When: Sunday, March 10, 2013.  2-4 p.m.

Where: Burien Library, Multipurpose Room
400 SW 152nd Street, Burien

Where: Dottie Harper Building*
SW 146th & 4th SW (next to the old library)

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Learn to identify your neighborhood birds
Adults and children are invited
Activities for children (both indoors and outdoors)
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Learn about the Great International Bird Count
Presentation by Birds Unlimited from noon to 1 pm.

Sponsored by members of Sustainable Burien
*the building is not Handicapped Accessible

Courtney Sullivan, Education Manager of the National Wildlife Federation for the Pacific Region, will be our featured speaker in September. She’ll be showing how at home or in our community we can learn to create a place where people, flora and fauna can all flourish!

Whether you have an apartment balcony or a 20-acre farm, you can create a garden that attracts beautiful wildlife and helps restore habitat. By providing food, water, cover and a place for wildlife to raise their young you not only help wildlife, but you also qualify to become an official Certified Wildlife Habitat® with National Wildlife Federation.

If you love gardening and connecting with people in your community, the National Wildlife Federation can help you certify your community as a Community Wildlife Habitat® — a community that provides habitat for wildlife throughout the community–in individual backyards, on school grounds and in public areas such as parks, community gardens, places of worship and businesses.

It is a place where the residents make it a priority to provide habitat for wildlife by providing the four basic elements that all wildlife need and also educates its residents about sustainable gardening practices.

Community Wildlife Habitats are organized by a team of people, who not only help create habitat, but also hold workshops about gardening for wildlife and organize community events.

Your neighbors in Burien, Tukwila, and West Seattle have started teams. Come learn more about how you can work with them or start your own community habitat project.

Imagine having chickens in your own backyard!

Unique pets, abundant eggs, rich compost, sustainable living – more people every day are discovering the many joys of chicken keeping.

Join us for this fun, informative class. Learn whether chickens are right for you, and how to get started – even if you have a small yard. Find outabout care, feeding, and housing needs. See displays. Hear from experienced chicken keepers. Walk away with helpful resources.

Class registration: $9
For more info please contact Burien Parks and Recreation: 206-988-3700

Urban Foraging Walk with Melany Vorass

What: April Urban Foraging Walk

Where: Seahurst Park, Burien, WA

When: April 15th, 2-4pm

Welcome to the fun and delicious world of urban foraging! Come join us at Seahurst Park on April 15th to learn how to identify some of the most common edible weeds and wild foods available to us in the city. Weeds are an abundant source of nutritious food available for the picking. Many of our most common weeds hide huge nutrition in their tasty little leaves! Master forager, Melany Vorass, will present information on gathering ethics, local rules and regulations, safety, and general information about how to cook with weeds. Participants will learn about free and abundant superfoods like dandelion, plantain, catsear, nipplewort and shotweed and will receive a handy take-home brochure with field identification information and cooking tips.

After almost 25 years as an environmental policy analyst, Melany retired to pursue a combination of her three greatest loves: plants, food and writing. She studied ethnobotany at the Evergreen State College, has a degree in environmental policy, and has been an avid forager for well over 40 years. With over 20 years experience in adult instruction, she now teaches urban foraging to a wide variety of people including University of Washington, high schools, youth groups, homeless shelters and through Seattle Tilth. Smack in the heart of Seattle, she tends an urban farm with chickens, honeybees and goats. Between farming, foraging for plants, bugs and snails, urban trapping and fishing, and cooking, canning, drying and fermenting her family’s food, she seldom needs (or has time) to visit a grocery store.

Allow enough time to park at the upper parking lot if lower is full. Walk will start right at 2 p.m. from the lower parking lot. Dress for the weather.

Sunday, January 8, 2012
Burien KCLS Library
2:00pm – 4:00pm (doors open at 1:30)

Elizabeth Weldin, of the Toxics Cleanup Program with the Washington State Department of Ecology, will be speaking about the “Tacoma plume,” from the ASARCO plant in Tacoma. “For almost 100 years, the Asarco Company operated a copper smelter in Tacoma. Air pollution from the smelter settled on the surface soil over more than 1,000 square miles of the Puget Sound basin. Arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals are still in the soil as a result of this pollution.”

Learn how this affects you. How safe are we? Who is at risk? How does this impact the sustainability of Burien? Can I grow my own food? Can my kids play outside in the dirt? What businesses might be impacted? Land value? What steps can we make to mitigate the presence of arsenic and create a healthy and resilient community?

Please join us!

Please join us for our yearly holiday potluck and roundtable discussion.  Bring something to share – food and your thoughts about Sustainable Burien and some possible directions for 2012.  We will have some utensils available, but it would be helpful if you could bring your own.

Our January speaker (January 8^th) will be talking to us about the “Tacoma plume,” the toxins in our soil from the Asarco plant in Tacoma that affects so many of us.  The Department of Ecology is presenting a public information meeting (and asking for comments) about a cleanup plan on December 6^th from 6:30-8:30 at 2045 South 216^th at the Des Moines Activity Center in Des Moines).

Note re this month’s Walk ‘n Talk on December 4^th:  Eric Mathison, editor of The Highline Times, will lead this month’s walk to Mathison Park.  Meet at the grassy knoll at Burien Town Square. http://www.b-townblog.com/2011/12/01/get-set-to-walk-n-talk-this-sunday-to-through-buriens-mathison-park/

THIS MONTH:

• Emergency Preparedness and Burien’s Walk ‘n Talk. Nancy Barry will share her experiences in CERT training this fall and we’ll talk about getting more neighborhoods interested in Map Your Neighborhood emergency preparedness.
• Maureen Hoffman will talk about the fun community members have been having on the Walk ‘n Talk outings and bike events. She’ll also talk about an effort to get bike racks placed in strategic places in Burien. (This coming Sunday’s walk – November 6th — will meet on the grassy knoll at Town Square at 2 p.m.)
• We may also be doing a short report on desired efforts to make Burien a certified Wildlife Habitat Community.

Come join us for learning, exploring and more!