Giver's Gallery, Gratitude and Updates

Lettuce ready for planting - April 2011

We've been watching the dramatic weather world-wide; floods, droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, heat waves and record snows! It seems more important than ever to be helping people learn this basic skill of growing food while building community ties amongst neighbors. We are very grateful for the surge of support that has come to us since we lost greenhouse access and the big grant we applied for. All told, we received close to $2,000 in donations from people near and far. We have also received materials donations and the warming weather here in the Pacific NW has brought out droves of volunteers, both new faces and familiar friends from last year.

Our garden "palette" to choose from - May 2011

We have been moving forward in faith, trusting that there is some greater purpose to recent events. We don't want to miss it by wallowing in regret or judgment. We feel on-purpose again and happy to honor the commitments we have for growing food for those in need, and continuing to develop this model of gardening that builds community and helps increase local food security. We have some exciting prospects calling us forward and are freeing-up our energies to pursue those. Thank you to everyone for your wise words and all the ways you have shown us that this program matters to you. It has really helped.

A few highlights since our last post:

Jan with lettuce for the Food Bank

Harvest has begun: We've begun to harvest from the gardens! The cool, wet spring has been very good for our lettuce and kale. Volunteers have been taking home as much as they can eat, we took thirty lettuce-heads to the food bank last week and another twenty to the Monroe Legion Hall: they serve lunch to seniors twice a week and appreciate the fresh vegetables we're able to provide. The seniors take home whatever isn't used in the lunches. This week's lettuce harvest was over 40 heads!

Llyn with spring's bounty!

Straw delivery: We are extremely grateful to Mark Frystak, a resident of Monroe who saw our recent wishlist posted in the Tribune News and came through with 55 bales of straw for us to begin to mulch the gardens. Everyone agrees that the straw makes the garden look so tidy, volunteers love the dry comfort of weeding from straw paths and the worms, snakes and other garden-friendly wildlife appreciate the food and shelter it provides. We can still use much more straw, and will continue to have need all through the season. We used about 10 tons last year and had about a third less garden in cultivation. If you know of anyone with bales to donate, we can probably arrange for pick-up. Here's a link to our full wish-list.

A-Frame - tomato cages with mulch on the paths

Young people in the garden: The last day of school is June 10 but we're already receiving lots of help from some of the local young people. Weeding, mulching, planting seeds and transplanting starts...all these tasks provide meaningful activity and fun in a town without much else to do after school. One afternoon last week we had five kids stop by; some just to visit, and others to help out.

Seth and Ricardo take lettuce home to their families after helping us mulch the garden paths

Volunteers: We've got some new faces and many of the core group of volunteers coming back from last year. Today we had five people helping with the harvest and other tasks. These included Pastor Mark Peterson from the nearby Monroe Church of Christ, Jim and Cindy Kitchen who are the coordinators for a garden modeled after the Sharing Gardens, in Corvallis and Larry Winiarski who went above and beyond the call of duty and patiently took apart our donated lawnmower that hasn't been working at all this season. He finally sleuthed out the problem and got her running! Now maybe our garden paths won't look quite so shaggy. Thanks to all the rest of you who have been coming out to help.

Jan, spreading mulch

Jennifer and Llyn planting tomatoes

Larry (the lawnmower doctor) starting seeds at the Monroe garden

The gardens are starting to take shape. We've been preparing beds and planting almost every day. Here are some pictures of the garden's progress:

"Butter Crunch" lettuce

Pepper plants interspersed with red lettuce. The lettuce will be harvested before the peppers get too big.

Much thanks too to all the people bringing us your used pots and flats. We're glad to give them new life. Phyllis Derr has been calling us to pick up her lawn clippings in Monroe. We use them to mulch. We've received financial donations since our last post from Jennie and Kris Rhoads, Craig Erken, Karen Josephson, Angee Costa and Chuck and Betty Conway. And thanks to Steve Rose who, once again has grown hundreds of tomato starts which he gives away to food-bank recipients, volunteers and provides us with the surplus at the Sharing Gardens. 

It looks like we'll have quite a few extra tomatoes to give away. First come, first served. Stop on by the Monroe garden during volunteer times if you'd like to take some home to your own garden.

Feeding Each Other, Feeding Ourselves

As the seasons cycle to the darkest times, and the garden has finally been put to rest, it's time to reflect on all we were able to accomplish this year. This posting will touch on some of the highlights. If you are interested in reading the full report, just send us an email and we'll forward it to you.

In 2010, the "Sharing Gardens" scope expanded in three significant ways: size of the gardens themselves, volunteer participation and amount of food grown and shared. In 2009, Chris and I were able to do most of the gardening ourselves. Alpine's "Sharing Garden" is 80' x 100' and, at the peak of the season we were taking about one wheelbarrow full of produce to the Food Bank each week.

Llyn Peabody with our very first harvest - July, 2009

The Monroe site is almost two and a half times larger. Its dimensions are 110' x 170" (18,700 sq/ft) and, during our peak eight weeks of harvest we were consistently bringing in 275 - 325 pounds of fresh, organic vegetables per week! Here is a list of some of our top performers. We grew:

Green Beans: 225 lbs
Cucumbers: 653 lbs
Summer Squash/Zucchini: 340 lbs
Winter Squash: 500
Tomatoes: a whopping 1,285 lbs (we had almost 200 tomato plants this year!)

Our grand total was in the ballpark of 5,000 pounds at a local market value of $9,950.

"Moonglow" tomatoes at harvest time.

As those of you who have been following this blog know, we couldn't have done it without the steady and loving support from the volunteer team. Over the course of the summer, we had 34 people volunteer in the gardens. Our youngest was Ricardo - eight years old - (Ismael - "My's" little brother), who affectionately became known as "Bob". And we had two volunteers in their 70's. Twelve of the volunteers are recipients of the Food Bank's services and thirteen had had little or no gardening experience before they joined in this project.

"Food Bank" and "Sharing Gardens" volunteers - reveling in the harvest. That's a box of "commercial" tomatoes on the right...flavorless and hard as tennis balls but that's what most Food bank customers were used to so they had a certain following. As the summer went on and people tried the heirloom varieties, most folks found their tastes changing and began reaching for our tomatoes instead. Our composting worms weren't picky and happily consumed all of the commercial tomatoes that got passed by.

Some of my favorite memories from this summer will be those late August, Thursday mornings when we'd get started at 8:00 or 8:30 to beat the heat, and to get the harvest in by 10:00 when the Food Bank opened. The volunteers would start arriving shortly after Chris and I began and it was all we could do to ride the wave of their enthusiasm and focused harvesting. Chris would direct the team of 6 - 8 people in the field while I weighed and recorded the quantities of vegetables and then wheel-barrowed the towering loads to the Food Bank. People clustered in picking-teams in the beans, catching up on the week's news or soloed in the tomato patch filling bucket after bucket of heirloom tomatoes - presorting so the best quality went to the Food Bank and the split or bruised ones could be taken home for canning projects. The Monroe Gardens became a focal point for visitors as well. Ol' Howard, the neighbor, would ride up on his lawnmower and cheer us on from the side-lines. He just didn't want to go till he got his weekly hug and then you'd hear him whistling happily as he toodled off. Clusters of volunteers interested in such topics as electric cars, solar power and straw-bale construction would regale each other with stories of their exploits and experiments and new friendships were made while the fence was built and the lettuce got transplanted.

That's Ol' Howard on the right. He came to check up on us the very first day we cleaned out the shed at the Monroe site. He told us later, "I never thought you guys could do what you set out to do but now I've got egg on my face!" From our biggest doubter to our biggest fan.

We wish to acknowledge the generosity of the couple who invited us over to glean apples from their orchard this fall. We didn't weigh them but we gathered at least 450 pounds. These have been going to the Food Bank each week and distributed amongst volunteers. Chris and I just canned another big batch of applesauce today too. Yum!

Thanks to all of you who have supported this project by donating materials and, in some cases money. And for the kind words that have come our way through notes and comments in passing. Some of you even took the time to write testimonials about your experiences in the Gardens this summer. We have featured some of them here on the site in previous blogs. The rest of them are in an Appendix in the Year End Report. Our funders will be very happy to read about the satisfaction and joy you felt in learning to garden, and can food, and help feed your neighbors and yourselves.

We're just catching our breath from the season's great bounty. Soon we'll be focused on writing grants for next year, building the greenhouse and writing a manual so other communities can start "Sharing Gardens" and learn from our experience.  We've got a back-log of blogs to write about our adventures with seed-saving, other gardening tips and stories from the gardens. Stay tuned.

Chris and Llyn at the Alpine Gardens. (picture by Scobel Wiggins)

Garden Update - October 2010

Here's the latest of what's happening with the Alpine/Monroe Sharing Gardens - October 17, 2010.

This hoop greenhouse is the same size and style as the one we will be building for the Sharing Gardens

Greenhouse 
We are pulling together the support and materials necessary to build a 20' x 96' greenhouse. Chris has been building and managing greenhouses for over 30 years. We will be using a simple hoop-house design (pictured). If you are interested in learning how to build this style of greenhouse, or manage a nursery, let us know so we can keep you informed of volunteer sessions. Having a greenhouse of this size will extend the growing season of tomatoes and peppers by as much as three months (they will ripen earlier and continue later in the season). We will be able to grow enough "starts" for the gardens, for fund raisers and to give away at the food bank. We are grateful to Dorothy and Gary at Alpine Pump for providing us with hundreds of feet of used well-pipe for use in construction. We also have a donor (who wishes to remain anonymous) who has provided all of the 30-foot lengths of re-bar we'll be using for the greenhouse ribs. We are seeking funding for materials and stipend through several granting sources. All donations are tax-deductible.

Tomatoes, purple, yellow and green beans and a cucumber on their way to the food bank.

Harvest Heaven
In spite of a cold, wet spring, difficulties in getting our new garden-site sufficiently plowed, growing the majority of our "starts" out of an 8' x 8' greenhouse (thank-you Estell/Kreths!), the Sharing Gardens have had a remarkably productive second year. We kept a bathroom scale at the Monroe garden and kept a rough tally of the harvest as we delivered it to the food-bank next door. The gardens still have a week or two to go but here are just a few highlights of this year's harvest:

Tomatoes: 1,210 pounds (thank you Steve Rose and Larry Hammon for donating so many of the 200 tomatoes we planted this year.) Organic, heirloom tomatoes are selling for $4 to $5 a pound in our area.
Cucumbers: 575 pounds
String Beans: 220 pounds

"Moonglow" tomatoes - an heirloom variety

There were some crops that didn't do as well as we'd hoped. We planted four different corn crops at the Monroe garden and the crows ate the sprouting seeds for all but one crop that we had sprouted in the greenhouse and transplanted. We had high hopes for the potato crop as we had carefully "chitted" such a huge quantity of seed-potatoes. The time came when we just couldn't wait to put them in the ground any longer but the ground was still so wet and heavy. We'll need a different strategy on both crops in 2011.

A happy harvester, picking out his pumpkin

Community Celebration:
Every third Thursday, the United Methodist Church hosts a free dinner open to everyone who would like to attend. Cash donations are welcome (though not required) and, side dishes/desserts are always appreciated. Please come join us for a harvest celebration and meet neighbors you never knew you had! Food Bank is from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. The Community Dinner begins at 6:00 pm in the basement of the United Methodist Church: 648 Orchard St., Monroe, OR 97456

Gallery of Givers: Our volunteer team has been wonderful this year. We truly could not have done it without them. Here are some faces of some of those who have been willing to get their hands dirty, showed up week after week - regardless of weather, and sometimes arriving as early as 8:30 in the morning to be sure the harvest was in, in time for the food-bank's opening. We are also so grateful to all the behind-the-scenes support we have received through grants, donations and kind words spurring us on.

Rann and Doreen in the bean tipi

Steve N. watering the transplants

Llyn's mom, Judy, harvesting tomatoes

Jim and Norma harvesting beans

Rann and Bruce fertilizing the plants

Ryan and Cindy in the raspberry patch

Dustin, Lexi, Llyn and Dylan in the bean patch

The Mulch Brigade!

Harvest morning in Monroe

It's Harvest Time!

Autumn is in the air and the gardens have really started to produce a fine harvest! Today was Food Bank day and here is a list of what was shared amongst volunteers and distributed at the Food Bank.

Alpine - most of a week's harvest - August 25, 2010

Tomatoes: 49 pounds
Cucumbers: 125 pounds
Zucchini/Summer Squash: 55 pounds
Basil: 4 pounds
Beets: 20 pounds
Cabbage: 15 pounds
Green peppers: 3 pounds
Green beans: 20 pounds

That's over 240 pounds of fresh produce in one week!

We are focused almost entirely on harvesting now. Our volunteer team (people who show up on a weekly, or bi-weekly basis) is nine-strong and we have another half-dozen folks who have helped us out on a more occasional basis. Our volunteers include Mi (13- short for "Ismael") and Ricardo (8), two Latino brothers who are helping feed their family with the food they bring home. We have people who found out about us because they have needed food from the Food Bank due to job-losses in their families. We have married couples and single people and several members of the team are in their 60's. Everyone shares a love for gardening and a desire to contribute to creating local food-self sufficiency.

Much of Monroe's harvest - August 26, 2010

Our weekly volunteer times at the Monroe site have become quite a social hub. Many people come to help with the gardening and others stop by just because it feels good to be in the atmosphere of service and giving that the garden provides. Volunteers usually spend two to three hours weeding, mulching, planting or harvesting and then we take a break in the shade, eat cookies someone has brought, sip iced tea or fresh, delicious well-water (Thanks again Chester for getting the well hooked up again!). Today people were munching on fresh picked beans and last week, Mi sampled his first fresh beet (peeled and stuck on a shish-kabob stick to keep his hands clean.) With a big, red grin he said, "These are great! And my mom says they'll give me a healthy body." Yes they will, Mi. We're so happy to see you developing a taste for healthy fresh produce!

Cathy, Danielle and Llyn with kale for the Food bank

There's going to be a lot more harvesting and fun to be had before we put the garden to sleep later this fall. If you're local, remember that you can bring your own garden surplus to the Food Bank (just do a search on our site for the hours). If you'd like to join the other volunteers, send us an email and we'll add you to the list.

When to Harvest in the Sharing Gardens

This post is addressed to volunteers and anyone who is harvesting directly out of the Sharing Gardens for their own use.

Volunteers Cathy, Danielle and Llyn with bouquets of kale

With the warm, sunny weather, the Sharing Gardens are poised to burst into high productivity! The cool-weather crops: broccoli, peas and lettuce are just about done. We've already begun harvesting yellow summer-squash, zucchini and slicing cucumbers from the Monroe garden and have picked a few ripe pickling cukes and tomatoes from the Alpine garden. The modest trickle we're experiencing now promises to become quite a big harvest in the days and weeks to come.

Alpine Garden - August 13, 2009

Soon, the gardens will need to be picked at least twice a week to keep up with them. (Just to give you an idea of the volumes we're looking at, we have close to 200 tomato plants, about 20 summer squash/zucchini and over 30 cucumber plants!) 

We would appreciate it if all volunteers and anyone else harvesting from the gardens, would do their pickings on the weekends.   

This way, the gardens will be picked twice a week and we'll be sure we have enough produce to take to the Food Bank on Thursdays.  
 

Food Bank harvest - July 2010    

Good news: We've begun having conversations with the United Methodist Church about the possibility of having some canning parties in their commercial kitchen.  We'll keep you posted.

Our contact info is in the upper right-hand corner of this website.

Much Gratitude!

Monroe Food Bank Hours

This post covers the Food Bank hours in Monroe. 

Please consider sharing the surplus from your own garden.

2009 Tomato Harvest

Fresh produce is greatly appreciated by the people who come to the Food Bank. As your own gardens come into high production, and you find yourself with surplus, please consider dropping it off at the Food Bank. You can leave it under the carport, behind the church, Wednesday evenings or any time Thursday mornings.

Food Bank Hours:

Thursday mornings 10:00 - noon

Except 3rd Thursdays: 5:00 - 7:00 pm 

(followed by a free community dinner hosted by the Methodist Church - all are welcome)

Where:  648 Orchard St.,  behind the United Methodist Church, in Monroe

A special thanks to Loren Bowman for his many years of selfless service in support of this local effort to ease the burden on our neighbors in need.

(Volunteers enjoying a cookie break at the Monroe garden - above - Thanks Joanie!)