Community Forum to Gather Suisun City Residents’ Ideas on Climate Resilience

Oct 6, 2022

Oct. 6, 2022
For immediate release

Media Contact: Allison Nagel
805-512-0901
allison@sustainablesolano.org
Interviews, photos and other materials available upon request

Community Forum to Gather Suisun City Residents’ Ideas on Climate Resilience

Suisun City residents are invited to a community forum on climate resilience to hear about the environmental challenges the city faces, specifically from flooding, and offer their voices and ideas to guide how the city responds to these vulnerabilities.

The Suisun City Climate Resilience Community Forum will be from 11 am-2 pm Oct. 22 at the Joseph Nelson Community Center. The day will start with a panel of speakers, including Mayor Pro Tem Alma Hernandez; John Durand with the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis, who has been doing research on Suisun Marsh; Jacyln Mandoske of Bay Conservation and Development Commission; and Emily Corwin of the Fairfield-Suisun Sewer District. Speakers will talk about the BCDC’s Adapting to Rising Tides report, the insights from the Community Resilience Building report from this summer, and ongoing resilience projects in the city.

Registration is required, with lunch provided for the first 30 participants who register.

After lunch, Suisun community members will be invited to engage with the panelists and discuss their thoughts on flooding risks and climate resilience, biggest worries and concerns, and how neighbors and city leaders can work together toward solutions.

The Forum is offered in partnership between the city and Sustainable Solano, which has looked at climate challenges in Suisun City through its Resilient Neighborhoods program, including monthly Flood Walks to inform residents about community flood risks. Suisun City faces threats in the years ahead from a variety of climate-related issues, most notably flood risk from sea level rise and more severe storms. During the summer, Sustainable Solano, city leaders and a core group of community members held a Community Resilience Building Workshop under the guidance of The Nature Conservancy. The Nature Conservancy created the summary report that will be discussed as part of the Oct. 22 Forum.

Suisun City residents are encouraged to read through the report and join the Forum to offer feedback and guidance to city and community leaders. Community members can also offer input through a simple feedback form that will be shared with city leaders.

After the Forum, Suisun City residents are invited to attend the city’s Environment and Climate Advisory Committee meetings on the third Wednesday of each month to stay on top of flood mitigation efforts.

About Sustainable Solano

Sustainable Solano is a countywide nonprofit organization that is dedicated to “Nurturing Initiatives for the Good of the Whole.” The organization, now in its second decade, brings together programs that support and sustain one another and the Solano County community. Initiatives include sustainable landscaping, local food, resilient neighborhoods, youth leadership, sustaining conversations and community gardens.

For more information, visit sustainablesolano.org 

Sustainable Solano’s Resilient Neighborhoods program is funded through the Pacific Gas & Electric Corporation Foundation.

Learn more here: https://sustainablesolano.org/project/suisun-city-resilient-neighborhoods/

Quick Facts:

Relevant links:

Suisun City Climate Resilience Community Forum: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/suisun-city-climate-resilience-community-forum-tickets-427372050307

Suisun City Community Resilience Building Summary Report: https://tnc.app.box.com/s/wg7eby3hcn01ngvyon42rirm1srotw0d

Environment and Climate Advisory Committee: https://www.suisun.com/government/citizen-governance/environment-climate-committee/

Upcoming Flood Walks: Oct. 15: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1015-suisun-city-marina-flood-walk-tickets-431357029487

Feedback Form: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BZQHSGW

Big Gardens in Small Spaces: Adventures in Container Gardening

Sep 26, 2022

By Blesilda Ocampo

Blesilda attended the recent workshop on Big Gardens in Small Spaces and volunteered to write a blog about her experience for us. We appreciate her insight! Lori Caldwell will return to lead a workshop on worm composting on Oct. 6 in Benicia. You can register for that workshop here.

Lori Caldwell

I am a beginner gardener. I had attended one of several online workshops taught by Lori Caldwell through Sustainable Solano last year. She is a consultant, landscaper and educator, aka CompostGal on social media. I enjoyed her presentation and decided to go to an in-person event now that the pandemic restrictions have eased up. She was very informative and great about answering everyone’s questions, which I really appreciated as I had many questions myself.

I attended the free workshop on Saturday, Aug. 27. I drove all the way to the Suisun City public library from Vallejo on my way to a memorial service that afternoon. I was dressed for a memorial service while everyone was in their weekend clothes of leggings or jeans and T-shirts.

There were over 25 participants, many of which were experienced home gardeners and some were new ones, like myself. Adopt a Neighborhood, a volunteer beautification project in Suisun City, and Sustainable Solano collaborated to support people growing food in small spaces. Together, they brought Lori Caldwell back to teach an in-person class on how to grow food in small spaces.

Snacks were provided and lots of handouts filled with information were passed out.

The presentation was incredibly informative. Lori’s warm, friendly and easy-going manner made the class that much more enjoyable. She taught using language that was easy to understand and a format that was easy to follow. Her handwritten outline on the flipchart in front of the class was available for everyone to see.

She talked about the benefits of container gardening, soil nutrition, companion planting, how to deal with pests and, of course, compost. I appreciate the reference guides provided in the handouts for further reading.

I am more informed about what nutrition I can add to my soil. I also learned that lemons and avocados can grow in containers; but dwarf versions will do best.

I attend these kinds of classes to get more information about gardening from an expert and to connect with other gardeners who are struggling or not; some of them seemed seasoned. It’s really great to have a place to go to bring my questions along and to get ideas I can try at home.

Big Gardens in Small Spaces

Unable to attend the in-person workshop, but still interested in learning more about container gardening? Watch this video of an earlier online talk from Lori Caldwell on container gardening.

(You can also find more videos and additional garden resources here)

Solano Gardens Expands Program to Get More Resources to Community

Sep 17, 2022

By Lauren Gucik and Michael Wedgley, Program Managers

Solano Gardens is growing!

This year, in addition to installing fruit and vegetable gardens, we also have resources to offer such as chickens, chicken coops, beehives and aquaponics kits to our communities. Our goal is to increase communities’ ability to grow food for themselves and their neighbors to improve our mental and physical health and foster abundance and collective power.

We have been supporting community gardens and personal home spaces with food forests and water-saving pollinator gardens for many years and this year we are able to expand our offerings. Our goal is to install 2-3 Hubs around the county. These Hubs would have a large amount of space to demonstrate multiple different growing methods, be able to host educational events and supplies giveaways, and have a kitchen space to prepare some of what is growing for the community as part of education, sharing healthy food, and creating social enterprises.

SuSol will also cutivate a satellite network of home growers, which can be anyone with a home garden. We’d like to provide you with the materials that fit your space, no matter how big or small, and curate classes and circles of knowledge-sharing among the satellites. We hope that everyone in that network can lend support to each other when it comes to growing your own food. We will be providing free plants, trees, chickens, bees, etc. for satellite gardens. Anyone interested in growing food at home can fill out an interest form here.

Solano Gardens will also host two internship tracks focused on sustainable Urban Agriculture and Youth Culinary Arts. Each will provide hands-on activities to practice the skills and concepts related to the topic, in addition to several online portions.

The Urban Agriculture track will focus on multiple ways of growing food and building valuable food production experience. They will learn plant needs, methods of planting and harvesting, crop planning, composting and market gardening. They will gain insight into permaculture, the Soil Food Web and square-foot gardening.

In the Culinary internship students will learn how to prepare fresh local food, explore concepts of food as medicine, and help us pilot a prepared food enterprise in the county. Interns will grow their comfort in the kitchen and learn basic food preparation skills while working together to cook in large batches. Interns will take food home after class to be shared with their families, and students will receive their food handler’s card through our coursework.

Additionally, our team will lead an inquiry throughout the county to see how to link farmers with underutilized agricultural land in the county to increase the amount of food grown locally that stays in Solano County and support young entrepreneurs in creating social enterprises that heal their communities.

The goal is to increase food production in Solano County through empowering communities with resources, materials, and opportunities to share skills and knowledge.

We’re Seeking Satellite Gardens & Hubs!

If you are interested in growing a garden, stewarding chickens or bees or an aquaponics kit, please fill out this interest form and join our network of satellite gardens.

High School Students Can Find Meaningful Opportunities with Sustainable Solano

Sep 12, 2022

Sept. 12, 2022
For immediate release

Media Contact: Allison Nagel
805-512-0901
allison@sustainablesolano.org
Interviews, photos and other materials available upon request

High School Students Can Find Meaningful Opportunities with Sustainable Solano

Sustainable Solano will have numerous opportunities for Solano high school students to participate in internships and Fellowships starting this fall. Different programs will center around community resilience, urban agriculture and gardens, or local food and cooking.

Interns will support Sustainable Solano programs and gain valuable research and hands-on experience in these areas of interest. They also will build leadership skills around sharing what they have learned with the community, local leaders, peers and others. The internships include a monthly stipend of $150 for students who meet program requirements.

High school youth interested in participating in SuSol programs can learn more during an introductory certification session. Certification is required for any Solano high school student planning to join a paid internship, though students can attend a certification session even if they are not ready to apply for an internship.

The free certification sessions, offered online and in-person, explore environmental challenges at a global, community and individual level, bringing the discussion to bear on youth leadership and engagement around environmental justice. The next online session starts Sept. 22, and an in-person session is planned for Vacaville in October.

Upcoming Fellowship and internship opportunities include:

  • Youth Air Protectors (Fairfield): Air Protectors will research the air quality challenges for their communities, create outreach campaigns and support community-based projects centered around air quality, including air sensor installation and air quality mitigation projects, culminating in an air quality plan for the City of Fairfield.
  • Environmental Justice Leadership Fellowship (Vacaville): Fellowship participants will study environmental data for the local community, discuss the environmental challenges and potential solutions for their communities, and participate in hands-on workshops to help beautify the Rocky Hill Trail while planting native plants and capturing rainwater to mitigate some of those challenges.
  • Sustainable Landscaping and Garden-based internships (various Solano County locations): Depending on the program, interns will gain a basic understanding of permaculture, learn how to install and maintain sustainable landscapes or community gardens, build healthy soil, learn planting methods, capture rainwater, and participate in community engagement.
  • Culinary and Local Food internships (various Solano County locations): Depending on the program, interns will learn about the larger local food system, how to prepare healthy, seasonal produce, grow their comfort in the kitchen and learn basic food preparation skills, and teach others about local food. The first cohort will be in Vacaville, with others to follow elsewhere in the county.

Learn more here: https://sustainablesolano.org/youth-engagement/ 

About Sustainable Solano

Sustainable Solano is a countywide nonprofit organization that is dedicated to “Nurturing Initiatives for the Good of the Whole.” The organization, now in its second decade, brings together programs that support and sustain one another and the Solano County community. Initiatives include sustainable landscaping, local food, resilient neighborhoods, youth leadership, sustaining conversations and community gardens.

For more information, visit sustainablesolano.org 

Simple Greywater Systems Bring Laundry Water to Your Landscape

Aug 31, 2022

By Sustainable Solano

Participants learn how to install a laundry-to-landscape greywater system at a Vallejo home

With California in a state of severe to exceptional drought, it is a good time to think of water conservation and reuse to keep your trees and shrubs alive during the dry months.

Sustainable Solano works with our partner organization, Greywater Action, to bring hands-on workshops to Solano County where you can learn how to install a laundry-to-landscape system at your home. These simple systems reuse water from your washing machine to irrigate mulch basins, often around trees, in your yard. The systems require a few tweaks in habits – you have to use specific kinds of laundry detergents that will be kind to your plants and have to remember to switch the three-way valve to send water to the sewer when using bleach, washing diapers, etc. But it is a great way to reuse water to keep your landscape healthy.

SuSol is currently looking for Solano homeowners who are interested in hosting one of these workshops. Homes must meet certain criteria to be a good site for a workshop, for example the washing machine must be located by an exterior wall. Simpler setups are best for teaching others how to install a system at home. If you would be interested in welcoming community members to your home to get your laundry-to-landscape system going, please fill out the interest form at this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZC36ZMC.

We will review the interest form and contact those with compatible homes for a site visit.