Compost your food scraps for free this month at any Martha's Vineyard transfer station.
The Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society and Island Grown Initiative have joined forces in a venture to build a slaughterhouse behind the fairgrounds in West Tisbury.
The project is still in the very early stages of discussion and no permits have been obtained, but preliminary talks between the agricultural society and the nonprofit IGI are under way to allow a slaughterhouse facility to be built behind the new barn on society land.
Following on the success of the Island Grown Initiative’s mobile poultry processing unit, the organization has won a $40,000 federal grant to look at doing something similar with four-legged livestock.
The grant was announced on Friday, as officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture came to the Vineyard to school locals on how they might share in hundreds of millions of dollars available from the government.
Island Grown Schools, the Island Grown Initiative’s farm-to-school program, is set to bring more local produce into school meals and snacks in 2009, developing a connection between cafeterias and farms that helps create a year-round market for locally-grown foods and a source of off-season income for Island farmers.
Island Grown Initiative has scheduled its first Summer Institute for Teachers, a three-day workshop for educators on the Vineyard interested in incorporating curriculum tied to farms and gardens into their classes.
The institute will run from August 11 to 13 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at a number of Island locations. Admission is free for Vineyard teachers, for whom professional development points will be available.
From backyard growers to full-fledged farmers, Island residents seem to have caught chicken fever.
The Island Grown Initiative hosted an all-day Vineyard workshop on the bird Saturday, which covered the ground from egg to plate.
