Oooh October.....

A silvery sliver moon rising over the harvest garden freshened by rain. Days shortening and nights cooling. Winter squash curing on the vine.Leaves start to drop and trees go dormant. We dream of lushness with thick hopes for rain. We bring our harvest inside, stack firewood, prepare feasts and gather with our people to celebrate another cycle round the sun.

This month at IUH we offer a fine selection of handskills Including home tile setting, basic auto mechanics and soapmaking. Learn to work with masa, make miso or mead. Join us for The Whole Lamb, a community meat sharing and butchery experience. Plus more classes and offerings below!

For Day of the Dead we welcome you to attend our mini-making workshops to learn skills while preparing a meal for 200.
And finally join us for the afternoon Saturday November 1 for altar building processions and more....details on both below.

October Work in the Garden
Lovely long shadowed fall afternoons are a wonderful time to be out in the garden with thoughts of managing soil and trees for productivity in the coming year.
Harvest. Tomatoes, summer & winter squash, greens, lettuce, root crops, cukes and peppers should all continue to produce and be harvested through October in our temperate climate.
Plant. Now is the time to get your last starts in before winter. Hurry! Greens like radicchio, chicory, kale, collards, mustard and chard established now will produce through the winter. Broccoli, cabbage and peas established now may produce before christmas or first thing in the spring. Garlic should be planted on or around November 1st for June harvest.
Sheet Mulch. October is the perfect month to sheet mulch your garden and super charge your soil for a fabulous 2015 garden. Sheet mulching is the absolute best fix for East Bay clay soils and works best when combined with a one time deep tilling method such as double digging. See my guide to sheet mulching here.
Lasagna Mulch. Similar to sheet mulching lasagna mulching is the process of heaping compost, manure , rotted straw, leaves and other organic matter on top of the soil. Let rest through winter and plant directly into the lasagna mulch in early spring without tilling.
Fall Fruit Pruning After your trees have fruited and before they have dropped their leaves is the perfect time to prune to encourage fruit production and discourage excess vegetative growth. Be sure to prune when there are 2 dry days on either side to allow wounds to harden off and prevent spread of pathogens.

Day of the Dead
Saturday November 1st, 3pm-7pm
Dover Park, Dover Street at 58th
Altars, Mandala, Procession, Facepainting, Hot chocolate, Blessing, Food.
Join with friends and neighbors to celebrate the time when the veil grows thin.
Exact schedule of events will be sent out in a separate announcement the week before.

We need volunteers and other daring acts of participation!
Vounteer (set-up, hot chocolate stand, food serving, clean up) contact Meghan: meghanleighhornstrom@gmail.com
Altars, Art, Activities (help with the central altar, create your own adjunct altar, offer a kids activity, facepainting or more) contact Aexa: Alexazedavis@gmail.com
Donations We need paper & plastic ware, candles, altar objects, flowers, produce (cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, onions, cilantro) llard, vegetable shortening, beans, rice, hot chocolate fixings and more. Cash donations also accepted.. Contact Ruby ruby@sparkybeegirl.com
To help cook, join us for the mini workshops below.

Day of the Dead Cooking Workshops
Learn and do. We'll be teaching and making to prep for our Day of the Dead Harvest Feast.

Tamales Making with K.Ruby Blume Wednesday, October 29 10am-2pm North Oakland RSVP ruby@sparkybeegirl.com
Learn to mix masa and roll up the tamales.

Cooking for Celebration with Seth Peterson Thursday October 30, 6pm-9pm
Learn knife skills and traditional cookery following Weston A. Price cooking including; whey fermented salsa, the why and how of soaking grains and beans, bone broths, etc.
RSVP sethdpeterson@gmail.com

CLASSES
Find full descriptions & prices on our calendar:
http://www.iuhoakland.com/calendar.html