Joseph Stewart Alford engaged
to Sarah Wilmarth Onion
Joseph Stewart Alford and Sarah Wilmarth Onion announce their engagement. Joseph “Jody” formerly of Chestnut Hill, is now residing in York, Maine and is a hotel manager at the York Harbor Inn. He attended Chestnut Hill Academy and graduated from the Haverford School. He graduated from Connecticut College majoring in Psychology, and has lived and worked on Martha’s Vineyard and in the Russian River area north of San Francisco. Jody sang in the Philadelphia Boys Choir from 1984 until 1986 and also with the Vineyard Sound, an a capella singing group on Martha’s Vineyard from 1992 to 1997.
Sarah is from Gilmanton, N.H. She graduated from Kenyon College majoring in Religious Studies, and received a masters degree in Early Childhood Education from Pacific Oaks College. She had her training in Gazebo Philosophy, and worked for several years at the Children’s School of Sonoma State University in Santa Rosa, Calif. Sarah runs her own school in York, Maine. The Gazebo School for preschool age children age 1 to 5 years.
Jody is the son of Mary Randall Hopkins of Chestnut Hill and W. Stewart Alford of Conshohocken and grandson of the late Mary Lear Randall and Samuel J. Randall of Chestnut Hill and of William J. Alford of Englewood, N.J.; and the late Susan Stewart Alford. Sarah is the daughter of Anne and Perry Onion of Gilmanton, N.H. and the granddaughter of Barbara Harris of Laconia, N.H., and the late Dr. George S. Harris, Jr., and the late Dr. Charles and Ilene Onion of Denver, Colo.

Weavers Way breaks ground on CSA Farm
On Tuesday, March 17, Weavers Way Co-op Farm and W.B. Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences broke ground in more ways than one. Not only did they start digging the soil that will become the areas newest Community Supported Agriculture farm, but they created one of the first high school-based CSAs in the country.
The farm, called “Henry Got Crops!” is run by Weavers Way staff working closely with Saul’s agroecology program and the school as a whole. Together, they will design a farm that not only brings food to the community, but also serves as an educational opportunity for students at Saul. The farm will be located right on campus, where teachers and their classes can learn about and partake in small scale, organic vegetable growing.
Part of what makes CSA’s special is the support from the community; members buy shares at the beginning of the growing season, when farms need seed money, and then they enjoy the benefits for the rest of the year in the form of weekly baskets of straight-from-the-farm produce. Each week throughout the season, the members receive a week’s worth of fresh produce from the farm — enough produce for a family of four. The exact vegetables in each share change throughout the season depending on what is growing on the farm at that time.

The Green Schools Alliance issued a Green Cup Challenge around Thanksgiving for schools to see who could save the most electricity during a specified period of time in 2009 compared to that same period of time over the past three years. The results are now in and Springside placed third out of 27 schools in their climate division of the challenge. The school’s reduction over the prior years was a whopping 20 percent.  Also, the inspirational video that Springside students created was awarded Honorable Mention in the video challenge. Springside’s team was comprised of 25 fourth grade