Highlights of December 12, 2009 Bi-monthly VMGA Board Meeting
Virginia Beach (Virginia Beach MGA)
Education Committee: Registration for the Saturday, March 27th advanced training program "Leading Edges in Consumer Horticulture" at Virginia State University near Petersburg opens January 15th. Check the VMGA website for list of sessions. Registration forms will be available on the website around January 12th. Limited to the first 200 active master gardeners and certified MGs, no interns.
Put April 17th on your calendar for another educational program. This one will be at VA Western Community College in Roanoke on "Community Gardens". This program is limited to 60 spaces and will be a "How to" teaching event, using Roanoke's Community Gardens information and including information and speakers from Fluvanna and other areas that have worked in this field of interest. Tours of local sites are planned along with data handouts.
State MG Coordinator Endowment: Dawn Lerch reported the current total is $308,911.37. It is up to us to help secure the State MG Coordinator position. There are almost 5000 MGs and almost 50 units in VA. Remember that if every active MG had pledged the $50 for 5 the endowment would be paid for. The Development Office for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) is working in conjunction with VMGA to raise the money while the VT Foundation acts as the money manager of the funds. See VMGA website for more information and to make contributions.
Send Unit Reports to Cheryl Sebera, master_gardener92@verizon.net by December 20th. Pease let us know what is going on in your unit. Tell us about a special event or a learning experience.
Send articles for the VMGA newsletter to Peggy Fox, peggyfox@hotmail.com, by December 24th. Remember to send copies of your unit newsletters to Betty Villers, bettyv@cox.net and Peggy. Articles from these newsletters can be shared with others through the VMGA Report.
New Fund Raising Chair: Contact Patty Gamache, Rgama37@aol.com to order shirts and other MG logo merchandise in the future.
Membership: Mary Ann Kincaid reported we have 548 members, an increase of 21 over a year ago.
Communications Committee: Frank Reilly, freilly@lmi.org, is working on the MG College Recruiting presentation for distribution in January, 2010. Send him your pictures from the 2009 MG College.
Volunteer opportunities:
Master Gardener College Silent Auction Committee is looking for a new chairman. For more information, please contact me at bettyv@cox.net.
Looking for MGs to Update the VMGA history. Last update was 1993. Would you be willing to write one four-year section of the history: 1994 - 1997; 1998 - 2001; 2002 - 2005; or 2006 - 2009? Historical information can be found in the VMGA minutes and from the newsletters of past years. Let me know what years you would like to write. See website for History of VMGA 1988 - 1993.
VMGA Nominating Committee: The committee presented the following nominations for VMGA officers for the next two years (2010-2012) starting at MG College in June 2010. President - Bill Scott (Prince William), Vice-president - Christy Brennan (Hanover), Secretary - Peggy Fox (Newport News), Treasurer - Jim Kincaid (Virginia Beach). There were no nominations from the floor. Election will take place according to the bylaws and results will be announced at the April 10 Bi-monthly Board Meeting.
Diane Relf Education Endowment Fund - Leslie Paulson reported the committee is in place and they will be contacting Extension Agents and Unit Coordinators after the first of the year for nominations for scholarships to MG College. It is up to the unit reps to spread the word concerning the availability of these scholarships and to remind their agent and unit coordinator to nominate someone from their unit. Scholarships are given to MGs in large and small units.
State Fair - Christy Brennan reported the MGs had over 10,736 contacts at their tent where they shared the Strawberry DNA Experiment with the student tours and sustainable land care and gardening practices with adults. Master Gardeners had over 20 tables available for demonstrations and publications.
VMGA Power Point Presentation Available - a PPP (6 slides) on the VMGA organization is available to the units when recruiting for VMGA membership. You can download it from the website.
Index of Power Point Presentations and Slide Programs - Kathryn Debnar is in the process of creating an index of such programs. These would be available for units to share with one another. Contact Kathryn at k2garden@cox.net with list of programs your unit has available for the directory.
VMGA 20th Anniversary - The VMGA celebrates their 20th year anniversary at the February 13, 2010 meeting. The first meeting was held in Hanover County Courthouse on February 9th, 1990. Bring someone with you to the meeting who has been involved with VMGA in years past such as a former officer or committee chair. Meeting will be in Suffolk.
VMGA Executive Board - will be meeting with the CALS, VCE, and Hort Department administration on February 3rd in Charlottesville for our semi-annual briefing meeting. We will be discussing issues and concerns and how we can partner with the College's efforts. If you have an issues and concerns you would like discussed please let me know, bettyv@cox.net.
Report from Dave Close:
Webinar on recycling plastic containers - Dave asked if there was interest among those present for a webinar on recycling plastic containers and he received a positive response. MOBot model as a presentation. John Ignosh pulled together a webinar on Plastofuel (a process developed at Penn State for creating a fuel source from recycled plastic); this was part of an effort to explore possible solutions to recycle horticulture waste plastic in VA.
Mapping of school and community gardening resources across the Commonwealth =
will be working with Jonah Fogel, a Community Viability Specialist, on this project. This is part of a larger effort to promote the Farm to School program in VA and increase awareness and participation of local communities in community gardening initiatives. Agents in the newly redrawn Southeast District are pulling together some resources to have a statewide advisory group on community gardening due to the increase in requests for local support of community gardening efforts.
Strategic planning meetings completed - Initial report should be ready by February and things in place by July 1, 2010 for implementation.
Redrawing of district lines - VCE went from 6 to 4 districts: Northern, Southeast, Central, and Southwest; the four offices will be located in Harrisonburg (Northern – Cyndi Marston), Richmond (Southeast – Lonnie Johnson), Danville (Central – Lonnette Marsh), and Abingdon (Southwest – Mike Martin); once the strategic plan is announced and official, it will take 12-18 months to transition through some of the changes
2011 Edition of the Home & Grounds PMG - With help of Dr. Joyce Latimer, team of Extension Agents and Extension MG volunteers will meet in late January to begin the planning process for the 2011 edition of the Home & Grounds PMG. Will meet to identify key issues and create a plan of action to come up with the 2011 edition incorporating the necessary changes.
MG Handbook advisory team - Have collected names of volunteers to serve on a MG Handbook advisory team with meeting in late winter to begin the process of planning the next update to the MG Handbook.
SRKS update – Last word was that the legal counsel office at VT was working with the legal counsel of UC Davis to iron out the details of our contract to purchase their volunteer management system. I don’t know when it will be in place but it should be soon.
Extension Publication - Extension MGs from Fairfax County have completed the first Extension Publication by a volunteer. It is on cold-hardy palms that grow well in VA. It will be reviewed by a couple of agents, and then submitted to VT for final approval and formatting and electronic publishing. They hope to create a series of fact sheets to supplement this initial pub.
MGCAT meeting - scheduled January 18. So far the following individuals have been lined up as keynote speakers: Rita Randolph, Mike Raupp, Jeffrey Gillman, & Kirk Brown as John Bartram. In January, we will button up the additional concurrent session topics and the leadership development training. The registration fee for 2010 will be $150, up $25 from the past 5 years. Sunday morning has been added back into the schedule and is when Kirk Brown will appear as John Bartram.
Website has been updated - check it out for the new look and one new feature: an adobe connect session on risk management has been uploaded to the site for anyone to download and watch. It lasts just under one hour. Similar sessions can be held and/or recorded for future use. Intent is to record one on what it means to be a VCE MG volunteer and post it before the January training classes begin.
New Dean for CALS, Dr. Alan Grant - started on October 1 and Dave met with him on November 20 to bring him up to speed on the VCE MG program. He is familiar with the MG program and has a positive impression of it already. He will be making an appearance at the 2010 MG College.
Interim VCE Director, Dr. Rick Rudd - met on December 4 to discuss how we can proactively plan for the impending restructuring of VCE statewide and how it will affect local Extension MG programs. Still too many unanswered questions to really be able to pin this down. Bottom line, there will be changes and we will survive them.
EAB Project – working on developing an online module on EAB to increase awareness in VA and eventually nationally on the presence and impact of EAB. We are working with agents in NoVA to increase public awareness through garden shows and events. The module will be hosted by the National Plant Diagnostic Network (NPDN) group out of Univ. of FL. NPDN is the group responsible for first-detector training that some of you may have participated in a few years ago with Sudden Oak Death (in cooperation with the North Central IPM Center)
LCS Project – contract with the NPS will conclude on December 31 and announcement will be made when the new book is available online.
Volunteer hour totals due - will be asking every MG unit to submit their annual totals of volunteer hours and contacts for 2009 to include in the 2009 annual report to VCE as part of annual faculty report.
Betty Villers, President, VMGA