of all to all of YOU who attended this Sold Out event. The energy you brought, the smiles on your faces and the joy that permeated the space was palpable. Each of you brought something to the dinner. Precious.
We all were so thankful for the opportunity to simply gather. We’ve all been through so very much these past couple of years and felt so blessed to be in community together again, eating a splendid meal under old walnut trees, listening to music. These simple pleasures are what life is about. We here at BCLFN hope you grab as many of these kinds of moments as you can! Every day gives us opportunity to realize and celebrate them. We are so very Blessed!
More Community Events
August 14- Stop by our booth at the Chico Certified Farmers Market and talk with Jarret James, star of our future “Ask Jarrett” Video Series and one of our garden experts. He’ll be there to answer your questions about gardening, volunteering with us (you know you want to), and, basically, anything BCLFN or local food. The Market is between 7:30 and 1 in the Chico City parking lot at the corner of 2nd and Wall. Just look for our logo (that tomato there on the top of this email)!
August 15- Our Save Our Seeds project is doing a Seed Re-packing event. If you aren’t familiar
with this program, check it out here. We think it’s pretty cool. We’ll be at Vecino Victory Garden gluing on labels, then packing up seeds in both larger and small packet for distribution to tiny libraries around town and for our Yard Sale’s mini seed swap. Come on over to Vecino Victory Garden early to beat the heat. Pamm will be there by 8:30 and we’ll stay until 11ish or a bit beyond so just come whenever is convenient. Vecino is at 1535 Laburnum Ave. We’ll be around back. And if you don’t want to pack seeds, there is plenty of other garden-y stuff to do.
August 26 – Butte Environmental Council is presenting: Community Forum: Wildfire, Climate, and Our Future
6-8PM at the Bidwell Bowl Ampitheater. The goal of this forum is to recognize the current understanding of the causes and effects of wildfires on our community as a whole and discuss solutions we all can contribute to in mitigating the impacts that wildfires have on the environment around us so that we as a community can be resilient when a wildfire happens. More info here.
September 4 th – Paradise Stronger 2nd Annual Wellness Fair . 9am to 1pm at Bille Park, 501 Bille Rd. in Paradise. Stop on by our booth and get to know some of our team, check out how we can support your healthy gardening and don’t forget to ask for a free pack of seeds!
September 9- Join Eliane Silva from Seeds of Love on a zoom where she will introduce her new Zero-Waste program. To find out more, please contact her at elicristinasilva@gmail.com. The Zoom presentation starts at 9:30am.
September 18 and 19- Natural Dye workshop by Rachel Haight at Vecino Victory Garden, 1535 Laburnum Ave. Explore seasonal natural colors during this 2-day plant & vegetable dye workshop. Participants will learn the natural dye process including mordanting fabrics and utilizing modifiers to produce an array of colors. Hours will be from 9am to 1pm both days. More info coming soon.
September 26- 11-12:30. Creating Food Independence in Butte County- Rot ON!: Community and Back Yard Composting. Keep an eye out for more details coming soon.
October 16- World Food Day Celebration at Vecino Victory Garden- hold the date to visit our lovely community garden, Vecino Victory Garden. Activities and adventures TBA,but be sure to hold the date!
Featured Recipe Of The Moment: Fermented Hot Pepper Sauce
Both sweet and spicy bright peppers are all over the markets now and this is the perfect time to make the perfect, simple, healthy hot pepper sauce. This version has no addtives and helps with your microbiome because it’s fermented. Plus, it’s incredibly tasty. And easy.
Ingredients:
Hot peppers- either red or a variety of colors (if you don’t mind the final color being a bit less intense of a red)
Garlic- 4-8ish cloves per pint, depending on size of the cloves and your obsession with garlic.
Salt- 2.5 ts. per pint
Water
Recipe:
Put peppers, garlic and salt in a jar. Fill to cover with water. Put the lid on loosely, then Let it sit for 2 weeks to ferment.
When ready, whiz in a blender to make is saucy. Store in glass jars in the fridge.
Please note: if you have a sensitive nose, we suggest fermenting in an out of the way place as it can get pretty smelly. But make sure it’s not too hot as the temp is going to be pretty intense out there the next few weeks.
Well, that’s it for this newsletter installment. Keep your eyes open for great foodie information. If you’d like to be in touch more and haven’t joined our Butte County Local Foodies page on Facebook, please do, then join in the conversation!
We’ll see you on the streets!
The Butte County Local Food Network!
We are grateful to have some of our projects funded by:
