HomeGrown Directory

Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture Seeks Volunteers!

We need your support! Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture is seeking volunteers to assist farmers participating in the 2010 High Country Farm Tour. The farm tour is August 7th and 8th, 2-6PM and includes 17 farms in Watauga, Ashe, and Wilkes counties. The farm tour is not possible without the support of our invaluable volunteers! Volunteers help farmers by directing parking, greeting and registering visitors, and accepting payment for farm tour tickets, BRWIA tote bags, and cookbooks. In exchange for volunteering on one day of the tour, volunteers will receive a free ticket to attend the other day of the tour. Together, we can strengthen our local food system! Sign up to volunteer with Blue Ridge Women in Agriculture by e-mailing contactbrwia@gmail.com with the subject “Farm Tour Volunteer.” Please include your name and phone number.

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.