building momentum

So here we are in our fourth month as a unit and things are moving along quite nicely. Its great to see some people have established a bit of routine while also keeping an open mind to new tasks and ventures. We have been making salads for the KDR (our dining unit) for quite some time now. Some people enjoy working on that while others feel that we could use our time more wisely. It seems that soon we will be serving our own salads up here in the Wellness Unit. We’ve also tested out of bunch of recipies, with granola bars and zucchini muffins being our most popular snack items thus far. Today we are going to test some peanut butter granola bars.

 Our gym has also become very popular. I’d say that there about 3-4 times as many people up there on a given day than there was back in July. Other staff and members have assembled an introduction packet for the gym and have begun to go around to the other units with a presentation about the gym and to talk about why it is worthwhile to exercise.

 Another goal we are working on is to educate the clubhouse about health-related issues. I have had conversations with members who are interested in setting up guest lectures here at the house and other educational forums. Soon we will be working on a bulletin board to be updated monthly or bi-monthly to be used as a passive educational piece regarding health awareness (i.e. Smoking Cessastion month, etc). We’ve also started a small library that we aim to expand in the near future. We will be purchasing new bookcases and perhaps tables, as well as gathering more books and resources.

 People have been busy up at the garden as well I hear. I have only been able to make it up there for one day trip so far, but I had a great experience and look forward to getting back up there. People have begun to plan for next year’s growing season. We have to decided what we want to plant (less zucchini perhaps?) and I do believe there will be some indoor growing during the winter.

Finally, our weekly farmer’s market has become pretty established. We were selling a ton of produce (cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, turnips, lettuce, parsley, tomatoes, potatoes, and so on..) but since there isn’t a lot of things growing currently we have started to sell snacks and soups. We hope to also put our electric juicer to work and start thinking about opening our health bar, serving just juice, snacks, soups, and the like for the meantime… until we get all of our kitchen supplies. Then we’ll be making a lot more stuff.

There’s certainly more that has been going on, but that’s a brief update for you. Stop by and visit!