gardening/farming

Learn how to preserve your abundance of juicy, sweet garden tomatoes by making and canning tomato sauce for later eating. This hands-on workshop will cover how to safely can tomato sauce using the hot water bath method and each participant will get to take home a can of sauce they made themselves.

Sign up at Growing Gardens Learn & Grow!

In this interactive hands-on workshop, participants learn how to plan and plant a vegetable garden using techniques of Square Foot Gardening to yield an abundance of food in small space while reducing time spent on maintenance. Topics covered include crop selection, planning, plant placement, watering and mulching. This workshop will be held outside, in a garden.

Sign up at Growing Gardens Learn & Grow!

Learn how to preserve your summer vegetables and fruits by pickling them for later eating. This workshop will focus on a variety of ways to make pickles and each participant will get to take home a jar of refrigerator pickles.

Sign up at Growing Gardens Learn & Grow

Register Now for Rural Living Field Day!

The 2012 Rural Living Field Day is set for Saturday, October 13, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at Echo Glen Farms, 15150 NW Echo Glen Lane in North Plains.  To register, landowners are asked to fill out the form for the event on the West Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District website.  Just click “Events” at www.wmswcd.org.

Rural Living Field Day is a fun event for rural landowners and this year the event is a partnership of West Multnomah, Tualatin and Columbia Soil and Water Conservation Districts.  The event features speakers addressing a wide variety of topics and covering issues that face rural homeowners, farmers, and land managers every day.  Topics include wildlife and pollinator habitat, invasive weeds, small scale agriculture, woodland management, livestock and pasture management and more.  Experts will conduct hands-on demonstrations and be available to answer questions about specific landowner concerns.

Morning beverages and snacks will be served as well as a fully catered lunch!  The cost is only $10 per person or $15 for families.   

Rural Living Field Day is also a great time for landowners to meet each other and share concerns and ideas about their properties and operations.  Landowners have also found valuable professional and personal contacts at past events.

 July 18, 2012 Events at the SMILE Station

Food Forest Presentation by Jenny Pell Jenny Pell will present at the SMILE station on July 18th from 6:30pm-7:30pm.

Jenny is the lead designer of a 7-acre "Beacon Food Forest" being implemented on public land in Seattle.

***Donations for this event are gladly accepted***

Sellwood Gap Springwater Trail Open House Prior to this event, from 5:30pm to 6:30pm, SMILE’s Stewardship of Natural Amenities Committee (SNAC) will be presenting the three design alternatives that were generated through an on-going community design process for the public land alongside the Springwater Corridor's “Sellwood Gap”.

Help choose the design that best reflects local and regional objectives for this unique space.