Neighborhood News

Bike to Work Day Registration is now open

Taste of Adams Morgan  - May 3, 2016

ABRA orientation for new and existing licensees on April 14th and reminders

Adams Morgan Farmers' Market CSA begins soon

Bike to Work Day - May 20th - Registration is OPEN!

The 2016 Bike to Work Day web site is now live and open for registration!

Bike to Work Day: The Best Thing on Two Wheels

One of nation’s largest Bike to Work Day celebrations is on Friday, May 20th

brought to you by Commuter Connections and the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) . Ride with thousands of cyclists, new and experienced,

and enjoy a healthy commute that helps improve traffic congestion and air

quality in the metropolitan Washington region. There will be free T-shirts, food, beverages and prizes for registrants who attend.

A record-breaking number of cyclists are expected to participate again this

year so register soon here: www.biketoworkmetrodc.org . The first 15,000
commuters who register receive free T-shirts (cut off date= May 12th) and are automatically entered into a chance to win one of many bikes donated by REI and BicycleSPACE.

The Adams Morgan Partnership BID is pleased to partner with CityBikes ,

BicycleSPACE and Tryst to host a pit stop in Unity Park at Columbia/Champlain and Euclid Streets from 7:30 to 9:30 am.

Say hello to our staff and volunteers who will be greeting commuters. Cyclists must register for one pit stop but are welcome to visit any of the 82 pit stops in the DC Metro region along their way to work.

All Adams Morgan businesses are welcome to offer free food and give-away items. Please contact Kristen at kbarden@adamsmorganonline.org if you would like to participate.

As part of a regional Employer Challenge, the top five companies with the

most employees registered for Bike to Work Day will be placed into a raffle

for a free catered lunch! The luncheon is exclusive to employees who

participate in this event. When registering, your employees are also invited to enter for a chance to win a free installed bike rack for your office.

See you May 20!

Commuter Connections

(800) 745-RIDE

http://www.commuterconnections.org

Taste of Adams Morgan - May 3rd, 2016

In benefit of Mary’s Center - Tuesday, May 3- 5-9pm

Mary's Center and the Adams Morgan Partnership BID would like to invite you, friends, and family to the 4th Annual Taste of Adams Morgan .

Stroll, sip, and sample your way through DC’s most vibrant neighborhood on Tuesday, May 3, 2016 , from 5-9pm at the 4th Annual Taste of Adams Morgan event in benefit of Mary’s Center.

Taste of Adams Morgan is an annual culinary stroll where over 15 local restaurants open their doors to provide tastings to 500+ attendees. All proceeds benefit Mary’s Center.

Purchase 4 ($25) or 8 ($40) tasting tickets online at www.maryscenter.org or on the day of the event at the following location: A Little Shop of Flowers (2421 18th Street, NW).

Adams Morgan’s best restaurants will serve small plates of their signature dishes to raise funds for Mary’s Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center that provides high quality health care, education, and social services to nearly 40,000 individuals annually in the DC Metropolitan area, regardless of ability to pay.

Restaurants are still needed! Please contact Angeline Jefferson to sign up to be a participating restaurant (202) 420-7049 or ajefferson@maryscenter.org

Not familiar with Mary’s Center? Just off of 18th Street at the corner of Ontario and Kalorama, Mary’s Center’s bustling main offices have been serving the DC metro area since 1988. Entering their 25th year, with now seven locations and two mobile medical units, Mary’s Center continues to fulfill its mission of building better futures through the delivery of health care, education, and social services. They embrace culturally diverse communities and provide them with the highest quality of care. In 2015, we expect to provide nearly 40,000 individuals hailing from 110 countries with access to top-notch healthcare, education, and social services. Your gift will help to fuel our services that place our participants on the path toward good health, stable families, and economic independence. Learn more about Mary’s Center at: www.maryscenter.org .

ABRA orientation for new and existing licensees on April 14th and reminders

New and existing ABC licensees are invited to attend ABRA’s orientation training from 2-4 p.m. on Thursday, April 14, 2016 to learn about:

1) District ABC laws and regulations (including recent changes to the law)

2) Tips for working effectively with the community,

3) Settlement Agreements,

4) Expectations of licensees,

5) Best practices, and

6) Noise abatement and sound management.

Contact ABRA Community Resource Officer Sarah Fashbaugh by Friday, April 8, 2016 to register: (202) 397-3971 Email: sarah.fashbaugh@dc.gov

Attendance for this class is strongly recommended for new license holders.

Training is free of charge. Requests for interpreters may be made; however, they must be submitted by the registration deadline.

Training Location

2000 14th Street, NW
Suite 400 South, 4th Floor
Washington, DC 20009

Maintaining Your Form

Early morning yoga-dance parties are a new trend in the District. Business owners looking to host these events need to consider several factors before allowing yogis to strike a pose in their establishments.

Any event held at an alcohol-licensed establishment—whether alcohol is being served or not—is required to occur during Alcoholic Beverage Control Board approved business hours.

If an establishment is not licensed to operate during early morning hours, the licensee could apply for a one-day substantial change license to expand its hours for an event.

A licensee or an ABC Manager would also be required to be on duty at all times during the event regardless of whether alcohol is being sold and served.

Licensees that have questions about obtaining one-day substantial change licenses can contact ABRA's Licensing Division by emailing or calling (202) 442-4423.

Adams Morgan Farmers' Market begins their CSA again soon

The 2016 CSA SEASON is rapidly approaching! You can start signing up for the Adams Morgan Farmers' Market CSA.  This year, the Early Bird deadline is April 20.

This is a long message because we want to be sure how the CSA is operated is as clear as possible.  Please don’t hesitate to ask questions you might have.

A CSA is not for everyone.  Our demanding lifestyles, eating habits, etc., may not make it feasible for your family in its different stages.  But, our members come to appreciate the hands on approach to their food, enjoy the challenge of discovering new food and new ways of preparing the food and somehow find the time in their busy schedules to do so.  Some find cooking meditative.  Others find it a wonderful way to bond with their children, partners and friends.  But mostly, it is an assurance that we have a relationship with the people who grow our food, that our food is grown without chemical pesticides and that the soil is not polluted with herbicides.

Also, a CSA does not provide all the food needs for a week.  It provides fresh, sustainably grown produce to include in your meals for the week and beyond.  Often not all of the week’s produce is consumed, so we will try to give you ideas on what to do when there is a lot of one item.  We’d also appreciate your suggestions that we can share with our members.  We suggest you think like a squirrel and during the season preserve some of the yield for the winter.  We also will be increasing the amount of fruit in season.

So, as we are about to enter the 2016 farm season, we hope you will want to be a part of our CSA, visit our farm to see where your food is grown, and be a part of the voices speaking out to preserve healthily grown local food and cherish access to the wonders our earth produces.

CSA starts in June
The CSA will start the first week in June.  Again we'll have 4 sessions - June-July; August-September; October; and November.  You can sign up for the entire season or by session. Either way, you need to pay before the session begins.  The intent of the CSA is to partner with the farmer by providing a cash flow to enable the farmer to purchase seeds, hire staff, tune up and purchase equipment, plant, nurture and harvest.  All of this happens months before the farmer can begin to realize income from the sale of produce.  The pre-purchase of membership also gives us a good sense of how much of our yield is needed for the CSA, which is critical to a smooth operation.  So we encourage you to plan accordingly.  You will get a reminder about two weeks before the beginning of each session, so you should have plenty of time to get your payment to us.

Membership fee
We are not changing the prices from the last two years even though prices have risen across the board on seeds, equipment, salaries, etc!  If you start off with the early bird price, we will honor that throughout the season if we get your payment before each session begins.  If not, then the regular price will apply for that session.  If you know before you pay that you won't be picking up on particular dates, prorate your amount and make sure you write on you form the dates you will not pick up.  That is essential for our weekly counts.

Below are explanations of how we work and disclosures so that there won’t be confusion during the season about credit, pickup hours and details for the individual market pickups, etc.

Credit
We do not give cash refunds.  As is our practice, if you let us know in enough time you will not be picking up that week, we will give you credit towards the next session.  Enough time means, before Monday for the Tuesday pickups and before Friday for Saturday pickups.  If you just forget to pick one week, we donate your share to a good cause.  Obviously, emergency situations are different so please let us know and we will make adjustments.  The best reason we've had for not picking up was, "I'm so sorry, I went into labor Saturday morning".

How we operate weekly
To understand why we need to know the numbers each week, here is how we operate.  I call the farm the day before each pick up.  So I call in early (before 8am) Monday mornings for our Tuesday CSA and early Friday morning for our Saturday CSAs.  The staff first pick for the CSA.  The produce is washed, herbs and greens are tied in bunches for you, counted and boxed.  Then the staff picks for our markets and wholesale.  So, if I don't have the correct number, we either don't have enough for the CSA, or we have extra that could have been used at our markets for sale.  That is why it is so important we have the correct number.

On a lighter note, the processing shed we built last season to wash, bunch and box our produce along with new equipment for the processing has been working wonderfully.  It is really exciting and we hope you will get to see it during our farm visit day.  We also added more solar panels, which are showing a significant electricity savings (adding to our ability to keep our rates affordable).  The fences we built last year around our vegetable field are keeping the deer and other wildlife out.  We discovered we had significantly more yield than in the past.

We have changed the varieties of some of our veggies.  We planted Parsnips last season.  We hope they will be a nice addition to our boxes for the fall harvest.  Burdock, an Asian root vegetable that is super healthy and great in low heat stir fries.  We hope to have Rutabaga, which is a fall crop.  Also, we established an Asparagus Patch last year.  If all goes well it will be potentially harvested in the second year on a limited basis and in the third year enough for our CSA.  We also started Gooseberries and Currents three years ago which we hope to harvest this year.  We are adding new varieties of tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant and we might be experimenting with some African vegetables. We also hope to increase the amount of edible and medicinal weeds this year.  We hope you will enjoy experimenting with them.

Pick up hours
We encourage you to try to pick up as soon as possible especially when it is really hot.  We keep what we can in water or on ice, and we mist, but the heat can be brutal, as you know, so the sooner you can get your produce in the refrig or inside, the better it will keep for the week.  If you need to be late, please let us know (for market pickups, we can't stay longer than it takes up to pack up).

We will not be calling you to remind you.  The best way to contact us on pick up days is by phone.  301 587-1739 (home) or 240 505-6281 or 6282 (cells).  On market days, we rarely have time to check email so phone calls are best.  If someone else will be picking up, even with their good intentions, they often forget, so please give us their contact information.

Adams Morgan market CSA pickups start around 9:00am until about 1:00pm.  (The market opens at 8:00am). The sooner we can pack up and leave, the sooner we can bring the CSA to the Takoma Park pick up!  You can call 240 505-6282, 6281 or 717 491-6842.

Don't hesitate to ask us questions.  Check out our web site ( www.lickingcreekbendfarm.com ) and our Instagram @lickingcreekbendfarm which we update as much as possible with wonderful new pictures and information.

PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDARS NOW for the Sunday, May 22 FARM VISIT.  You should plan to leave this area by 9:15am to arrive by 11:30am.  Remember it's a veggie pot luck to share.  Bring your own plates, utensils and cups.  Read the CSA quotes for some comments on past farm visits.  It's well worth the trip!  We will provide directions to the farm closer to the date.  Our directions are a bit better than Mapquest, but you can try using those.  The address is 928 Donahoe Lane, Needmore, PA  17238.

We are excited about the new season.  Thanks for your support.

Michael, Esther, Charmaine, Justin and Kyla
Licking Creek Bend Farm

Questions and to sign up for the CSA:

Esther Siegel esiegel2@igc.org