April is fooling with our usual, expected schedule. The leaves have already appeared and green things are sprouting up all over the place! Our high tunnels are bursting with life, but we are being cautious about putting plants out to harden yet. Nature is unpredictable even at the best of times!

CSA Shares are daily walking out the door...but there's still time to get one for yourself or a family member or friend. Don't wait!!

Check out the value: 

• Certified Organic Fruits and Vegetables grown with care on our East Central Minnesota farm and at select Organic-certified partner farms.
• 18 week season starting in mid-June and ending in mid-October
• Harvested and delivered to a drop site near you each week -- it doesn't get much fresher than this!
• Rebates available for farm pick-up, participating in our Farm-For-A-Day program, and keeping your WEI membership current
• 3/4 bushel of produce each week (about a brown paper grocery bag-full, on average)
• Supports your local farming community
• Newsletter in each delivery with news from the farm, recipe ideas and information about the produce in that week's box
• Only $576.00 for the entire season
• Special members' only pricing on produce for canning and freezing, and special members' only events at the farm.
• Organic apples in your share in the fall
• 15 workshare positions available for this season. Trade work on the farm for your CSA Box!! Call us at 651.583.0705 for more information.
• Bread and Cookie shares are available from our Baker partner, Red Door Bakery of Lindstrom, MN. 

You can't beat the convenience, and the taste and freshness are out of this world! Join our CSA. Make a difference in YOUR community. Weekly Friday deliveries at many metro locations. Click on the links below for more information:

What is a CSA?      Order a CSA Now      2012 Dropsite List      Look at our CSA Brochure      Contact CSA Coordinator    2011 CSA Newsletters

Farming and Food Justice         Register On-Line

Time: Monday evenings (unless otherwise posted) 6:00-8:00
Where: Midtown Global Market (920 East Lake Street)

Featured Speaker on August 20: The Future of Sustainable Agriculture and Food Justice in Minnesota -- Dave Frederickson (Minnesota Commissioner of Agriculture)

Organic Farm School is a ten-week lecture, discussion, and field course on organic food production and agriculture from environmental, social, and historical perspectives, connecting environmental justice with agriculture and food justice. Participants will also have the opportunity to develop practical skills in organic horticulture through hands-on workshops at the WEI alternative farm campus and farm field trips.

For more information and a list of scheduled lectures for 2012, click here.

WEI is seeking self-motivated and hard working individuals to fill the following positions as part of the WEI farm team for the 2012 season. Employment preference will be given to individuals in our local area.

FULL-TIME or PART-TIME EXPERIENCED FARM EMPLOYEE. HIRING IMMEDIATELY for an experienced seasonal crew member. Click here for more info. Click here for an application .

FARM VOLUNTEERS (UNPAID). Click here for more info.

PART-TIME OFFICE ASSISTANT. 20 hours per week, year-round. Click here for more info.

All farm employees and volunteers are welcome to share in extra produce that is not needed for the CSA and/or market on days that they work on the farm.

WEI's East Metro Environment Justice Education & Advocacy Project team, Amay
Yang & Suyapa Miranda, helped recruit U of M graduates for internships with
WEI at the PASA Career Engagement Fair, Hubert H. Humphrey School, University of Minnesota.

The Women's Environmental Institute has been working for more than four years to bring PFC awareness to locally affected communities through our environmental justice work.  Now we are in the unexpected company of a powerful lawsuit aginst 3M.  In the coming months, we seek to have Dr. Fardin Oliaei recognized as a pioneer whistle-blower on this issue, returned to a job at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and given access to a lab to complete and support her critically important research on the effects of PFC contamination in soil, plants, water and fish, and potentially in humans. It is also necessary that her new position with the agency enable Dr. Oliaei to provide policy leadership that maximizes her new public policy expertise.  At the WEI website, watch for a petition of support for Dr. Oliaei that you and your organization can sign, and watch for WEI's upcoming conference on current PFC researc. Download WEI's recently released PFC Update. 

WEI endorses OCA New Year's Resolutions.                                                               DONATE NOW (last day for 2010 WEI)

Creative Ways You Can Help WEI Grow                        DONATE NOW

Welcome to the returning post-solstice sun. In looking back, 2010 has been both a challenging and an exciting year for WEI! Like most small non-profits, WEI’s been challenged by hard economic times, especially to adequately meet our operational costs. Determined to become more financially sustainable, WEI went to work forging more opportunities to partner with allies.  We can report great progress in 2010! Exciting new multi-year federal grant awards for our projects plus our first work-place giving campaign: 1) a USDA grant to partner with Environmental justice Advocates of MN (EJAM) for our cross cultural/cross neighborhood Urban Community Food Justice Council we initiated last year and 2) a U.S. EPA Community Action for Renewing the Environment) grant to partner with Hennepin County for expanding our environmental justice mapping work in Phillips. 3) WEI also competed successfully to become part of the Minnesota Environmental Fund’s work-place giving campaign and 4) Healthy Legacy Coalition awarded us a joint grant with EJAM to continue our policy work. And what makes us so happy, WEI was honored with the prestigious Ann Bancroft Award for our environmental justice work in support of girls and women.                                                               


WEI’s two Environmental Justice Education and Advocacy Collaborative (EJEAC) Projects also gathered momentum: 1) Phillips EJEAC, with the leadership of our community-based PESCI organizers, helped successfully change state public utility policy to challenge the environmental injustice of siting high voltage electric transmission lines through Phillips and WEI has become the “incubator” for a project with the Allina Backyard Project focused on safer home product workshops in the Latina/o community.  2) WEI’s East Metro EJEAC hired a new intern-coordinator and our Principal Investigator sparked new interest from the Obama administration’s federal environmental agencies (EPA and NIEHS) and with local Hmong health professionals to help promote our research on toxic exposures to Hmong farmers.

WEI’s own Farm Program bloomed in 2010: bountiful crops at Amador Hill fed a successful Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project and our three culturalheritage farms (Indigenous, Latino, Hmong) expanded to four, adding an experimental Mexican peanut growing project. The highly successful launching of WEI’s new Regional Outreach Training Center in collaboration with Growing Power, Inc was an October inspiration. WEI’s Organic Farm School’s fifth season convened at the Midtown Global Market and WEI’s public policy work with Healthy Legacy continues. WEI’s Land Registry Project gained membership and the North Circle Project may find new life as part of a farming cooperative development. WEI’s most exciting partnership with Little Earth of United Tribes Urban Farm and Food Justice Project continues to inspire with the Little Earth Women’s Group taking strong leadership. This project and these urban farmers are the grounding team for WEI’s educational certification/accreditation work ahead.

These projects and programs surviving with the hard work of WEI volunteers and minimal staff. Though we are celebrating the success of these terrific projects, it’s important to share that WEI is seriously struggling with infrastructure, administrative and operational costs because these are not currently being fully funded by our granting sources. WEI is fulfilling its  mission with our unique coalition of rural and urban, Indigenous, low income and communities of color, ensuring that women’s voices and priorities help lead the way to change lives as well as public policy. We know we cannot maintain the momentum without the ongoing generous help and participation of our members and community supporters, so please stay with us as we close out 2010 and begin 2011. Your contributions and donations will make the difference. All gifts to WEI are tax deductible.                                                           

For a full copy of the 2010 WEI Newsletter, click here. Photo:Little Earth urban farmers, Dawn Segura and Sindy Wright,
with Jacquelyn Zita and  Dan Halsey, mentor farmers, and Karen Clark at the 2010 High Tunnel Conference.

Dr. Fardin Oliaei, Principal Investigator for WEI's East Metro Environmental Justice Education and Advocacy Project, has created a new update on her Perfluorochemical (PFC) fact sheet, entitled UPDATE ON PFC INVESTIGATION AND HEALTH RISKS (2010). This document summarizes research revealing human health concerns regarding PFC exposure. PFCs products are persistent, long lasting man-made chemicals produced for use in commercial and consumer products which have now been mostly phased out of production but have been found to contaminate ground and surface water near the East Metro production facilities and in human and animal blood throughout the world.  Health risk levels are still being researched and established.  Read more.

“Dedicated to the ideals of good water quality in the Sunrise and St. Croix Rivers, the preservation of habitat for native plants and wildlife, and a vibrant rural/farm economy that embraces sustainable agricultural practices.”

The Amador-Sunrise Registry was launched in 2008 to support the conservation efforts of private landowners with property in Amador and Sunrise Townships of Chisago County. An informal membership-based program, the Registry brings together people who share an appreciation for the rural and natural heritage of the area, and are interested in caring for their land in ways that project these values. Read more.

 For even more information, click here.

WELCOME  to The Mother Brick Project

A celebration of the nurturing spirit, fostering aculture of caring for each other and the earth 

VIEW TRIBUTES

WHAT IS THE MOTHER BRICK PROJECT: For a new and meaningful twist on gift giving, check out our new MOTHER BRICK PROJECT. If you join in this large collective effort, you can honor a mother, grandmother or other nurturing individual by dedicating a virtual brick in their name and submitting a written tribute and/or photgraph that will be permanently posted to the WEI Mother Brick Website.  Mother Bricks may be dedication as a gift or memorial, and particpants so honored will receive a Certificate of Dedication as a keepsake or gift enclosure.  The posting of these tributes recognizes your tax deductable contribution to help build and strenghen the place of WEI on the planet and your support of our environmenal and agricultural justice work.  We honor the mothers all as we honor the Mother Earth and build our strength together.
Read More.