Update on Hilltown Home Garden Exchange (HHuGE)
By HHuGE Coordinator, Kathy McMahon

WHAT IS HHuGE? In a nutshell

• Bringing family gardeners together to donate their excess bounty – in trade or just to help local families in need.
• Nature is abundant, just not evenly distributed.
• Sharing fresh, wholesome produce is the neighborly thing to do!

UPDATES: A few quick updates about the happenings with HHuGE

1. Our Grand Opening is Monday, July 20, 2009. Please stop by and take a look! We’ll be in the Old Creamery parking lot on the corners of Rte 9 and Rte 112, Cummington, MA.
2. We are needing volunteers to help paint our ‘wagon.’ It needs to be primed in the next few days and final paint put on before Monday. If you can help between now and then, please contact me (Kathy- 634-0002.) We need your help with priming and putting on the final touches!
3. We have a website now, and a calendar of events. See www.HHuGE.org and click “calendar” to see the weeks we have open weeks. If you can get a group of friends or an organization to open and close the wagon for one week, let me know. It is a job that will take less than 10 minutes.
4. We were in the Chesterfield Parade on the Fourth of July, (dressed as farmers and vegetables) and handed out produce to the crowd. We won Fourth Place!!!! Many people had ALREADY heard about us, so we’re getting around!!! Wonderful coverage in the Country Journal as well, complete with evidential photography!
5. If you haven’t already, it isn’t too late to Take the Lead, Plant More Seed. If we ever DO get a steady week of heat, consider planting a whole host of plants like carrots, lettuce, kale, radishes, swiss chard, and the like. Consider helping those facing hard times, and creating the sharing spirit for which the hilltowns are so famous for.

TIP OF THE HAT:  A Word of Thanks

• ENOC would like to thank Steve Yoshen for the magnificent job he’s done in volunteering all of his time, energies, and materials to building our ‘wagon’
• Sienna Wildfield for her diligent efforts establishing the website
• The Old Creamery for allowing our ‘wagon’ to take up precious summertime space in their parking lot
• Jennifer Peotter and her family for creating the award-winning float and donating the printed materials
• Collective Copies for the 50% reduction on printing
• The Northampton Survival Center for lending their carrot, apple, and corn costumes
• Dan Dashnaw for his role as an ear of corn
• The GoodTimes Stove Company for contributing the “wagon wheels”
• The West Cummington Congregational Church
• The Village Congregational Church of Cummington
• Hilltown Families
• The Worthington First Congregational Church
• Our Lady of the Hill Church of Williamsburg

HAVE WE MISSED YOU?

We’d like to involve all area churches and organizations that are invested in improved food security in the hilltowns. If you’d like to get involved, please let us know.

We ask anyone interested in coordinating their civic or religious organization’s participation to contact Kathy at peakshrink@peakoilblues.com for more details. All volunteers: Please stay tune for a late summer party held just for you (you’re the greatest!!!) celebrating our upcoming success!!!

PILOT PROGRAM

If you know of folks that would like to participate in this pilot program (to adopt it into their own town next year…) have them contact Kathy McMahon at peakshrink@peakoilblues.com

Thank you for your time reading this, and for your interest in caring for your friends and neighbors in these wonderful hilltowns.