Seagrove Community Garden

Ongoing updates for the Seagrove Community Garden are posted at the following site: http://seagrovegarden.blogspot.com/  This week we were blessed with yellow wax beans, a second crop of radishes and beautiful Mexican sunflowers. We continue to be grateful for the help Fiskars provided to our garden.

Prayer vigil.....

The following quotes are from 3 of our community garden members, and reflect their thoughts of the ribbon cutting.

Beth Norris - "The garden was beautiful and so many folks turned out for the ribbon cutting. It has been such a joy to have so many people active in this project. The right people show up at the right time. Usually just enough gardeners turn out every time the garden is open. And our purpose, to grow
healthy food and to feed others is coming true. We are growing stronger as a community because of the garden. The Fiskars grant has made that possible. We would not have been this far along in this project without this grant and I am so grateful that they as a company are right there with us. Thanks Fiskars!"

Gina Garner - "It was a great event. The garden, though challenges being faced from time to time, is truly one of God's handiworks."

Susan Greene - "A great write up in the Sunday paper. Watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumber and onion with dill and sour cream salad, ratatouille, sautéed swiss chard with onion and garlic, chopped swiss chard stalks with pasta in a cream reduction sauce, zucchini bread, homemade bread, tomato, cucumber and onion salad vinaigrette, sautéed okra, fried okra, herbs and flowers in a local potters vase, the mayor cutting our ribbon with giant orange handled shears, a town council woman, friends, love, community members all together, all in our garden, all from our garden, great food and fellowship, sustainable agriculture sustaining us all. It was a memorable night indeed."

The Seagrove Community Garden will have a ribbon cutting on Monday, July 14th. at 7:00 PM. Anyone and everyone from the community is invited to this short and sweet introduction to our vision to "feed the people in front of us." Our hope is that official representation from the town of Seagrove will be in attendance as well.

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The following images are from a workshop on bee keeping and "diverse community involvement" that 4 of our members attended at Anathoth Community Garden in Cedar Grove, NC. This workshop was the next to last in a series presented by Piedmont Interfaith Network of Gardens. The final workshop will also be at Anathoth on July 26th., and will be on food preservation.

 

We are all learning gardening lessons as we experience this journey of community building. There have been many different lessons. For example: Whe using square foot gardening techniques to plant swiss chard there should be 4 seeds per square foot. If you plant 16 seeds per square foot there will be more work needed to thin the plants to allow room for grow.  The good news from this "mistake"  was there was lots to eat when the lush green plants were thinned. Some of us had fresh greens for a salad and others were treated to lightly sauteed swiss chard at our pot luck supper tonight.  

 Along with the bounty our garden is starting to produce, we are learning to battle potato bugs and keeping weeds from over taking the rich beds, which is a challenge!  The tools we have received from Fiskars are helping with the weed control! God is good.

Slate and Tim mowing some of the overgrowth. Can you see our deer fence in the background?

Thinned swiss chard ready to go to the kitchen.

With all the rain we've had this past week, interspersed with plenty of sunshine, our garden is really taking off! So are the weeds. We spent some time in a planning session, trying to chart a more defined course for our next few workdays, and some time thinning out the carrots too. Even though our numbers were few, we got quite a bit accomplished. Hmmmmmhhh, chopping weeds while conversing with both new and old friends is a pretty good way to spend a Saturday morning. Oh yeah, the last image is of our first tomato. Yippee!

Since our last entry our garden made the front page of our local newspaper!  The Seagrove Community Garden is continuing to take shape. To date we have 23 families that have joined!

The biggest task has been putting up a deer fence which consisted of setting 12 foot posts around the perimeter and then tying the plastic fencing material to the posts.  Although we love our local wildlife, we want to keep the fruits of our garden available for our members and those in need. Another challenge has been putting together an irrigation system. Thanks to Fiskars, a large percentage of our grant money has been used to purchase garden hoses, drip hoses and connectors to help much needed water get to our sprouting plants. We also were able to get a couple of wheelbarrows.

We have been busy planting. Kennebec, Cobbler and Yukon potatoes were the first vegetables to go in the ground along with lettuce and spinach seedlings. Beds of beets, carrots, sugar snap peas, scallions, yellow and white onions were next, as well as different varieties of tomatoes including German Johnson, Roqq Paste, Mt. Spring and cherry. We have also planted Heritage green squash, Heritage golden hubbard squash, Botanical yellow crookneck squash, muskmelon, watermelon and some sweet corn. Marigolds have been added to discourage pests!

Our ground is rich as evidenced by lots of red wiggling worms. We were thrilled to notice lady bugs last time we were there. We have so many people to be thankful for, but especially God, for inviting us on this journey.

The seed that started the Seagrove Community Garden was planted at a conference in April 2007 entitled "Food, Faith, and Farming." The two thoughts that pervaded the conference were - hunger is a community problem, and feeding the hungry is an issue of faithfulness. 12% of all North Carolinians are suffering from "food insecurity," the new USDA term for hunger. That equates to 1 million people in North Carolina alone, 400,000 of which are children.

Armed and inspired with this knowledge, we began a search for a way to involve our congregation in feeding the hungry. We stumbled upon a Bible study called "Just Eating?" which uses scripture, prayer and stories from the local and global community to explore four key aspects of our relationship with food - the health of our bodies, the health of the earth that provides our food, the ways we use food to extend hospitality and enrich relationships, and the challenge of hunger. In June/July of 2007 a small group met one night a week for the seven (7) week course of study, the outcome of which was our calling to start a community garden. Additionally, two members of our Bible study offered the use of roughly 3/4 of an acre of family land for the garden.

In November of 2007 our garden area was bush hogged; plowed, disked, tilled, chicken litter applied, and tilled once more. An appropriate cover crop was selected, broadcast, and the garden spent the winter resting. While the garden was resting our steering committee was busy preparing for a workshop to be held in our garden and church in February. The workshop was part of our group’s involvement in a new organization called Piedmont Interfaith Network of Gardens, PING for short. PING, assisted by Heifer International, is hosting 6 workshops throughout 2008, and our garden agreed to host the first one.

In mid February 2008 our garden was spread with horse manure, and less than two weeks later the beds were plowed by a local gentleman and his mule team. On February 23^rd we conducted the first PING workshop, our topic being Christian hospitality and how that relates to community, communion and creation. We spent the morning working in the garden with our guests, and the afternoon in table fellowship and listening to lectures.

In January we received an e-mail announcing the Fiskars 6^th Annual Project Orange Thumb grant. After delegating responsibilities to our steering committee, we completed and sent off our application on February 9^th . We received notification we had won on March 13^th , and the tools, gift card and Project Orange Thumb tee shirts arrived on April 4th. On April 8^th  we put the tools to use for the first time when we started cleaning up our garden’s perimeter so we could install a deer fence, and we began planting on April 12^th , with the 22 families who have signed up and agreed to garden together.

Our garden is an organic, raised bed garden using a square foot, companion garden techniques, (something most of us are learning one day at a time). We are anxiously awaiting the fruits of our labor from the first planting of marigolds, onions, lettuce, spinach, radishes, potatoes, beets, sweet potatoes, carrots, and nasturtiums. Weekly work days are planned for the next month.  

For more information about our garden go to http://seagrovegarden.blogspot.com/