Our Seeds of Hope Celebration was truly a celebration! On Friday, December 4 our 2020 Seed Money recipients presented short videos and/or PowerPoint presentations of their project goals, the challenges they faced and the results of their efforts. If you were not able to attend the virtual celebration, you can access a recording here.
This year's recipients were wide-ranging and included: a rural cultural tour, a conservation stewardship project, an educational event on soil health, two rural community farmers markets, a food artisan immersion program, and others. To learn more about each of the projects see brief descriptions here.
We heard from Lisa Buttonow from the Hill & Valley Exploration Tour, Donna Swanson from Grant County Rural Stewardship, Kathy Moczulewski from Prairie Street Farmers Market, Amanda Gardner from Dodgeville Farmers Market, Carolyn Hamblen from Taliesen’s Food Artisan Kitchen Garden, Cindy Becker from Southern Driftless Grasslands, Kathryn Kruse from Residency on the Farm, Gretchen Kruse from Sauk County Conservation Network, and Chris Frakes from Southwest Wisconsin Community Action Program.
Note: The 2020 Seed Money initiative was made possible by the support of the Sinsinawa Dominicans, Alliant Energy, and our individual contributors.
Our 2019-2020 Winter Farmers Markets and Meals season was a great success thanks to you, our congregation partners, our vendors and our shopping and dining participants. We sponsored nine markets in the Milwaukee/Waukesha County area. We saw an increase in vendor sales and were delighted with the enthusiam and energy of our host congregations and their coordinators. Click on this link to see our 2019-2020 schedule.
We had ten markets scheduled for our 2020-2021 season. Due to our current health crisis, we have suspended in-person markets and brunches for the 2020-21 season. We want to ensure the safety of both our vendors and our host congregations. Our vendors have modified their business practices to adhere to best practices during the pandemic and our host congregations have each adapted to new ways to best serve their congregants and adhere to public health guidelines.
Our priorities have always been to support our local farmers and producers, and to educate the congregations and communities we work with regarding the importance of buying locally sourced and sustainably grown products. We hope to present online educational events in collaboration with our congregations. We are extremely grateful for your past support. We look forward to seeing you at the markets and meals in the 2021-22 season.
In the meantime, please continue to support our loyal vendors by placing direct orders. A listing can be found on our Programs page.
If you have any questions, contact our Milwaukee Area Winter Farmers Market Coordinator, Linda Sheridan, lsheridanfffn@gmail.com.
We are happy to announce that we again invite applications for Seed Money for initiatives that support our mission and address the issues raised in our Listening/Networking Sessions held in early 2018. We are accepting applications for projects in the following counties: Green, Iowa, Lafayette, Grant, Sauk, Crawford, Vernon and Richland.
If you are interested in applying, know that the amount of funding per project ranges from $1200 to $1500. The deadline for applications has been extended to January 29, 2021. Awardees will be notified by February 26, 2021. More information is provided on the application form.
Our application requests that you share your project goals, expected results, project timeline and budget as well as other details. You can download our Application for Seed Money in your preferred format: (PDF) (WORD).
While we highly recommend applying for projects that are stated as priorities on our application, other worthy initiatives will be considered. In addition to evaluating whether a project meets our priorities, the following criteria will be considered: 1) the level of energy behind the project; 2) the significance of the project’s impact on the community; and 3) the network of people/groups working on the project.
In 2019 we awarded a total of $8,595 to 6 Southwestern Wisconsin initiatives. This year we granted 9 projects a total of $12,050. Descriptions of the projects we have supported can be found here.
