Build Day with Habitat!

On November 12, the Winona house teamed up with the Imani house and volunteered on a Habitat build site in North Minneapolis. At my work they were encouraging staff members to organize groups to fill in the winter build season, (we build year round at Habitat) so I asked my housemates and Imani and they were all really excited.

So we showed up at 8:30 am on a Saturday ready to build. Reuben, Allie and Kelsey suited up and sprayed insulation in the attic, while Lindsay, James and Kathy broke down insulation cubes and fed them into the insulation spraying device.

The rest of us worked on sheet rocking the walls in the living room area and closets.

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone at the dedication for this site in the spring (which is what I organize at Habitat).

We had so much fun that we are already talking about doing some more build days this winter and maybe even in the spring/summer, when there will be a Habitat site on our block! What do you say, huge LVC build day? 

P.S. Feel inspired? Here’s a quick plug- there’s a website with volunteer opportunities for individuals and small group (4 or less people): TC Habitat Volunteer Hub

P.P.S. Americorp member Kate has a site blog for the site we worked on http://tchabitat1091.blogspot.com/

-Sarah

CSA- October and November

October and November have been busy (and exciting) months for us at Winona house! There was hardly a weekend when we didn’t do something exciting (see Margarite’s picture post for some). Now, as Thanksgiving rolls around, we’re preparing for a Minnesota winter. The first snowfall of the year was on Saturday, but thanks to our landlord nearly all of the windows in our bedrooms now have insulating plastic.

As part of our commitment to sustainability, in October and November we decided to buy a fall community supported agriculture (CSA) share through Big River Farms. The boxes come every two weeks with fresh vegetables straight from an organic farm that offers experiential teaching to new farmers. We never know what we’re going to get until we go get the box every two weeks, so opening the boxes is kind of like Christmas. So far there have been carrots, four kinds of winter squash, onions, garlic, beets, parsnips, potatoes, spinach, kale, broccoli, leeks… all super fresh and awesome tasting. We’ve also had to be somewhat creative in order to use some of the more obscure veggies- for example, Romanesco Broccoli- a green fractal pyramid shaped veggie that tastes like broccoli and Celeriac, or celery root- looks like a gross inedible bulb but actually tastes almost exactly like celery. Some favorite recipes so far have been:

Delicata Squash Wedges

Winter Veggies Pot Pie

Sauted Parsnips and Kale

Veggie Christmas!

Lindsay with the Romanesco Broccoli

We pick up our last box of the season today, and we’re going to miss the fresh veggies as winter sets in. We’re undecided whether or not we would want to continue this in the spring/ summer or go to farmer’s markets (we have a great one nearby, Midtown Farmer's Market that starts in May!).

-Sarah

Kittens!

There are kittens in our shed!! Actually, there are kittens in the church's shed, which is in our backyard, so we have to lure them out with Purina Kitten Chow. There are two of them and they are cute and fluffy and feral. (Beth Shalom, any interest in lovingly violating your lease agreement?) We're trying to socialize them enough to trap them for the cat rescue society, but if it gets too cold they might die first. :( No one wants dead kittens!