Contributed by: Tim Olsen

The 3rd annual Harvest Festival will take place on Saturday September 24, 2011 from 11am-3pm at the Lowell Elementary MST playground in downtown Sioux Falls.    Urban Agriculture Initiatives Inc. will host the event with inflatable toys and free food and beverages donated by Cross Pointe Baptist Church in Sioux Falls with music entertainment provided by Dakota Productions from Lennox, SD.  Local organizations including the Boy Scouts, SDSU Extension, Sanford Health, Sioux Falls Fire and Rescue, Sioux Falls police department, Health Connect, and Augustana College will also be present.  Student –led tours of A Growing Place teaching garden will be featured with children from Lowell Elementary on hand to answer questions about what they are learning and how the garden affects their life.  If there are additional non-profit groups or service organizations that would like to be involved please call Cindy A Heidelberger Larson at 201-5549 or email cindyalarson@gmail.com for more information.

Produced by award-winning filmmakers Josh Tickell and Rebecca Tickell, “FREEDOM” started out as a documentary about the recent Gulf Coast oil spill disaster.

It became something very different.

“[The film] ‘FREEDOM’ makes a completely compelling case that by converting our dependence on oil to a literally homegrown source of energy, we achieve several goals. First, we improve our economy by spending energy dollars here; second, we create more jobs; third, we base our energy needs on a renewable resource (corn and biomass); and fourth,
we reduce our impact on the environment,” says reviewer
Patrick Robinson of the West Seattle Herald.

To promote the film, the husband-and-wife team, who also produced the Sundance Film Festival’s Award-winning documentary, “Fuel,” are now on a three-month, 30-city “North American Clean Energy Tour” in their fully customized Freedom Bus, a “green” constructed, highly energy efficient vehicle that showcases the latest biofuel-efficient advanced fuels along with wind, solar and water technology.

Contributed by: Whitney Parks, Koch Hazard Architects and Steven Matzner

Augie Green, Augustana’s student-led environmental club, and POET, the world’s largest ethanol producer, present the FREEDOM Film Tour, featuring an investigative documentary on alternative fuels and a full size, ethanol-burning bus covered in solar panels and wired with high-tech learning tools, which will roll through campus on Monday, Sept. 19.

The FREEDOM Bus will be located outside the Morrison Commons from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The film, “FREEDOM,” will be shown at 7 p.m. in Kresge Recital Hall.

The bus and the film are free and open to the public.

Contributed by: Natalie Eisenberg

Plain Green 2011 Speaker line-up and schedule have been released for this year’s conference on October 14!  Check out details at http://plaingreen.org/

Contributed By Tim Olsen

•  ECO Camp: July 18-22, 8:30-11:30 a.m., Lowell MST Elementary School, 710 W. 18th St., Sioux Falls. Grades K-5th grade. Garden science lessons, tasting fresh vegetables, and exploring the environment. Trained staff. $ 5/child. Contact: christina.zdorotsov@sdstate.edu.
• Growing Connections Garden Party: August 4,6:30-8:00 p.m. Lowell MST Elementary School, 710 W. 18th St., Sioux Falls. Six course meal prepared by Chef Don Smith using locally grown meats and vegetables. $50/plate. Contact: cindyalarson@gmail.com.
• Harvest Festival: September 24, 11:00 a.m.- 3:00 p.m., Lowell MST Elementary School, 710 W. 18th St., Sioux Falls. Food, music, games and the Big Top for nonprofit and social service exhibits. Contact: pchanavan@augie.edu.

Sioux Falls Green Drinks will host a special edition on October 5 at Minvera’s.

Meet Downtown for a few belts and discuss why sustainable cities depend on a strong urban core. Inspired by the recent movement to build the next Sioux Falls event center downtown.

More details coming soon on the Facebook Page and at siouxfallsgreendrinks.com.

Here’s a nifty special edition announcement to send to your pals: the Green Drinks email.

This weekend is chock full of green goodness. While the Greenival is going on at Sertoma Park, a celebration for a great harvest in “A Growing Place” teaching garden at Lowell Elementary School will kick off at 11am. The Second Annual Harvest Festival is on Saturday, September 25, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Lowell playground. Free hot dogs, popcorn, snow cones, games, and more will be provided to Pettigrew Heights residents and volunteers.

Guests will have the opportunity to connect with local nonprofits, receive free blood pressure checks, celebrate the second growing season of “A Growing Place” teaching garden, and meet neighbors. At 12:15 p.m. Lowell Elementary students will cut the ribbon at a dedication ceremony for the new A Growing Place garden greenhouse and the Sioux Falls chapter of Architects for Humanity will announce an affordable housing design competition for Pettigrew Heights.

The Green Project is one of many partners in the local urban agriculture project started at Lowell. Others include City of Sioux Falls, Summit House at Sioux Falls Seminary, Volunteers of America Dakotas, Lowell MST Elementary School, Minnehaha Country Extension Office, Augustana College/Augie Green, Cross Pointe Baptist Church. The Harvest Festival is also sponsored by Sioux Falls Fire Rescue, Sanford Health, 211 Help!Line Center, Housing Resource Center, South Dakota Cooperative Extension Service and 4-H, Architecture for Humanity, Koch Hazard Architects, Tuluu Dimmitu Foundation, Co-Op Natural Foods, and more.

To learn more about the Harvest Festival, contact Tim Olsen, Director of Operations for Summit House at Sioux Falls Seminary by calling 605.336.6588.

Volunteers will also be working to clean up the Pettigrew Heights neighborhood on Saturday. Learn more about lending a hand here.

Our community’s green movement is on display this weekend at Sertoma Park. Stop by the Green Project’s booth at Greenival and Bio-Blitz, a free family event from 10a to 2p on Saturday 9/25.

Ride your bike or the bus to Greenival and get a reward from the City of Sioux Falls Sustainability Office.

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The City of Sioux Falls will host its second annual Green-ival and Bio-Blitz on September 25, 2010, at Sertoma Park and the Outdoor Campus.

The event will bring together green-minded businesses, organizations, scientists, and citizens to celebrate and explore the ecology of our area, as well as sustainable products and services in and around Sioux Falls. The event will take place from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m., and is free to the public.

The Green-ival & Bio-Blitz is a family-friendly event, complete with children’s activities, live music, food, crafts and items for sale, and plenty more. Last year’s Green-ival was a big success, with over 400 people in attendance and over 60 businesses and organizations present. The team of scientists from our 2009 Bio-Blitz & Ecology Day at the Mary Jo Wegner Arboretum accounted for over 275 species at the four hour event. This year, come see what critters are roaming the Outdoor Campus, and get up-close and personal with a few of them as well! Check out some of the pictures below from last year’s events. Scroll down for more information on getting involved this year!

Stop by Sioux Falls’ newest parks next Friday–they’ll only be around for one day. Two local groups will be creating temporary green spaces on Phillips Avenue on September 17 to celebrate Park(ing) Day.

PARK(ing) Day is an annual, worldwide event that inspires city dwellers everywhere to transform metered parking spots into temporary parks for the public good. The local chapter of Architecture for Humanity and the folks driving Sioux Falls Pedicab will both host Park(ing) Day sites downtown from 10am to 4:30pm. “Because when we list our favorite places a parking lot is not on the list,” says pedicab driver Harold Christensen, “Sioux Falls Pedicab will participate in PARK(ing) Day and transform a metered parking spot into a temporary park.” His “Rediscover Your Bicycle Park” is co-sponsored by Landscape Garden Center. If you promise to rediscover your old bicycle stored in your garage, dust it off, and ride it in the next week, you’ll get a free pedicab ride today!

If you want to help build a Park(ing) Day, contact:

Harold Christensen (SF Pedicab): Ride@SiouxFallsPedicab.com.

Whitney Parks (AFH-Sioux Falls): info@afh-sfsd.org.

More details are coming…

Welcome to the new Trash talkers season! We’ll kick things off at Automania on Friday night Downtown. If you haven’t signed up for a Trash Talker shift yet, don’t worry–we still have room for you Friday night or at any of the other events in our summer lineup. Just click here to see the details and get signed up.

Thanks a ton if you’ve signed up to work at Automania this Friday, June 11th. The Sioux Falls Green Project is very excited to have you on board for this event. Automania this year is a three day event. The Trash Talkers are participating in the Friday evening preview party Downtown, not the portion of the event that is at the Fairgrounds on Saturday and Sunday.

In order to prepare for the 2010 debut of the Trash Talkers team, we ask that you take a few minutes to watch our new orientation video. It’s a brief video (4 minutes) that will give you all the details that you need to be a trash talkin’ volunteer. Please watch this before you attend the event on Friday.

Trash Talkers Orientation 2010 from Sioux Falls Green Project on Vimeo.

How to be a Trash Talker 2010 training video for Sioux Falls Green Project’s Trash Talkers, sponsored by Millennium Recycling, Inc.

If you can’t see the video above, just Click Here to watch it on YouTube.

On April 27, Sioux Falls will choose a new Mayor to lead our community for the next four years. The new Mayor will be a key player in deciding how serious our city is about building a sustainable future with all of us.

In March, we co-hosted all of the Mayoral candidates at a Green Drinks gathering. If you weren’t able to make it, we hope you get a chance to watch video of comments and answers to tough questions shared by Mike Huether and Kermit Staggers at that event. You can watch both videos on the Sioux Falls Green Drinks website here.

Please get out and vote April 27, and tell your friends to do it too. If you’ll be busy tomorrow, anyone can still vote absentee today. For info on where and how you can vote, click here.

Last month’s Sioux Falls Green Drinks featured a Q+A with all six candidates for mayor of the Queen City. On April 13 Sioux Falls voters selected Mike Huether and Kermit Staggers to face each other in a special run-off election on April 27. We’ve re-edited the video from the March Meet the Mayor Candidates into two short videos featuring Huether and Staggers. Be sure to tell your friends to watch the videos to find out how the two candidates see the green future of Sioux Falls unfolding.

Watch the Mayor Candidate Video at siouxfallsgreendrinks.com

What is Green Drinks? Every month people interested in the environment meet up at informal sessions all over the world known as Green Drinks. There are Green Drinks sessions in almost 600 cities these days. Green Drinks is organized locally by Astronaut Studio and Sioux Falls Green Project.

We’re taking a little break from simple green living tips to let you know about a few big events coming up this month.

Plain Green Conference and Marketplace hits the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls in just a couple weeks. On April 28-29 you will see the most amazing line-up of green experts and world changers to ever hit South Dakota.

Here’s just a tiny taste of what’s in store for you at Plain Green:

• Mitchell Joachim is re-designing cities all over the world from scratch. He’ll show you what future “carborexic” cities will look like, and why “sustainability” is a sissy.
• Cameron Sinclair is making sustainable design a matter of life over death. He’ll show you why green architecture changes lives all over the planet.
• Steve Clark is rebuilding Minnesota’s transportation system for walkers and bikers. He’ll pedal his bicycle from St. Paul to show you tools that will change the planet and set us free.
• Brian Dunbar is creating buildings that teach sustainability. He’ll show you how cool buildings can save a hotter world and sharpen your skills in LEED core concepts and strategies.
• Joyce Coppinger will lead you in building Sioux Falls’ first ever strawbale building.
• Anita Kealy will teach you how to make clothes from cassette tapes.
• Industry leaders and officials will tell you the Future of Renewable Energy
• Jihong Cole-Dai will show you what old ice from Antarctica can tell us about our changing climate.

See the entire schedule and register (http://plaingreen.org) for Plain Green. We hope you’ll come support this important event.

Sioux Falls Green Drinks is hosting the official Plain Green After Party on April 29 at Monk’s from 5:30-8:00pm. It’s free! Learn all about Green Drinks.

Are you a Trash Talker? A new season is about to begin for the Trash Talkers Team, and we need your help. See videos and photos from the 2009 season, and learn how to join the team this summer here.

The 40th Anniversary of Earth Day is April 22. What will you do this year to show the environment some love? Here are some ideas: Find a local event this month and take action. Make a plan to live lighter with your family and coworkers. Or make a donation that will keep the local green movement moving.

The Sioux Falls Mayoral Run-off Election is April 27. Our new mayor will set the green tone, and decide how serious our city will be toward sustainability. Learn what Mike Huether and Kermit Staggers think about our community’s green future by checking out the Green Drinks with the Mayor Candidates video here.

There’s a big election coming up April 13, and Sioux Falls will pick a new mayor. Back in March, we invited all six mayoral candidates to Green Drinks at Leonardo’s Cafe.

The candidates tackled some tough questions about our community’s green future submitted by you. SF Green Project intern Karin Costin caught the whole thing on tape. Now you can watch the entire conversation.

Find out what the candidates will do to build Sioux Falls’ green future. Watch the video here, then vote on April 13.

On Saturday, April 10th, Augie Green will host a Clean Energy Forum at Augustana College as part of the Focus the Nation campaign within the nation’s critical manufacturing regions. The free “Greenfest” event features segments on jobs and the Clean Energy Race and environment. Discussion from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. in Augustana’s Gilbert Science Center (Rm 100) will center on clean energy policy conversations for South Dakota and the nation, including building a clean energy infrastructure and new clean energy economy. Youth leaders promise a day full of booths, music, food, and speakers from 12:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Featured speakers include Matt McGovern (Repower America), Leighann Dunn (Operation Free), Gary Hansen (Public Utilities Commission), Matt McLarty (Environmental Law and Policy Center), Peter Carrels (Sierra Club) and Matt Astleford (Senator Tim Johnson Office). A Clean Energy panel discussion led by Augie Green will commence at 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. in Augustana’s Gilbert Science Center (Rm 100). Later in the day, there will be free food (sponsored by Buffaloberries) and talks centered around community issues including bike coops, gardening, and community building.