Slow Food Russian River: Let’s plant the seeds for a better food system. Together.

Dear members and friends, 

We hope that you had a restful, joyous, and healthy holiday.

Thank you to all who attended our Terra Madre Day cyber celebration! It was so good to see some familiar faces, and to hear your ideas for our chapter in this new year.

As we mentioned at the meeting, our primary focus for 2021 is to fulfill our EIJ commitments. For those of you who don’t know, EIJ stands for Equity, Inclusion & Justice – all of which are values that we seek to embody and advance in the larger Sonoma County food community.

This past fall, we selected 5 EIJ commitments, or projects to submit to Slow Food USA. They are:

1. To deepen our collaboration with Steele Lane Elementary & Proctor Terrace Elementary, and strengthen our relationship with the SC School Garden Network.

2. To connect directly with farm and vineyard workers via United Farm Workers to explore how our chapter can better serve them and their communities.

3. To invite more diverse leaders to the board, including people of color, Indigenous leaders, and leaders in the LGBTQI communities.

4. To make Slow Food more accessible to people of all incomes.

5. To support the efforts of the Gravenstein Apple Presidium in processing donated Sonoma County apples.

We have a lot of uplifting work ahead of us, but if we are to meet these goals, we need your help!

Many of you shared that you would be more willing to step up and lead, or at least volunteer your time, if we gave you clear, concrete tasks. Well, we will need people to help us with outreach to potential partners, event coordination, fundraising, and more if we are to pull this off.

The Slow Food Russian River board is also in need of new members. Each one of us can promise you that being a board member DOES NOT require much of your time. We meet once every three weeks for 2 hours. Occasionally, you might be asked to spend a few hours between meetings on tasks that advance these EIJ goals.

In addition, we are actively seeking a new Treasurer as well as one or two people to join our Snail of Approval team. Please respond to this email if you are interested in supporting this chapter as a leader or volunteer.

Read on for other news, and stay tuned for more exciting virtual events coming your way!

We are ever thankful for your support.
– Slow Food Russian River leaders

Since COVID restrictions aren’t going to lighten anytime soon, we’re planning to go virtual with our Annual Members meeting this year.

As of now, we’re planning for the afternoon of Sunday, March 7th, but we’ll have more details for you in the coming weeks.

Until then, we wish you good health and happy cooking!

Bike & Eat is back!

As you may recall, last spring we announced our intention to start some Bike & Eat events. Unfortunately, our plans were derailed by a global pandemic, amongst other things. BUT we’re thrilled to announce that intention’s return.

This March, or whenever the weather warms up a bit, we hope to launch a series of food-fueled bike rides. Each ride will set out to explore our beautiful foodscape from a different (two-wheeled) perspective, ending at a good, clean, and fair food destination. After all, what better motivation is there than a good meal?

The purpose of these rides is the experience: savoring slowness not speed. Beginner bike riders would be welcome and we’d set a leisurely pace, riding anywhere from two to twenty miles. We’re open to your suggestions!

For now, we are just gauging interest, so if this sounds like your ideal way to spend a Sunday afternoon, please tell us so! Respond with your interest, ideas, and inquiries.

We want to hear from you!

What days and times would work best for you?

We’ve created a nifty little poll to try and plan around your preferences. Don’t worry: if the time you selected isn’t the “winner” by majority rule, we’ll still be hosting events on different days and at different times. We just want to gauge your availability and interest.

Please click this link or the button below to participate in the poll. Thanks!

Terra Madre 2020 is still in session!

Check out the video above for one of the most recent Terra Madre Food Talks with California’s very own Alice Waters. You can see the up-to-date calendar of events here.