The Brooks Place Van
Donation protected
Here’s the 1 minute version:
We got a grant to drop off organic, local food to low income refugees, all season long. That’s once a week, a big box of organic produce and eggs, for 6 months. The grant pays for the food and labor. Not the vehicle.
We’ve been having serious car trouble with a van that’s been good to us, but is at the end of its rope. We need to be ready to start making weekly deliveries back and forth to Louisville by May 1st.
So we started a GoFundMe to see if we could raise money for a delivery van that would let us make our deliveries.
Originally I wrote this giant News Letter/GoFundMe… thing.
It took way too long to read.
If you want the news letter part, hit us up on facebook or instagram
www.facebook.com/thebrooksplace
I’ll email it your way. And we'd love to hear from you.
If you wanna give… I love you.
-The Brooks Place
Food Deserts, Friends and Free-Loaders, oh, and… we’ve got worms.
Hello friends,
Let me be upfront: if you read this whole thing, which I’d be honored for you to do, it’s going to take you a solid 9 minutes and 12 seconds, give or take. Also, although it is definitely an update on what we’ve been up to at the Brooks Place, I don’t like tricks or salesmen, so you should know, we’re asking for something in this writing. And should you feel so inclined to help out in this pursuit, well, our thanks won’t be enough. If not, that’s ok too. Thank you for being on this fun journey with us all the same. We hope to see you soon, maybe outside, or at our kitchen table, where friends belong.
Here’s a newsletter of all the things that we’ve been cooking up at The Brooks Place in the “off” season (winter months). As any gardener knows, there’s a little bit of daily maintenance that goes into keeping up a place, even when everything goes into the winter sleep. There are a few things to clean up from the growing season, and a few projects to prep for the spring. For us, shorter days means time to recalibrate, reimagine, reflect on 2020 and think about things we want to try in 2021.
Here are some of those things:
Over the years, Meghan and I have been nursing an irritating little conviction to grow and eat healthier food. Irritating because, let’s be honest, we like a good doughnut, soda or bag of Doritos as much as the next person. But the more we learn, the more we just can’t “UN-see” what we’ve seen. And over time, we’ve grown excited about doing something. Not only eating healthier, but also growing food in such a way that actually makes the piece of earth we’ve been given to steward BETTER than it was when we got here, and it was pretty good when we got here.
One issue that has constantly nagged us is that when we use words like “Organic,” “Green,” “Sustainable,” “Local,” “Free-range,” “Plant-based,” “Regenerative” or just talk about “health food” in general… we are largely talking about a subject that low income communities have zero time to worry about. And that’s understandable. What is less understandable, is the fact that struggling families have less opportunities to even FIND healthy food, let alone afford it. This challenging socio-economic problem is broadly referred to as “the food desert.”
The Food Desert is real. And parts of down town Louisville, like most other large cities, struggle to find ways to get healthy, sustainably grown food to the poor among them. In our world, foods that we know cause all sorts of diseases from diabetes to cancer, are cheap. Additionally, the production of such foods is subsidized, making it more profitable to produce a Dorito than an organic apple. One argument I’ve heard goes something like, “Well, if those idiots wouldn’t eat too much junk, they wouldn’t get fat, sick, diabetes, back problems, cancer, etc…”
But what if the junk is the most affordable choice?
What if financially, it just made sense (cents? couldn’t resist) to eat… poorly. Having to choose between your wallet and your health seems like a crappy decision to me. But as a recovering Taco Bell and Mountain Dew addict, I know I can buy about 10 pounds of burritos off the dollar menu and wash it down with a bottomless 32 ounce Mountain Dew for the price of one bundle of organic salad at Kroger… And that’s freaking weird, if not down right problematic. I keep asking myself, if God designed a food economy, would it look like ours? I bet you can guess our answer.
I’m not sure what the “big” answer is. In fact, I’m thinking there might not be a big answer, only small answers, and small people, like you and me, taking care of one another instead of waiting for the government to do it. But I better change subjects before I make somebody mad. Politics seems to muddy things up to the point that we all start arguing with each other and leave everyone still hungry or poor or both.
With that in mind, we’ve always thought about how much we would love to grow things that help, even just a little.
So…
We’ve Got Worms!
It’s common knowledge that in the last 100 years, we’ve lost nearly HALF of the worlds top soil… Let that sink in for a minute. Top soil is the layer of earth we grow our food on. Plants and animals all depend on it. If you happen to be one of those people who likes things like, I don’t know, eating… soil matters. A few years ago, as with everything we do, we began to think small about how we could help. If the soil is running off into the ocean, how can we keep what’s left, and even grow some of our own? Enter worms. Earth worms are little soil makers of the best kind. In a forest or prairie, grasses, leaves, animal manure, bark, rotting trees and the like, all slowly decompose into the earth and worms turn it into beautiful black worm castings, humus, soil that we all need for growing our food. Even potato chips need soil, just barely. So we bought some worms a few years ago and have been feeding them in the “worm bin” with our own compost and compost we collect from neighbors, literally making soil instead of using it up (Ps. If you’d like to contribute some of your own compost to this world saving operation, give us a shout. :)
This year we’ll be selling coffee size bags of pure, black worm castings. Nature’s most rich and awesome organic fertilizer–also known as worm poop.
Food Deserts
Last year, we received a very small grant, in conjunction with an organization called Peace Catalyst, to grow some organic vegetables for impoverished refugees in Louisville and deliver them. The grant was small, as were the expectations, and it was a good experiment for The Brooks Place and the organization that we worked with to set up the deliveries. It was a hit. And this year, we are stoked to announce that they’ve increased that opportunity! We’ll be growing MORE and in collaboration with another organic CSA operation, we’ll be delivering boxes of organic, locally grown, awesome food, to down town Louisville refugees for FREE, once a week, every week, for the entire growing season!
But guys, we need a delivery van.
Sustainable “Agritourism”/Education
Last winter we began to brainstorm about a way to get young people outside more. As a teacher and principal, I (Kirk) have spent a lot of years figuring out how to inspire and connect with kids. Education at its best, is about helping humans become healthy, not just intellectually, but physically, spiritually, emotionally. In a world where we are increasingly dependent on and addicted to our screens, I found that creating opportunities to get people outside and maybe even get their hands a little dirty, is life giving. With that in mind, we geared up and began researching what we might need to start a little outdoor education program at The Brooks Place that would include some things like over night camping trips, some early morning farm chores, animal husbandry, late night talks around the camp fire, and sustainable agriculture education.
Then, of course, 2020 got a little weird didn’t it?
So we put a pin in that idea that we planned to kick off in the summer of 2020. We have high hopes that 2021 will see that vision become a reality! We’re thinking of calling it something like… “Get-outside-and-work-with-your-hands… camp” (We’re still working on the name)
A van would be really helpful for this adventure too.
Come see us at the Farmer’s Market!
That’s right. The Brooks Place is finally going to have a weekly presence at a real live farmer’s market. We would be delighted to see you there! Every Saturday morning on Main Street in LaGrange. The market is open from 9am to 1pm.
Some Brooks Place stuff we’ll have on hand at the market includes
our pasture raised organic eggs,
worm castings–an organic fertilizer for your own plants,
all kinds of varieties of Cherry Tomatoes,
Microgreens of all sorts,
some insanely delicious baked goods from whatever Meghan is cooking up in the The Brooks Place kitchen,
and maybe a few surprises from the kids too.
We’re pumped about this opportunity to give our kiddos some first hand business experience and get out in the community. The kids are brainstorming ideas about what their contribution might be. Joshua of course is saving for a car, on down to Ariel and Elezar who are saving for… well, we’ll see.
Meghan and I, as you might have gathered, are selling a few things, and saving for… a van. A big one. At very least, if none of that suits your fancy, come by and give us a hug and check out all the other awesome vendors from farms to artisans and craft makers at the LaGrange Farmer’s Market.
The Van
Every one of those items mentioned above has a common denominator, I bet you can guess what it is… we need a van.
Some of the urgency for this began in the last month when, at just over 212,000 miles, our little Toyota minivan has started doing some funny things: shaking steering wheel, whole car vibrating, an engine miss here and there. As some of you know, I am dangerously mechanically inclined. “Dangerous” because I know just enough to cause trouble by thinking I can fix most things myself. I checked it out. No suspension or tire issues that I could see. I took it to the shop where we recently bought a new set of tires, they said, “Tires are perfect, we rotated and balanced them just in case.” Not fixed. I took it to another shop, they said, “We can’t find anything wrong, must be the gas. Run some fuel cleaner in it.” Several bottles and weeks of fuel cleaner later. Still not fixed.
The Toyota has had a good run. And if we are able to get something newer, we will sell it to someone who wants to fool with it. We do not.
Here’s what we’re looking for: a 2015 ish Ford Transit Wagon.
Reliability, around 50k or less.
Space, for family AND cargo so we’re not in two or three vehicles.
We don’t need the bells and whistles, of a mini-van, we need space and reliability. We will be selling two of our older vehicles and saving hard to contribute as much as we can to our own cause. But it just isn’t practical or economical (or possible) anymore to get all of us and the gear, product, tents, tables, stands, boxes, etc… Back and forth every week all season from Owen County to Louisville.
We have a truck, with 340,000 miles on it. We love it. But it only seats 5 (barely) and in any inclement weather, the truck bed won’t protect any of the product or gear. Nor does it fit everything.
Closing
I know this may sound pretty brash–asking for your help to buy a van. I can already hear my critics–“Seriously?! This guy is asking the internet to buy him a van? Get a job man! Buy your own van like the rest of us have to! Maybe you shouldn’t have had so many dang kids!”
Et-cetera, et-cetera.
Fair enough. If you’ve had any of those thoughts, so have we.
(Although, I’m not sure why you’re still reading this :)
But our inner critics can be a hateful bunch. As you know, Kirk is still working more than full time. There’s the farm and all of our endeavors here, but he’s also teaching high school English part time at an awesome school in Carrollton, and doing home inspections all over Louisville and Northern Kentucky 30 hours a week. He’s no slouch.
But that’s what you do when you believe in something right?
You work your butt off for it, and one way or another, it’ll happen. We believe that. We’ll get the van. When or how, we don’t know yet.
Maybe this GoFundMe thing will be a God send. Maybe it’ll just be an embarrassing failure. Either way, we’ll keep going.
If you read this far, we wanna say, we love you!
Grace and Peace to all,
-Kirk, for The Brooks Place
We got a grant to drop off organic, local food to low income refugees, all season long. That’s once a week, a big box of organic produce and eggs, for 6 months. The grant pays for the food and labor. Not the vehicle.
We’ve been having serious car trouble with a van that’s been good to us, but is at the end of its rope. We need to be ready to start making weekly deliveries back and forth to Louisville by May 1st.
So we started a GoFundMe to see if we could raise money for a delivery van that would let us make our deliveries.
Originally I wrote this giant News Letter/GoFundMe… thing.
It took way too long to read.
If you want the news letter part, hit us up on facebook or instagram
www.facebook.com/thebrooksplace
I’ll email it your way. And we'd love to hear from you.
If you wanna give… I love you.
-The Brooks Place
Food Deserts, Friends and Free-Loaders, oh, and… we’ve got worms.
Hello friends,
Let me be upfront: if you read this whole thing, which I’d be honored for you to do, it’s going to take you a solid 9 minutes and 12 seconds, give or take. Also, although it is definitely an update on what we’ve been up to at the Brooks Place, I don’t like tricks or salesmen, so you should know, we’re asking for something in this writing. And should you feel so inclined to help out in this pursuit, well, our thanks won’t be enough. If not, that’s ok too. Thank you for being on this fun journey with us all the same. We hope to see you soon, maybe outside, or at our kitchen table, where friends belong.
Here’s a newsletter of all the things that we’ve been cooking up at The Brooks Place in the “off” season (winter months). As any gardener knows, there’s a little bit of daily maintenance that goes into keeping up a place, even when everything goes into the winter sleep. There are a few things to clean up from the growing season, and a few projects to prep for the spring. For us, shorter days means time to recalibrate, reimagine, reflect on 2020 and think about things we want to try in 2021.
Here are some of those things:
Over the years, Meghan and I have been nursing an irritating little conviction to grow and eat healthier food. Irritating because, let’s be honest, we like a good doughnut, soda or bag of Doritos as much as the next person. But the more we learn, the more we just can’t “UN-see” what we’ve seen. And over time, we’ve grown excited about doing something. Not only eating healthier, but also growing food in such a way that actually makes the piece of earth we’ve been given to steward BETTER than it was when we got here, and it was pretty good when we got here.
One issue that has constantly nagged us is that when we use words like “Organic,” “Green,” “Sustainable,” “Local,” “Free-range,” “Plant-based,” “Regenerative” or just talk about “health food” in general… we are largely talking about a subject that low income communities have zero time to worry about. And that’s understandable. What is less understandable, is the fact that struggling families have less opportunities to even FIND healthy food, let alone afford it. This challenging socio-economic problem is broadly referred to as “the food desert.”
The Food Desert is real. And parts of down town Louisville, like most other large cities, struggle to find ways to get healthy, sustainably grown food to the poor among them. In our world, foods that we know cause all sorts of diseases from diabetes to cancer, are cheap. Additionally, the production of such foods is subsidized, making it more profitable to produce a Dorito than an organic apple. One argument I’ve heard goes something like, “Well, if those idiots wouldn’t eat too much junk, they wouldn’t get fat, sick, diabetes, back problems, cancer, etc…”
But what if the junk is the most affordable choice?
What if financially, it just made sense (cents? couldn’t resist) to eat… poorly. Having to choose between your wallet and your health seems like a crappy decision to me. But as a recovering Taco Bell and Mountain Dew addict, I know I can buy about 10 pounds of burritos off the dollar menu and wash it down with a bottomless 32 ounce Mountain Dew for the price of one bundle of organic salad at Kroger… And that’s freaking weird, if not down right problematic. I keep asking myself, if God designed a food economy, would it look like ours? I bet you can guess our answer.
I’m not sure what the “big” answer is. In fact, I’m thinking there might not be a big answer, only small answers, and small people, like you and me, taking care of one another instead of waiting for the government to do it. But I better change subjects before I make somebody mad. Politics seems to muddy things up to the point that we all start arguing with each other and leave everyone still hungry or poor or both.
With that in mind, we’ve always thought about how much we would love to grow things that help, even just a little.
So…
We’ve Got Worms!
It’s common knowledge that in the last 100 years, we’ve lost nearly HALF of the worlds top soil… Let that sink in for a minute. Top soil is the layer of earth we grow our food on. Plants and animals all depend on it. If you happen to be one of those people who likes things like, I don’t know, eating… soil matters. A few years ago, as with everything we do, we began to think small about how we could help. If the soil is running off into the ocean, how can we keep what’s left, and even grow some of our own? Enter worms. Earth worms are little soil makers of the best kind. In a forest or prairie, grasses, leaves, animal manure, bark, rotting trees and the like, all slowly decompose into the earth and worms turn it into beautiful black worm castings, humus, soil that we all need for growing our food. Even potato chips need soil, just barely. So we bought some worms a few years ago and have been feeding them in the “worm bin” with our own compost and compost we collect from neighbors, literally making soil instead of using it up (Ps. If you’d like to contribute some of your own compost to this world saving operation, give us a shout. :)
This year we’ll be selling coffee size bags of pure, black worm castings. Nature’s most rich and awesome organic fertilizer–also known as worm poop.
Food Deserts
Last year, we received a very small grant, in conjunction with an organization called Peace Catalyst, to grow some organic vegetables for impoverished refugees in Louisville and deliver them. The grant was small, as were the expectations, and it was a good experiment for The Brooks Place and the organization that we worked with to set up the deliveries. It was a hit. And this year, we are stoked to announce that they’ve increased that opportunity! We’ll be growing MORE and in collaboration with another organic CSA operation, we’ll be delivering boxes of organic, locally grown, awesome food, to down town Louisville refugees for FREE, once a week, every week, for the entire growing season!
But guys, we need a delivery van.
Sustainable “Agritourism”/Education
Last winter we began to brainstorm about a way to get young people outside more. As a teacher and principal, I (Kirk) have spent a lot of years figuring out how to inspire and connect with kids. Education at its best, is about helping humans become healthy, not just intellectually, but physically, spiritually, emotionally. In a world where we are increasingly dependent on and addicted to our screens, I found that creating opportunities to get people outside and maybe even get their hands a little dirty, is life giving. With that in mind, we geared up and began researching what we might need to start a little outdoor education program at The Brooks Place that would include some things like over night camping trips, some early morning farm chores, animal husbandry, late night talks around the camp fire, and sustainable agriculture education.
Then, of course, 2020 got a little weird didn’t it?
So we put a pin in that idea that we planned to kick off in the summer of 2020. We have high hopes that 2021 will see that vision become a reality! We’re thinking of calling it something like… “Get-outside-and-work-with-your-hands… camp” (We’re still working on the name)
A van would be really helpful for this adventure too.
Come see us at the Farmer’s Market!
That’s right. The Brooks Place is finally going to have a weekly presence at a real live farmer’s market. We would be delighted to see you there! Every Saturday morning on Main Street in LaGrange. The market is open from 9am to 1pm.
Some Brooks Place stuff we’ll have on hand at the market includes
our pasture raised organic eggs,
worm castings–an organic fertilizer for your own plants,
all kinds of varieties of Cherry Tomatoes,
Microgreens of all sorts,
some insanely delicious baked goods from whatever Meghan is cooking up in the The Brooks Place kitchen,
and maybe a few surprises from the kids too.
We’re pumped about this opportunity to give our kiddos some first hand business experience and get out in the community. The kids are brainstorming ideas about what their contribution might be. Joshua of course is saving for a car, on down to Ariel and Elezar who are saving for… well, we’ll see.
Meghan and I, as you might have gathered, are selling a few things, and saving for… a van. A big one. At very least, if none of that suits your fancy, come by and give us a hug and check out all the other awesome vendors from farms to artisans and craft makers at the LaGrange Farmer’s Market.
The Van
Every one of those items mentioned above has a common denominator, I bet you can guess what it is… we need a van.
Some of the urgency for this began in the last month when, at just over 212,000 miles, our little Toyota minivan has started doing some funny things: shaking steering wheel, whole car vibrating, an engine miss here and there. As some of you know, I am dangerously mechanically inclined. “Dangerous” because I know just enough to cause trouble by thinking I can fix most things myself. I checked it out. No suspension or tire issues that I could see. I took it to the shop where we recently bought a new set of tires, they said, “Tires are perfect, we rotated and balanced them just in case.” Not fixed. I took it to another shop, they said, “We can’t find anything wrong, must be the gas. Run some fuel cleaner in it.” Several bottles and weeks of fuel cleaner later. Still not fixed.
The Toyota has had a good run. And if we are able to get something newer, we will sell it to someone who wants to fool with it. We do not.
Here’s what we’re looking for: a 2015 ish Ford Transit Wagon.
Reliability, around 50k or less.
Space, for family AND cargo so we’re not in two or three vehicles.
We don’t need the bells and whistles, of a mini-van, we need space and reliability. We will be selling two of our older vehicles and saving hard to contribute as much as we can to our own cause. But it just isn’t practical or economical (or possible) anymore to get all of us and the gear, product, tents, tables, stands, boxes, etc… Back and forth every week all season from Owen County to Louisville.
We have a truck, with 340,000 miles on it. We love it. But it only seats 5 (barely) and in any inclement weather, the truck bed won’t protect any of the product or gear. Nor does it fit everything.
Closing
I know this may sound pretty brash–asking for your help to buy a van. I can already hear my critics–“Seriously?! This guy is asking the internet to buy him a van? Get a job man! Buy your own van like the rest of us have to! Maybe you shouldn’t have had so many dang kids!”
Et-cetera, et-cetera.
Fair enough. If you’ve had any of those thoughts, so have we.
(Although, I’m not sure why you’re still reading this :)
But our inner critics can be a hateful bunch. As you know, Kirk is still working more than full time. There’s the farm and all of our endeavors here, but he’s also teaching high school English part time at an awesome school in Carrollton, and doing home inspections all over Louisville and Northern Kentucky 30 hours a week. He’s no slouch.
But that’s what you do when you believe in something right?
You work your butt off for it, and one way or another, it’ll happen. We believe that. We’ll get the van. When or how, we don’t know yet.
Maybe this GoFundMe thing will be a God send. Maybe it’ll just be an embarrassing failure. Either way, we’ll keep going.
If you read this far, we wanna say, we love you!
Grace and Peace to all,
-Kirk, for The Brooks Place
Organizer
Kirk Brooks
Organizer
Worthville, KY