Hi everyone, I'm excited to be in this course from you all. I'm Becca and have been with CCE Putnam for two and a half years now. I have a food systems background with an MS in Ag. Extension, so I studied a lot of adult learning theory and program planning and evaluation. I also teach Intro. to Food Systems at the Culinary in Dutchess. I don't have any formal horticulture training so this job has been a learning curve in that respect! We have about 70 MGVs in Putnam and most of them are active. I've been holding their toes to the fire a little more in terms of reporting their hours so more people have become active since, even though we lost a few because of inactivity.
It's hard to choose what the volunteers are most excited about but I think collectively their favorite thing is probably the May Plant Sale. This year was a bummer for them because we took the Plant Sale virtual and therefore there were fewer roles for volunteers. They love setting up their plant stations and talking to the public when we do it in person. It is an exhausting event so I think some of them were secretly glad we didn't have it, ha! I am proud of how quickly we got our plant sale online, and now we have an online marketplace for future years too. We surveyed our customers and about 3/4 of them want an online option in the future. So next year we are thinking of having a hybrid plant sale with online pre-orders, and a one day in-person sale/pick-up, as long as it's safe to do so.
Various groups of volunteers would tell you that they are most passionate about their individual projects. We have three demonstration gardens, two of which are used to grow produce for donation to a local food pantry. The teams who run these are very self-sufficient and dedicated to making their gardens the best they can be. We've also got guided hikes, Seed to Supper, a Pollinator Pathway initiative, Farm to School, Speaker's Bureau, and our Hort. Lab. Our two program priorities are Climate Change and Food Systems so we try to have most of our education fall under these topics. I feel lucky to have the volunteers we do; they care so much about doing good work that makes a difference.
