Greetings from the Sharing Gardens! We certainly are in 'shifting times'! Some areas of our amazing planet are receiving unprecedented flooding while others can't seem to break out of a drought cycle. Far more people fall into financial hardship each year and the natural world continues to face threats from all sides. So, how do we respond? We believe each of us has a unique role to play and that ours at the Sharing Gardens is to continue to demonstrate the power of generosity and mutual aid. Read below about the local challenges we are facing and how we are rising to meet them.
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| Service Learning student |
The Sharing Gardens are a unique style of community garden. Instead of
separate plots that people rent from the owners of the land, we all
garden together, for free! This has great benefits: it makes watering
more efficient, one is able to grow pure seed, pest management is
simplified, all while growing more food in the same amount of space. Overview and Benefits of the Sharing Gardens.
Our
'sharegivers' (volunteers) join us through all parts of the
food-growing cycle, including: planting, mulching, weeding, making compost,
harvesting, processing grains and beans by hand and saving seed. Our
garden is a school, and a sanctuary for people and the natural world.
The food that is grown is shared among those who help grow it or contribute in other ways.The surplus is donated to food charities.
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| Sharegivers (volunteers) sharing in the harvest - 2016 |
Over the last several years, the focus of the Sharing Gardens has shifted. In the beginning (16 years ago!) our main objective was to grow the greatest volume of high-quality vegetables as we could (over 6,000 measured pounds annually, from 2012 - 2015!) and share them all freely (no one charged for the food that is grown). When we started out, we were the only gardeners providing significant amounts of produce to the food charities we served.
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| Llyn, with less than half of
one week's donations to our local Food Pantry - 2017 (cucumbers,
tomatoes, carrots, beans, squash, greens). This was before other
gardeners in the community began making significant donations. |
Gradually, our town's Food Pantry (S. Benton Food Pantry) began benefiting from donations from other sources: Family gardens began contributing significant amounts of summer-fresh produce: tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers etc. In
addition, SBFP also began collecting summer
produce from the Corvallis Farmer's Market (produce left over at day's
end that the farmers couldn't sell) and receiving staple crops such as
potatoes from local
small-scale farmers who received grants to grow specifically for Food Pantries. All this on top of the commodity crops provided through USDA support (apples, oranges etc).
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| Our same Pantry's produce tables, Oct. 2025. Our cabbage, cukes and greens are squeezed in amongst the other bounty. |
With all this additional support, for the last five years or so, there were many times
during the peak summer months of garden production that it was
literally impossible to find room on the tables at the pantry for our donations! (Now that's what I call a 'high-quality problem!'). Also, during this time, our volunteer support began to dwindle, so gradually we shifted away from producing significant surplus of
these 'summer-ripening' crops that need tending and harvesting
throughout their peak season and began focusing more on storage crops like dried beans and grains, winter squash along with cabbage and root vegetables such as
potatoes, carrots and beets. But it's hard to grow enough of these crops to make much of a difference at food pantries. We primarily only share them with the people who help us grow the food.
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Summertime harvest from our gardens at peak season, 2022.
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This was what we planned to do again this year when we heard that massive funding cuts have been announced that will reduce the
amount of produce coming from government-funded sources including USDA
commodity foods and grants for farmers. This has sent ripples of alarm
through the food-charity community and will have significant impacts on their
ability to distribute fresh produce.
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| Sharing Gardens donation of lettuce to Local Aid, Junction City - 2015 |
It's not too late for the Sharing Gardens to step up and return to producing more of the summer-ripening produce. But this would take much stronger volunteer support than we've received in recent years and at this point we're not sure this is the best focus for our energies and resources. The summer-ripening crops (tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers etc) with their
pruning, watering, weeding and weekly, or bi-weekly harvests, take more energy than growing storage crops like winter
squash, dried grains and beans which, once planted, mulched
and weeded a few times don't need much attention till autumn
harvests and, if the past 5-7 years are any indicator, Food Charities (at least the ones we're in regular contact) with receive lots of donations from local gardeners of these summer-ripening crops anyway.
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| Elisa and Maiya with a donation to the SB Food Pantry: tomatoes, cantaloupe and greens. |
It is our strong feeling that we are in a better position to continue developing methods and mentoring others in the areas that are less commonly addressed through regular gardening sites; things like small-scale dried grain and bean production and processing, and seed saving; and to be available to coach others wanting to start sharing-type gardens in their own communities.
That being said, there is still room this season in the Monroe Sharing Gardens for a handful of committed folks who want to learn how to grow food and save seed in a cooperative environment; in a spirit of mutual generosity.
If, after reading this
info about our volunteer program, you feel like it's a good fit, we hope you'll be in contact with us.
Meanwhile, we are grateful to see that some of this 'mutual generosity' is already showing up. We are heartened that our neighbor Deb Moss has offered to bring her small tractor and till up a bunch of ground that has been invaded by grasses. This will allow us to use our garden space more efficiently, whatever crops we grow.
Vincent Drew has reached out to us from Linn/Benton Food Share, the warehouse/coordination-center that distributes food to most of the food charities in our area. He has offered to come help in the gardens when we have a particularly large harvest, to pack it up in LBFS totes and take it directly to the warehouse refrigerators for distribution.
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| Chris and Joey sharing in the autumn apple harvest. |
So, while in some ways we feel a sense of nostalgia for the early days
of the gardens with its dynamic pace and sheer abundance in
productivity, we're also grateful that our program still has relevance
to our changing times. We still
are growing impressive amounts of food; all shared freely and
our role as mentors and educators continues to expand. We are so happy when we hear of other community
gardens shifting to the Sharing Gardens model and like to believe that
in some small way, we helped to plant and nurture this seed of
generosity by what we've demonstrated here.
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| Volunteers help with all aspects of growing food: shifting mushroom compost for soil-fertility. |
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| Weeding is a lot more fun with company. |
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| When kids help grow food, they're more likely to enjoy eating it! |
Greetings from the Sharing Gardens! We certainly are in 'shifting times'! Some areas of our amazing planet are receiving unprecedented flooding while others can't seem to break out of a drought cycle. Far more people fall into financial hardship each year and the natural world continues to face threats from all sides. So, how do we respond? We believe each of us has a unique role to play and that ours at the Sharing Gardens is to continue to demonstrate the power of generosity and mutual aid. Read below about the local challenges we are facing and how we are rising to meet them. 
Our
'sharegivers' (volunteers) join us through all parts of the
food-growing cycle, including: planting, mulching, weeding, making compost,
harvesting, processing grains and beans by hand and saving seed. Our
garden is a school, and a sanctuary for people and the natural world. 
It's not too late for the Sharing Gardens to step up and return to producing more of the summer-ripening produce. But this would take much stronger volunteer support than we've received in recent years and at this point we're not sure this is the best focus for our energies and resources. The summer-ripening crops (tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers etc) with their
pruning, watering, weeding and weekly, or bi-weekly harvests, take more energy than growing storage crops like winter
squash, dried grains and beans which, once planted, mulched
and weeded a few times don't need much attention till autumn
harvests and, if the past 5-7 years are any indicator, Food Charities (at least the ones we're in regular contact) with receive lots of donations from local gardeners of these summer-ripening crops anyway.
