HomeGrown Directory

BRWIA announces the first in a year-long series of potlucks and presentations relating to local food issues. The first in the series will be held on May 13 from 6-7:30pm at the Watauga County Agricultural Conference Center. Bring a dish to share and join BRWIA in hearing from ASU honor student, Matt Ballard, who will give a presentation entitled, “Canned responses to food insecurity: Proposal of an alternative and just approach”.

Current food assistance programs, although beneficial to low-income Americans, require a better understanding of the context between issues of production (supply) and consumption (demand). The current agroindustrial food system often disenfranchises Americans, particularly those of low-income. These inequities require an alternative approach to improve food security.

The Leola Street Community Garden is entering its 3rd growing season. Over the past two years the community garden has seen 45 different participants with 30 active participants each year. We have grown all kinds of vegetables, flowers, and herbs. There is a peace garden with medicinal herbs and herbs for tea along with flowers randomly about. Along Leola Street we have 35 dwarf apple trees which came from Big Horse Creek Farms in Ashe County. There are benches for resting, socializing, or observing. We have created the beginnings of a children's garden with the work of Two Rivers Community School. W.A.M.Y. has partnered to assist in meeting low-incomes with necessary resources. The community garden has supported participants by providing seeds, compost when enough funds, mulch, straw, leaves, and tools.

Those who have participated last year I must know by March 15th if you will renew your space or want more space or have something else you need to do. Please email, phone, or meet with me so we can sign up, deal with the usage fees, and cover guidelines or questions.

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The Leola Street Community Garden is entering its 3rd growing season. Over the past two years the community garden has seen 45 different participants with 30 active participants each year. We have grown all kinds of vegetables, flowers, and herbs. There is a peace garden with medicinal herbs and herbs for tea along with flowers randomly about. Along Leola Street we have 35 dwarf apple trees which came from Big Horse Creek Farms in Ashe County. There are benches for resting, socializing, or observing. We have created the beginnings of a children's garden with the work of Two Rivers Community School. W.A.M.Y. has partnered to assist in meeting low-incomes with necessary resources. The community garden has supported participants by providing seeds, compost when enough funds, mulch, straw, leaves, and tools.

Those who have participated last year I must know by March 15th if you will renew your space or want more space or have something else you need to do. Please email, phone, or meet with me so we can sign up, deal with the usage fees, and cover guidelines or questions.

read more

Buy Local. I’d add Buy Informed. Asheville has a strong buy local campaign and I do what I can to support it. But I just got back from a two week trip to Guatemala that gave me another perspective on my purchasing power.

I visited three different farms and fincas (plantations) in and around Antigua, Guatemala. La Azotea is an organic coffee plantation. Valhalla is an organic macadamia nut farm. I also toured a poinsettia factory. And all are amazing.

Café Justo

I am a coffee drinker. I love it. But seeing it grow on the tree and pluck off a little red berry was a whole new experience. Squeeze the ripe berry and out pops the green coffee bean, wrapped in a clear, sweet jelly-like mess. These are arabica beans, like they grow all over Guatemala. Shade grown and harvested once a year by hand. They are picked, washed, processed, dried, and roasted all right there. I put my hand in a pile of green beans drying in the sun. I watched men shovel dried coffee bean husks they use for organic mulch. I smelled fresh coffee – roasted exactly 18 minutes to perfection. I bought several pounds of coffee right then and there.

From now on I don’t think I’ll ever purchase generic coffee again. And I don’t have the heart to pour out a half drunk cup either – because I think of the people that actually picked my coffee by hand. I will buy informed.

Flower Power

Seventy-five percent (75%) of all poinsettias sold in the US get their start in Guatemala. I toured a poinsettia plantation where rows of greenhouses are tucked in the valley between two volcanoes. It is powerful and beautiful. Agua towers one side, while Fuego steams on the other.

Two greenhouses are for propagation. Patricia, the propagation guru, gave us a tour. I have never seen anyone as proud of root shoots and plant starts as she was. She loves her job. The other 30 or so greenhouses are used to grow the poinsettias. Although no one on the Guatemala side of the business actually sees the poinsettias flower. They grow and export them before they flower. Businesses in the US buy the plants and grow them to the flowering point and sell them under the “Made in the USA” label. Nothing wrong with that, but I like knowing how it all got started.

Women and men from local villages walk, ride a bike, or carpool to the plantation. They dip their boots in water before going in and out of each greenhouse to wash off any potential contamination. They wear rubber gloves and hold plastic bags full of clippings and leaves, as they work methodically along the rows of plants. They look for any imperfection or infestation. They water and fertilize. Pinch and cut back. They tend hundreds of thousands of plants by hand.

Next Christmas when I buy a Freedom Red or Prestige poinsettia at Home Depot or Wal-Mart, I will be proud to know that I saw where they got their start. And I know all the work it took to make this little plant grow. I will buy informed.

The Miracle Nut

The Valhalla Organic Macadamia Nut farm is a little ways outside Antigua. I made this tour with a busload of other students from the PROBIGUA language school. There is no electricity on the farm. They gather the nuts after they fall naturally from the tree. The nuts are dried on racks – you know when they are ready when you shake them and you hear the nut rattle inside. The nuts are sorted by hand and then the shells are cracked open using a human-powered machine.

But what they were really selling at Valhalla were the health and beauty benefits of macadamias. I heard everything from they prevent cancer to erase wrinkles. A miracle nut!

I thought macadamias just grew in Hawaii. Once again, I learned something new. I connected the people and the plants. I don’t regularly buy macadamia nuts, but the next time I do, I will buy informed.

Last year, the Watauga County Democratic Party canvassed in a number of areas around Watauga County, and identified a number of needs and concerns, the greatest of which was the need for self-sufficiency and sustainability. Several projects were suggested, but the one that resonated with the largest number of people was the idea of community gardens.
As Watauga county's population has grown and changed, family and subsistence farming has become a vanishing culture. Instead of small gardens dotting the local landscape, food production has become a faceless industry.
A community garden can serve an important role to change that, in both towns and rural areas. It provides a source of high quality food, as most community gardens require organic garden practices. It is a source of low-cost food for low income families and seniors on fixed incomes so they can have access to nutritional meals. It provides a sense of community as people join together to garden. And it helps children form a sense of where their food comes from and feel a connectedness to the land.
To these ends, Community Gardens of the Blue Ridge has committed to and already has possibilities for garden plots in several areas in Watauga County. Gardens in a Habitat for Humanity community and for senior citizens next to the Western Watauga Community Center are already in the works. The gardens would be permanent additions to these locations. We believe that these locations actively express our goals of self-sufficiency and sustainability.
While this project was a Democratic initiative, it has grown far beyond that. Indeed, our core committee is comprised of a wide-ranging spectrum of individuals from diverse religious, political and philosophical backgrounds, ages (students to seniors), and gardening experience (novices to professional gardeners), all working together to nourish bodies, souls and soil.
As with any fledgling project, Community Gardens of the Blue Ridge needs a great deal of help to start out on the right track. While the work of maintaining the gardens will be up to the recipients of the garden plots, our group is charged with providing tools, seeds, plants, wood for raised beds and all the other items that make for a successful garden, and we're asking for your help.
We are open to any suggestions, as well as offers of help.
Sincerely,

Bob Gow

Professional gardener, landscaper

Jasmine ShoShanna

Interim Director

The following is a "Wish List". If you can supply any of the materials or labor, or sponsor a garden, we would love to hear from you. If you are interested in coming to the meetings to help out, call either Bob at 297.5479 or Jasmine at 297.4677.
Wish List -

• Garden Sponsorships @ $50, $75, $100
• Hoses
• Spades, forks, rakes, trowels
• Lockable sheds
• Wheel Barrows
• Chicken Wire for compost piles
• Mulch (straw, leaves, cardboard)
• Manure, especially horse, llama, goat & cow manure

Equipment we would like to borrow/ have donated or have you donate time and equipment -

• Tractor
• Roto tillers

Community Gardens of the Blue Ridge seeks to encourage self-sufficiency and healthy environments while providing wholesome food, reestablishing our connections to the land, providing a classroom for our youth, and creating community. Goals:

• to create self-sufficient people who know how to provide their own food.
• to improve our environment via organic farming techniques.
• to improve our environment via the reduction of the transportation of food to our community.
• to reconnect people to the land.
• to reconnect people with people.
• to revive a vanishing culture.

The first one, a couple of weeks ago, a cheeky piece on how to have a "green" Thanksgiving; the other, just out today, a review of legendary multi-species pastured meat farmer Joel Salatin's new book. These are independent of my regular blogging on Gristmill.org. Check them out.