The Silver City Community Partners, formerly known as the Silver City Task Force, has announced a full summer schedule of community events and programs. The tightknit community of Silver City works together to offer a free summer youth program, monthly community dinners, cultural events, a volunteer library, cooking lessons, and a community garden.

Annual Youth Summer Program: The annual summer youth program will take place this year on Monday and Wednesday mornings (more details on exact locations and times will follow soon). Plans include art lessons by artist Alison Harris and other visiting artists, a kids’ photo journaling project on Silver City led by local photographer Renate Victor, an August acting workshop with professional musicians and actors Will and Sheree Rose, a tour of St. Mary’s Art Center in Virginia City, a field trip to Shakespeare at Sand Harbor at Lake Tahoe on August 10, cooking lessons, job skills workshops for teens and adults, and special projects for the community garden, including a scarecrow making party on June 4. Volunteers will host a kids’ terra cotta pot painting class on June 22, followed by a spider plant planting workshop by local organic farmer Mary MacDonald of Beautiful Foods Farm on June 29. Special thanks to Silver City’s Volunteer Fire Department for donations that will fund the summer children’s art classes.

Community Dinners: The monthly community soup and salad dinners that are organized by lead chef Cashion Callaway and funded, in part, by Healthy Communities Coalition and matched by local donations will continue through May. In June, Callaway will organize the second annual homemade ice cream social with local children taking turns at the old fashioned hand-cranked ice cream machines on the front porch of the School House. Chefs take a break during July and August, and resume the first Friday soup dinner schedule in September.

Cooking Lessons: Intergenerational cooking lessons this winter have included dishes such as etouffee and Taiwanese beef noodle soup, and culinary adventures with ingredients like squid ink pasta. Summer lessons will include lighter fare of green salads made with produce from the community garden. In addition, writer and chef Cashion Callaway has offered to organize a kids’ cookbook project this summer.

Community Garden Committee: The community garden committee meets on Sundays and is making assessments for this season’s needs for soil amendments, more fencing, benches, planter boxes, seedlings, etc. Committee organizer Renate Victor said a possible July garden party fundraiser is in the works. Healthy Communities Coalition will provide $600 to the community garden this season through a USDA grant.
Library: The Silver City volunteer library is open through the summer during all events, and includes 1,000’s of fiction and nonfiction titles for all ages, including a very large collection of science fiction, and nonfiction by many Comstock residents. The library has recently had donations of new children’s books from Sarah Lindsay and Christy McGill.

Group Meets April 21: The Silver City Community Partners is part of Healthy Communities Coalition of Lyon and Storey, and activities are funded in part by the Coalition, and by local donations, recycling, and fundraisers. To find out more, come to the next meeting April 21 at 6pm at the Silver City School House, and watch for announcements on the community bulletin boards.