[earthwise]

Jeff –

Carl and I are on the Rural Vermont Board and I sent along your request/suggestion and they thought this was a great idea and are working on making this happen…. there should be at least an audio recording (and possibly a video recording too)… but I do not believe it will be live….thanks for your suggestion.

Lisa

[earthwise]

Thanks Erika for your kind words.

The January class filled up and I have a waiting list… so will schedule another class for Sunday, February 27th from 1 pm – 4:30 pm.

Go to http://www.earthwisefarmandforest.com/RawDairyProcessing.aspx for more information.

cheers!

Lisa McCrory
Earthwise Farm and Forest
http://www.earthwisefarmandforest.com

[earthwise]

Great idea Bill –

We are also thinking about an ‘ask the trainer’ piece and perhaps a technical article highlight, along with updates on workshops and field days happening in 2011, and some creative writing/poetry/family life contributions. There is lots of potential… the only challenge, I think is going to be keeping the length at a manageable level. We are thinking that this newsletter would be quarterly or every other month…

Lisa

[earthwise]

I also wanted people to know that the Draft Animal Power Network (DAPNet) will be sending out its FIRST newsletter in February. (DAPNet is the parent of this discussion forum)

We are looking for advertisers, classified ads, calendar items, and always welcome article submissions. If you have not yet joined DAPNet (member info can be found on the DAPNet website), please consider doing so.

For more information, you can contact me privately on this list or send me a message to my email address below.

Lisa McCrory
http://www.draftanimalpowernetwork.org
Lmccrory@hughes.net

[earthwise]

Geoff –

Well, you know what happens when you are not there to speak for yourself…. you get volunteered for all sorts of things.

Thankfully, Neal and Erika also expressed interest, so I can take you off the ‘chair’ category, but will keep you on as a committee member.

Lisa

[earthwise]

Thanks for catching that Erika! I have made the correction in my notes.

Yes, you and Neal are on the Membership Committee under Finance and Fundraising.

Lisa

[earthwise]

Mark –

As Carl said, I can give you a little more information about the English Shepherd that we bought. We purchased her when she was almost 4 months old … I would have perferred getting her at two months, but the perfect puppy arose and here we are. I think if she had been younger when she started here she may have bonded with carl more… understandably, she still is not too sure about him 🙂

I purchased Faileas(her name) from Tish Toren in NY state (near the fingerlakes). Tish has a farm and is a wealth of information. I am including her website and contact information in case you are interested.

Faileas is just over a year now and is ‘coming into her own’… she is great with the poultry and is still needing to take on the chore of ‘working’ the larger livestock… but there isn’t much for her to do around them… It would be great if I made the time to work on some skills with her so that I had some commands for her to follow and she felt like she had more to do.

We will see what this year will bring. She is a great family dog… willing to ‘lay low’ in the house with us if nothing exciting is going on. She LOVES to play catch and is quite the athlete… lots of potential for her on so many levels. Often times if I have to walk down to the barn (about 800 feet from the house), she will choose to stay up at the house and ‘take care of the kids’ if they are playing outside. I kind of like that.

It sounds like you have been reading into the English Shepherd breed, but if you haven’t found it yet, there is an American Working Farm Collie discussion forum on Yahoo (http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/AWFA/) …. I lurk there and learn a lot about the breed and my dog’s potential. Again, we found the perfect dog for us… We paid $600 though…. probably would have been $500 if I had gotten her at 2 months…. Money well spent, I think.

Here is the contact info of the person who sold me our pup
-Tish Toren
The Blacksheep Homestead
Phone: 607 229-3947
email: blacksheephomestead@yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/blacksheephomestead
member AWFA- http://www.farmcollie.com

Lisa McCrory
Earthwisefarmandforest.com

[earthwise]

Geoff –

We have not heard from a lot of people, so it would be GREAT if you could check in and get some rsvp’s from as many people as possible. If it is just a small handful of people who can make it to our house (at this point I think that Erika Marczak is yes, a maybe from Erik Andres, and a maybe from Ben/Meg) then Carl and I are feeling like we could just as easily have a conference call for everyone and cancel the in-person/potluck feature.

Thanks for being willing to check in with everyone…

Lisa

[earthwise]

Attached (I hope) is the pdf of our 2009 Budget (actual)

[earthwise]

Hey everybody, here are the notes… FINALLY…

Erika is getting ready to send out a letter to the 23 plus people who were at the Sunday meeting. Please let us know if there are a few others who could NOT make the 10/17/10 meeting that you feel we should pull in ….
Lisa 🙂

Conference call Notes
Present: Lisa McCrory, Carl Russell, Brad Johnson, Erika Marczak, David Fisher, Geoff Prichard, Erik Andrus, Jean Cross

Outline of Meeting:

1) Updates from each category from DAP site

A) Organizational Structure: David gave a brief report.

1) HPD is a national 501.c.3 that moves each year to a different location and the local group organizes the event. Secretary, Treasurer, President, VP. Board has 2 yr term (alternating?). Board serves as a resource for local event planners. Print program booklet, hold liability insurance, take care of advertising. Not a membership organization. Exist from the revenue from their event. Paid staff? They pay about $5000 between book publisher, graphic artist/website. Otherwise, it all comes from the event. $10 gate fee.
2) Eli Berry – still trying to figure out the structure of LIF in relation to MOFGA
3) Jason Rutledge (Healing Harvest Forest Foundation) 501.c.3 – pretty low key. Put on a Draft animal Field Days. Has officers. Do a little bit of grant writing.
4) Rural Vermont – our current fiscal sponsor, has a paid Executive director plus some staff that run the day to day operations. Board of Directors consists of 2 co-chairs and other officers (secretary, treasurer, ), consensus organization.
5) White River Partnership – Board does not run the day to day, but the ED makes all the decisions and gets direction from board as needed.
6) SFC – has a President that operates pretty much as the executive director… a lot of things are governed by expectations of bylaws. Have a fairly large board, that operates similarly, where the Board gets all the paperwork pertaining to what the organization is doing. Lynn’s staff for the magazine does double duty for Lynn’s annual auction and for the SFC. They are only in their first year as a 501.c.3, and do not have a lot of stuff going on at this point.
7) GMDHA – Jean is the VP of the organization. All she does is try to raise money. President runs the meetings, does a lot for the auction. Secretary takes notes, Treasurer manages the bank account and reports each meeting. Keeping track of $$ going in and going out. Also have a Board of Directors, every 4 years, rotating so that one person drops off at any one time. They are the ones who run the annual meeting and vote for officers.
B) Communication to the DAPNet Membership –
Erika wrote a great letter to the membership (of 71 people), which will go out to our membership by email for those who have it, snail maiL for those who don’t, and will be posted on the website and sent out via the NEAPFD/DAPNet e-newsletter (of 360 people). Can bring in/ try to attract advertisements, content for the NL, etc.

Payment of someone (Lisa) to get the first newsletter out…. Trying to catch peoples’ eye, use the newsletter as a way to formalize the organization. Chicken or the egg of agreeing to spend $$ on, talked about how the newsletter should financially support itself through ads, etc.

On letter have both Erika and Lisa on the letter with email and snail mail info

Erika will be posting it on DAP.com, mailing it to our DAPNet members. Lisa will update the NEAPFDDAPNet website with the member letter and will send it out to the 360 people subscribed to the e-Newsletter.

Discussion: setting up a timeline as we move forward: How do we decide what the organizational structure will be, election of officers, etc. Will discuss at debriefing with larger group

C) Bank Account Update:
Jean thinks that we should just be able to add her name and change the name on the current NEAPFD account. Then Jean can take over the reconciliation of it. Week between xmas and New Years, will sit down with Lisa and Carl to get all the account records. Secretary of State – Jean will check with and see if the Draft Animal Power Network is still available.

D) Fiscal Sponsor:
Brad, Erik and Carl drafted a letter to the Small Farm Conservancy about SFC being a fiscal sponsor for DAPNet. Letter that Carl sent Lynn (email and hard copy) was not received, and Lynn has offered to send a post board meeting packet out to members to discuss.
In the meantime, Lisa has since been to two Rural Vermont Board meetings and RV Board is amenable to give DAPnet fiscal sponsorship that we need.

E) Researching Laws of Fiscal Sponsorship: (Geoff and Brad)
Geoff could not find anything in Oregon about requirements of Fiscal Sponsorship (responsibilities or guidelines).
When we DO become a 501.c.3, does it make it any easier for us to just stay in Vermont (with our fiscal sponsor) or does it make much difference? Brad Johnson found that it did not make much difference (in his research). Longer term question is just deciding where we want to be based when the time comes. Regional boundaries of DAPNet that we want to define? Feeling is that we shouldn’t have any boundaries. Bylaws will be able to lay that out – defining the boundaries (or lack thereof) of membership base. Lots of online resources about 501.c.3 non-profits. Developing your board, responsibilities of Board, etc

F) Administrative Features: finding a way to move tasks away from Carl and Lisa. Carl has had a contract with VT Web Properties who originally set up draftanimalpower.com website and had all the administrative capacities and login’s in his own hands. Carl has recently been able to successfully move the domain name to our account now and is working with another web designer to create a chain of custody so that it is in a safe and concise package and will be a manageable asset for this organization. Wondering if we should have a web subcommittee – someone who understands website work . Carl has a few people in mind that he could start pulling in to be on board with this. As far as managing the database, Jean has expressed interest in doing this.

Actions: Carl has already created a Draft Animal Power Network heading on draftanimalpower.com and Erika has already posted….

2011 NEAPFD – reach out to find out the where/when of 2011 – changing venue? A lot of people have made comments about having the event a different time of year… the event itself can be the same format, but is an opportunity for a broader organization of people.

Consider the possibility that we are not going to do it next year… timing too short… and maybe we need this year to regroup.

Piggy back with NOFA Mass? Hold NEAPFD Event… a scaled back event… do some worshops at David Fisher’s as part of the NOFA Mass workshop and hold more DAPnet related meetings. Something scaled back.

It would be in our best interest to have something to keep people motivated/excited to keep DAPnet going.

To do:
Erika will draft a letter to the original 23 group of people to : organizational discussion, future of field days discussion, and more.

Perhaps behind on debriefing from 2010 and deciding on key speakers.

By middle of January perhaps have a venue, timeline, potential speakers, keynote ideas….

Carl will post an outline from 2009’s planning so that people have an idea how he and Lisa have been planning NEAPFD in the past.

Look into other venue possibilities between now and mid January.

Brad to check in with Russell Libby (MOFGA) to see if there are any opportunities with using MOFGA fairgrounds.

Time to have an early January potluck debriefing meeting perhaps in January for some in-person time to discuss the 2010 NEAPFD and to discuss 2011 possibilities. Have those who cannot make it to be available by speaker phone.

Other:
Making the market place on dap.com to be free to dapnet members. Only dapnet member could post for free on the website. (full support). Revenue streams from dap.com – without making huge financial taxation, asking people to become a member of dapnet OR send $10 if you are not a member. Add this as an additional benefit to dapnet.

Next meeting: early January

Debriefing
Formalize organization
NEAPFD venue/dates/format?

[earthwise]

Erika –

Your letter is wonderful! One change I would suggest is to take Jerry Bouchard’s name off the Transition team list, as he contacted Carl recently to say he does not have the time.

For the paragraph on the Newsletter, I would suggest that we open the door for some advertising as well, so that there is an income stream to contribute to mailing costs (and some labor, perhaps). It would also be neat to see if anyone has any great photos that they would like to share from the 2010 event.

We also need to encourage more people to join as members…. in talking to a few people ‘off the street’ that have come to one of the NEAPFD events over the years, they were very excited about the event and were unaware of the new membership organization, so making sure that we are talking to our members, but also encouraging others to join. Perhaps there could be a concluding paragraph thanking those who are currently members and encouraging them to spread the word and let them know how others can join. The letter as it is written will be posted on the NEAPFD website and can be posted on the DAP site as well and then membership and Newsletter advertising information could be posted on the NEAPFD (http://www.animalpowerfielddays.org) site.

I think that we need to approach businesses to become members as well….

Thanks Erika for moving this along.

Lisa

[earthwise]

Erika –

I realize that you are drafting a raw milk letter to Farm Bureau and hope that goes well for you. Once you have a note crafted to the DAPNET membership, why don’t you zip us a copy. I think we can talk further about letter to the membership on our next conference call. I think that it would be a good thing to do… soon…. as it will inform AND draw in new members.

cheers,

Lisa

[earthwise]

16th and 17th is the best for me

Lisa

[earthwise]

I know that there is a Mascoma’s Savings bank, Randolph National Bank, and a Northfield Savings Bank nearby…. but whatever is convenient for you. I think it would be good to have Carl and I included on the account for now at least.

lisa

[earthwise]

got the message – thanks

Lisa

[Author]

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