"Nominate Your Favorite Food Revolutionary" and other fun Friday stuff

Happy Friday, everyone!

A few ideas/items before I tackle the meat of today's post:

1. We started a "drop-in" tally sheet. In late November, right before our board retreat, Mary and I tried to estimate how many people dropped in on us, unannounced, to pick our brains (mostly Mary's) for information and feedback. I put the number at 64, or 16 per week. Mary guessed 16, or 4 per week. After some discussion, we decided to include drop-in phone calls, which are essentially the same as an in-person drop-in: people calling, unannounced, for information. So we made a tally sheet. The goal is to see how many people we deal with outside of the parameters of our programs. We're not complaining. We love helping people and talking about what we do, we just want to get a clear picture of how much time we spend doing it. We encourage you to swing by the office or give us a ring. We're always down to shoot the breeze. Just be prepared for some furious scribbling and "inside-joke-style laughter" as you walk in the door.

2. We've sent out invitations to potential board members! Right now, we are running with a skeleton crew of six board members. Good thing those six are dynamos. At the board retreat, we brainstormed a list with a bunch of new faces that we'd love to see helping us build a better foodsystem and we can't wait to start hearing back from some of our long-time friends and colleagues.

3. The CSA Directory is almost ready to go to the printers. We are still waiting on a few farms to send us their updated information for 2009, so once we get everything penciled in, we can start production. I hope we can get the print proofs before the month is out.

Okay, "Nominate your favorite food revolutionary." Seattle Weekly has teamed up with the Pellegrini Foundation for the third annual Angelo Pellegrini award, "which honors lifetime contributions to food in the Puget Sound region." Boo-yah. What a great award!

Quick aside: I love the Seattle Weekly, especially the food section. Helmed by Jonathan Kauffman, the SW food staff does a kick-ass job of reporting both short- and long-term food news and stories. Their blog, Voracious, is a great resource for up-to-date goings-on abour town and an enjoyable read. Not an easy feat. If you haven't checked out the SW lately, take another look. Well worth it.

Back to "Nominate your favorite food revolutionary." Do it. I know who I'm nominating....