Grow a beard help a child (or lots of children)

The world is fun is putting on Beard & Stache fest 2011 so start growing your beards, you have until the beginning of January. Beard & Stache fest benefits Treehouse a local non-profit helping kids in foster care. Get registered for a month of facial hair fun at The World is Fun's website http://www.theworldisfun.org/BSF_2011.html

In this episode our Heros fight Himalayan Blackberries

Saturday was Green Seattle Day and Team Younger and Wiser was at Seattle's Nature Consortium fighting blackberry bushes.

The Himalayan blackberry is one of the Pacific Northwest's worst non-native invasive species, it thrives in our temperate climate and chokes out our native plants. It's also very hard to get rid of. A Seattle Times article had this to say about Seattle Works public enemy #1:

Nature could not have designed a better invader than the Himalayan blackberry, a native of Eurasia.

In a sunny site with some water, a patch will expand 10 feet in girth in a year. Consider the blackberry's abilities, truly without parallel, when it comes to reproduction:

Its flowers need no pollination. Unlike other plants that need their pollen transferred in some fashion to the ovary, the blackberry sets seed on its own. Bees need not apply.

Knowing this 8 members of Younger and Wiser put on their long sleeves and gloves and headed into the brambles armed with shovels and loppers. They chopped away at the thorny vines and dug out the giant root balls. The ground was muddy, the air was cold but the team stayed at it for the entire project. They stayed in high spirits and were entertained by forest minstrels (seriously, two dudes with drums and a clarinet showed up and played music).

After the project the team headed to West Seattle for some much deserved lunch and sitting down.

It's been a while

Team Younger and Wiser has been way too busy volunteering to update our blog, we're terribly sorry and will work hard and keeping the interwebs updated with what we've been doing. To tide you over for some posts about our fall and winter Team Works round here is a video of Younger and Wiser team members Meghan and Aviva talking about why they like SeattleWorks.

Summer Volunteering Had Me a Blast...

Summer is here and Team Younger and Wiser is ready to put on some SPF 30 and volunteer in the sun. For summer round we've got 12 returning members and are welcoming 3 new faces to our team. We start our 4 month round off this Saturday at a Woman's home in Greenwood with Volunteer Chore Services, a group who goes out to elderly and disabled peoples home and help with yard work, cleaning and other chores that they can't perform on their own. Check back next week (and the first week of every month) for details of our project and photos.

Marra Farms

More Photos:

Younger and Wiser had farm ee-i-ee-i-o

For Younger and Wiser's final spring project we headed south to Marra Farm to spend an afternoon in the sun and act like Old McDonald.

Marra Farm is an urban community farm in Seattle's Southpark community teaching sustainable agriculture through community gardens and private P-patches. Last year Marra Farm grew more then 16,000 pounds of food, most of which was donated to local food banks. The Farm also hosts local elementary students to teach them about the importance of eating healthy and show them just how delicious fresh vegetables can be.

We arrived at Marra Farms around 10am on what would turn out to be one of the nicest saturdays of the month, good thing we had sunscreen. After what seemed like an extra long talk from the director of Marra farms (who accused us of not knowing what a globe is) we got to work. We split up into a few small groups some of us cleared vegetable beds which had been resting for a season so they could be planted later that day while others worked on building the largest compost pile ever. Ralph took on the amazing task of weed-whacking most of the 4 acre farm and put on his ear and eye protection and went to town. After the vegetable beds had been cleared we planted summer squash and corn in the newly usable beds. We also did some great work building bamboo structures for green beans to climb and were allowed to take home some 'rouge' potatoes. It was a great day and we all plan on going back in a few months to see how the vegetables we planted have done.

We Were at Seattle Works Day!

On Saturday May 22nd 5 members of Team Younger and Wiser grabbed some friends, rolled up their sleeves (or cut them off) and formed the Seattle Works Day team Sleeves are for Suckers. Our team totaled out with 10 volunteers, 5 current Younger and Wiser members, one veteran member, one boyfriend, and 3 friends. Our project was at the Fremont Abbey, small venue and community center. The Abbey regularly puts on concerts (there was actually one happening while we were working) as well as fitness, dance, and art classes; it's a great addition to the artistic neighborhood that Fremont is.
Our team was all pretty experienced with the projects we were working on: weeding, sweeping, removing invasives, and painting. We did have an interesting addition that we haven't had to projects before, street cleanup. The Abbey feels very connected with the fremont neighborhood, so in addition to cleaning up at the Abbey we were asked to help pick up trash in a two block radius of the site itself. With the theme for this years Seattle Works Day being Neighborhoods I couldn't have thought of a better way to make our project about Fremont instead of just about the Abbey.
Around 3 we began finishing up all our tasks and cleaning up in time to head to Fischer Pavilion at Seattle Center for an amazing after party sponsored by Pyramid Brewery, Taco Del Mar, Zevia Soda, and Breyers ice cream. We all got a great fill of tacos, a new pyramid flavor, some tasty ice cream treats, and played some awesome games.
After the day was over Seattle Works had raised $75,000 from 1175 volunteers who worked 4000 man hours at 28 sites around Seattle, which is pretty easy to call a success.
Check out all the Seattle Works Day photos on their special flickr group.