We have two major volunteer needs coming up this month!

First, will be a planting day on Saturday, April 18th. Come see the farm, enjoy community, and practice your gardening skills. If you’d rather offer moral support than get your hands dirty, you can help provide refreshments to those who are planting the seeds of the new crop. We’ll meet at 9am at New Hope Baptist Church on 21st and Fir. We’ll be able to provide transportation for up to 20 people to the farm. You can also form your own carpool if you’d rather come at a different time. Bring your garden tools – hoes, trowels, gloves – and boots for muddy fields if it’s wet. Sign up here

Our next volunteer opportunity will be Whole Foods 5% Day on April 22nd. We’ll be at the stores in Bellevue, Redmond, Downtown Seattle and Roosevelt. We will need 16-20 volunteers (4-5 at each store) to staff the booths. There will be two shifts, 10am-2pm and 4pm-8pm at each store. We’ll also have cooking demonstrations at the stores in the afternoons, so if you can share your greens cooking skills with an audience, let us know. Sign up here.

If you’d like to support the project but can’t volunteer, you can join us on Sunday, April 19th from 4-6pm when we’ll celebrate with a fundraiser at Central Cinema. Come watch film, share community and support Clean Greens. Central Cinema has been wonderfully supportive of the project. You can also shop at one of the four Whole Foods we’ll be in on April 22nd, when 5% of those stores’ profits for the day will be donated to Clean Greens.

The steering committee for Clean Greens is working hard, meeting regularly, and getting things rolling for 2009. There are plenty of opportunities to share your knowledge, experience and time. As anyone who’s volunteered knows, what you get back is often more than you put in.

If you’d like to get involved with the Clean Greens Farm Project, there is a new volunteer sign-up form link at http://www.cleangreensfarm.com/group/volunteer where you can tell us how you’d like to get involved, what talents you bring, and what you’d like from the experience. When specific volunteer needs are scheduled, we can then invite those who are interested in working on that part of the project.

Upcoming volunteer needs will include staffing booths to promote the Clean Greens Farm at four Whole Foods stores on April 22nd and a planting day on the farm sometime in April.

So get involved and help our community grow at its roots.

The Clean Greens project is getting started again for 2009. There was an initial steering committee meeting on Tuesday, and the group will continue to meet on a regular basis. Top priorities include finding equipment to turn the soil on the farm in Duvall and preparing the land for planting. The farm will be working 7 acres of land again this year.

Last year’s crop was very popular and the organic greens sold quickly. Unfortunately a flood ended the season before the entire crop could be harvested. Clean Greens will be looking for volunteer gardeners to help with the planting day again this year. The produce will be sold at New Hope Church once the harvest begins. Last year, the mustard greens were a huge hit.

Local support for this effort is vital. From volunteering to buying organic produce, you can help bring affordable organic produce to our community.

For more information on the project, go to http://www.cleangreensfarm.com/