--Ralph Waldo Emerson
Remember the story of "Stone Soup"? A couple of strangers wander into a
town of suspicious people and offer to make Stone Soup. No one believes
it can be done, and everyone withholds contributing until a small child,
who hasn't been tainted yet by the town's stingy spirit, brings forth a
few onions stored in her family's root cellar. One by one the
townspeople get caught up in the spirit of sharing and, by the end of
the story they all sit down to delicious soup, made better by what each
of them contributed.
 |
| Volunteers gather food for Farm to Farm Century Ride - 2012 |
The Sharing Gardens are a lot like Stone Soup. Everything that goes into
making it a success comes from the generosity of people near and far.
Some people give time, some give money and some bring us surplus
materials they don't have need of, or even things like grass clippings,
old cedar boards or other things bound for the dump or burn-pile. The
gardens become a focal point for giving
and receiving -- with
each person who donates being blessed with the good feeling that they
are making the world a better place through their contributions. And,
for those local enough to partake, they're sharing in the bounty of the
garden's beautiful harvest as well.
December 2019
We have so much to be grateful for.
Cash donations from individuals:
- Peter Stoehl, Karen Josephson - $2,100 (from an I.R.A required distribution).
- Judy Peabody - $500
- Karen Salot: $100
- Lee Cornforth: $100
- Jim and Cindy Kitchen: $50
 |
| Jim and Cindy Kitchen (with Chris in the middle) - enjoying watermelon. |
Other donations:
- Victor Stone - honey (when a huge maple tree split open in a storm
this winter, it revealed a hive of wild bees who then abandoned their
hive leaving us with two gallons of wild-honey). Four cords of
maple-firewood (a $1,000+ value): Victor already had enough firewood
stored up for his needs so he helped us chop up that maple tree (and two
others that also came down in the storm) and load the "rounds" into our
truck. He got the debris from the storm cleaned up and we got several
winters' worth of firewood. Now that's mutual-generosity! Victor has
many maple trees on his land and this year, once again, he's blown the
leaves into huge piles and then loaded them into our trailer for
garden-use. Nineteen trailer loads so far! - Enough to cover the entire
garden. Much thanks.
- David Crosby - loaned us his log-splitter to split Victor's
wood-donation. Who needs a gym-membership when you have to split and
stack all the wood you'll need to heat your house for the winter? David
is also a local with lots of big trees on his land. We received five
trailer-loads this year that he and his helper collected and delivered!
Wow!
- Neighborhood leaf donations: Our leaf drive has continued
to be a big success. We estimate that we've had approximately 150 bags
of leaves donated this season.
 |
| Llyn
spreading donated leaves. Donations have been enough this year already
to cover all outdoor garden-beds, our greenhouse paths and still have a
surplus for next summer's growing season. |
- S.A.G.E. Garden: S.A.G.E. Garden is a non-profit project
run through the Corvallis Environmental Center. Like us, they grow a
huge garden of organic vegetables to be donated to soup kitchens and
food pantries. We donated over 100 cabbage and broccoli "starts" to them
and they let us fill up a few dozen buckets of their surplus compost.
Again, "mutual generosity"! LINK
- John and Donna Dillard - donated a chest freezer that was no-longer
needed. The Dillards also donated a couple of trees-worth of firewood
from trees taken down to make room for their new house. Also,
cinder-blocks, large plastic and terra cotta planters, and salvaged
lumber. Best neighbors ever!
- Larry M. - Fixed mower belt. Our trusty ride-on mower finally wore
out the belt that drives the mower blade. Larry saved us the money it
would have cost to have it repaired at the dealer, plus the hassle of
transporting the mower.
- Craig Erken: Llyn's uncle Craig donated a Mother Earth
News-subscription - the
classic guide to homesteading. Also, after her help in cleaning out his
garage, Craig donated a dutch-oven we are using to cook with on our
wood-stove, a mini-shop-vac, a Champion juicer and a bunch of other
useful miscellany.
 |
| OSU Service-Learning students with kale-bouquets. Nov. 2019 |
- Peter Alford - driving our donations to Local Aid.
- Wanda Foster: a grocery bag full of fresh-picked Chanterelle
mushrooms (it's been a great year for them but we've only managed to go
out picking a handful of times ourselves).
- Cheryl Anson: wheelbarrow, salvaged redwood decking. Cheryl is the warehouse manager at Local Aid - one of the main recipients of our produce donations.
- Jim and Cindy Kitchen: gloves and pruners. The Kitchens also
transported two of our CSA member's boxes each week on their way home
from volunteering in the gardens.
- Catherine Henry: three and a half pounds of seed garlic (six varieties) which we've planted in our greenhouse.
- Mara Friddle - USDA/NRCS Plant Materials Center: Forty wire tomato cages made from fencing material.
- Our wonderful Share-givers: We couldn't do this without our core
group of six wonderful volunteers. They came almost every week during
the growing season for three hours, doing whatever needed to be done.
- Oregon State University "Service Learning" students: The SG has
hosted six groups of 4-6 students-each to volunteer with us in 2019. The
students receive hands-on experience in some of the many tasks needed
to grow food for the community, an extensive Q&A session where we
delve into their curiosity in living a more generous and sustainable
lifestyle, and we receive an incredible boost of high-energy labor! A
real Win-Win!
 |
| Llyn, with some of summer bounty donated to the SB Food Pantry. |
Foundation grants:
- Benton Community Foundation - $2,400: This grant funded the Sharing Gardens to
provide vegetables to the Total Health Improvement Program (THIP), a
twelve-week free class designed to help participants address, prevent
and heal from chronic health issues through adopting a whole foods,
plant-based diet, and stress-reducing behaviors such as meditation and
exercise. The class is a partnership between our local, Monroe Health Clinic, it's vegan doctor - Dr. Kyle Homertgen, the South Benton Food Pantry and the Sharing Gardens.
- South Benton Food Pantry: $1,800
- for general operating expenses. This is the second year in a row that
SBFP (a main recipient of Sharing Garden's produce) has made this
generous donation.
- OSU Folk Club Thrift Store granted us $772 for general garden
expenses: tools, hoses, gloves and potting soil to fill up our raised
beds.
 |
| Thank you "berry" much! Bella, Adri and Jasmyn enjoy summer's blackberry abundance. |
September 30, 2018
Hi friends - Last week we featured our many share-givers (volunteers) in our gratitude post.
This post is about expressing gratitude to the folks who support the Sharing Gardens in a variety of other ways.
Jessie is new to our garden "family". We met her when she was making a
donation of diapers to the Food Pantry that her one-year old
baby had outgrown. She brings a ray of sunshine wherever she goes!
 |
| Jessie - such a beautifully generous spirit! |
Over the summer she has volunteered at the gardens many times on the weekends, and
helped with planting and weeding tasks. A few weeks ago,
she came bounding into the gardens with her big smile and a bigger
envelope with these words on it:
New Glove Fund-Raiser from Pegasus Farms
Jessie
had noticed that we'd had "gloves" on our wish-list all summer and
decided to do "crowd-funding" at her partner's farm. She put an envelope
up on the company bulletin board that she seeded with $20 from Sean
("cause he's a big softy, and I knew he'd contribute") and left town for
a long weekend. When she got back, everyone else on the farm had added
to the envelope for a total of $160.00! Thanks to Q, Dan-the Solar Man -
Twan, Sean, Dom and Andrew. That will provide us with a great selection
of gloves heading into next year's season (and more).
 |
| Janeece and Dave Cook - generosity personified. |
Janeece wears many hats in our small town of Monroe, Oregon. She is the director of the South Benton Food Pantry (
LINK)
that is located directly next-door to the Sharing Gardens; she serves
on several boards, works for Strengthening Rural Families and seems to
go to every meeting in town that relates to community-issues! She is
also cooking vegan recipes for the free, weekly class on Healthy
Life-style Choices offered by the Monroe Health Clinic and Dr. Kyle
Homertgen - our local, vegan doctor (
LINK).
Dave
is an amazing support for all that Janeece does and also helps a lot
with our local Gleaners group, picking up donated baked goods and other
groceries when the Gleaners need help.
They fostered
two young girls for over a year and bought a swingset for them to enjoy.
When the girls were able to return to live with their Mom,
the Cooks donated the swing-set to the Sharing Gardens.
We have it set up right next to our main garden-shed so that, when
people bring their children to our volunteer-sessions, the kids have
something to play on.
Much thanks!
 |
| Here's Bella - one of the foster children, helping us with the kale harvest. |
John Kinsey: "Kinsey" has been
coming to the gardens since 2011; he lives just a few blocks away. He's
been a great contributor over the years. Here's a list of some of his
contributions:
- volunteering in the gardens
- donating Elephant garlic bulbs to get our patch started
- donating worm-castings and worm-castings-tea from his worm farm
- collecting lawn-clippings and leaves from his neighbors to build our compost piles
- building produce-display-boxes out of scrap lumber - both for us and for the South Benton Food Pantry
- volunteering at the Food Pantry
 |
| John
Kinsey with garlic 'seeds'. His contribution of garlic 'bulbs' has
grown to our current patch with over 200 plants planted for the June
2019 harvest. One of his early nicknames was 'Garlic John'. |
 |
| Our
deep-mulch method of gardening uses tons of leaves and grass-clippings.
John, who's now retired, gathers these materials wherever he can and
donates them to the project. Here's a LINK to our post about using leaves and grass-clippings for soil fertility. |
 |
| John, with a big load of squash-vines for the compost pile. |
 |
| Coffee-grounds
that John picked up from a local coffee-shop. Since coffee is not a
local product and must be shipped in from thousands of miles away, it is
not a sustainable resource. But since the grounds are currently
considered a waste-product, we feel good knowing that we are keeping
them out of the garbage. (LINK to coffee-grounds as fertilizer). |
 |
| Sifting
the coffee-grounds and removing trash that's mixed in is one of the
favorite jobs of our OSU student-volunteers. The grounds sure make our
greenhouses smell nice! |
 |
| Chris and John - building a compost bin. He sure is a big help! |
There are a few donors we don't have pictures of:
Fay and Erik - donated
plastic tubs that are great for weeding, and storing or displaying produce.
Becky Lynn - donated
carpet, seed potatoes
Valerie P.
- For the last two months, Valerie has been making a $10 donation to
the project. We've never met Valerie but are grateful for her support.
You too can make a donation through PayPal by clicking on this link:
Drivers:
Though some of our CSA members pick up their own boxes, we have members
in Eugene and Corvallis who rely on the services of our
delivery-people.
 |
| Cathy Rose delivers to Eugene. Cathy has been with the gardens since 2010 and been a huge supporter. We love you Cathy! |
 |
| Here's Sabine shelling walnuts. She was our delivery-person to Philomath this summer. |
 |
| Jim Kitchen... |
 |
| ...Adri and Cindy Kitchen deliver our Corvallis boxes after spending Wednesday mornings helping in the gardens. |
September 25, 2018
 |
| Llyn with biggest sunflower yet! |
Hello dear people, It's been another summer of bounty
at the Sharing Gardens and we hope this finds you thriving as well.
Though things are still going strong, the first autumn rains and cooler
nights have begun and it's clear that we're past the peak of garden
production. This has been a wonderful season with our Share-givers (
volunteers),
many who are multi-year participants with some beautiful new faces as
well. Often, after a morning session with our garden "family", Chris and
I just lay on our bed feeling full of smiles and gratitude for the
richness of community that has developed around the project.
 |
| Chris, early in the season. |
This year has been our first year offering
CSA/memberships
as a fund-raiser. We've had seven "share-holders" who each receive a
weekly box of produce. Though at times we've felt a bit stressed to keep
up with planting, weeding and harvesting, the excellent support of our
share-givers has made it - mostly- a real pleasure. Our help has been so
good that, for two seasons in a row (summer and autumn) we've declined
receiving volunteer students from OSU's service-learning programs. We
just don't have enough to do to keep six students busy for four hours.
Now that's what we call a "high-quality problem"!
Here is a photo gallery of many of this summer's share-givers. Thanks so much,
friends; we couldn't do it without you.
 |
| Sabine
and Cindy - our champion bean-pickers. We grew green beans on a trellis
this year (instead of as bushes) and it worked great. High productivity
and we only had to pick once per week. |
We
had some great group-sessions; several weeks with ten or eleven adults.
It's challenging to keep everyone busy but we sure get a lot done and
have fun in the process!
 |
| Thorin, Eliza and Adri harvesting cabbage. Adri's been coming to the gardens since she was born and is a great help! |
 |
| Eliza, Rook and Thorin harvesting kidney beans which we dried in the greenhouse and shelled for winter-use. |
 |
| Our
blackberry patches were wonderfully productive this year. We picked
enough berries to make several large cobblers, about a gallon of juice
and sent baskets of them home in the CSA boxes too! |
A great year for potatoes! We keep experimenting with
different methods. We have heavy, clay soil which is hard for potatoes
to grow in.
 |
| To
extend our season we tried growing potatoes in our greenhouses with
fair results. Here are Chris and Rook, mixing compost into a
potato-patch early in the season. |
As the soil warmed, we began planting potatoes
outside. We planted the potatoes about 6" in the ground with a
bulb-planting tool
and then covered with soil, compost, grass-clippings and straw (whatever
mulch we had a lot of). This method worked
very well!
 |
| Rook, planting potatoes with a bulb-planter. |
 |
| Here's a group of potato-planters. That's Caleb and Tyrell (Caleb's Dad) at the cart. |
 |
| ...and here's the other end of the process - harvesting potatoes. Kids love to help with this as finding the potatoes is a bit like hunting for eggs on Easter! |
 |
| Rod, a man of many talents, "logging" the sunflower stalks after harvesting the heads |
 |
| Here's
Eliza, our new neighbor in Monroe, picking tomatoes. She's creating an
organic orchard and veggie farm. Great to have people with similar
values moving to our town. |
 |
| Llyn's uncle Craig with little Jace, examining the pepper plants. |
Garlic provides many opportunities for group efforts.
 |
| Here are Rook and Sabine separating the garlic bulbs for this year's planting. |
 |
| For two sessions we had these wonderful Taiwanese young men come help.
Wayne, Li Hung and Song Yu. Here they are planting garlic in September
for next year's harvest. |
Llyn spent much of the time on share-giver days in the garden-shed bagging produce and filling boxes.
 |
| Here
she is with Kailyn bagging kale. Kailyn is another of Cindy's many
grand-kids and jumps at the chance to be helpful. What a delight! |
Aside from catalyzing Chris and me to a new level of focus and
productivity with the farm, an added bonus of having the CSA has been
the loving feedback and support we receive from our members. Though we
know that our donations to the Food Pantries are very much appreciated
(and we continue to supply Local Aid and the South Benton Food Pantry
with our surplus), the comments from our members are nice to hear
because we know they especially value the high quality of the food we're
growing and want to be supportive of the project's charitable work. Here are a few samples:
"I've been enjoying delicious salads and soups made with these fresh ingredients! Everything is delightful!
Made a brown rice cabbage casserole with our remaining cabbage a few days ago and it was such a big hit with the family ~yum!
Thank you!" Diane
"Sending
deep appreciation for this bounty, it has been most wonderful! Thanks
Llyn and Chris, you are keeping us so healthy and nourished, love
it!!!!" Cordy and Bodhi
" Everything looks lovely. Thanks so much to Llyn and Chris and all the workers." Karen and Peter
"What
a nice variety of things we have gotten from our CSA boxes and we feel
privileged to have helped you launch your first year. Thank you for all
the communication about our boxes each week; that is a nice added
feature we didn't have when we got CSA boxes a few years back." Marilyn
and Don
"We have loved the weekly bounty, a variety of nutrients
& colors. How nice to not have to shop for produce weekly! We love
supporting our local veganic farmers who serve this community, who
bring us hope! Dr. Kyle (LINK to his fantastic site)
And
lastly, we must bid a fond fare-the-well to dear Sabine. Sabine has
been volunteering at the Sharing Gardens for three seasons but is moving
back to Germany (her home) with her husband Tyrell and son, Caleb.
(We'll also miss seeing her wonderful parents Yvonne and Manfred since
they won't be coming to visit her but we know they are so happy to have
her moving back close to home.) Sabine's soft, warm and generous nature
will be missed but we wish her well. Maybe she'll start a new Sharing
Garden in Kressbronn am Bodensee!
 |
| We love you, Sabine! |
 |
| ...and your beautiful boy Caleb. (Thanks for the picture, Thorin!) |
And to you, our fine readers, we also bid a fond farewell. Give Long and Prosper!
June 25, 2018
Hi
folks - The coolest thing happened the other day! We were playing in
the gardens on Food Pantry day when our friend Dave Cook (who's wife,
Janeece runs the Monroe Food Pantry) drove up with a trailer-load full
of firewood to donate. No sooner did we get finished unloading and
stacking it when another guy, Jimmy Templeton - who runs the Monroe Food
and Firewood Gleaners - pulled up with
another load to donate. He and his crew then brought
another
trailer and truck-load to us the following morning and have promised us
one more load before the summer's through. That's five cords of
firewood; probably enough to get us through two and a half winters, if
they're not too harsh.
 |
| Unloading firewood donation. |
The Gleaners is an organization that "gleans" a
community's surplus - whether from farmer's fields, grocery stores,
restaurants or, in this case, trees for firewood - and provides them to
members of the community who are in need and can't afford it for
themselves. Though we're not officially members of the Gleaners, the
Sharing Gardens has been supportive of their organization. In the peak
of summer, when we have more vegetables than the two Food Pantries we
serve can handle, the surplus has often gone to the Gleaners. We have
also let them use our flat-bed trailer for over a year to pick up large
donations on a bi-weekly basis and donated a large chain saw that the
firewood gleaners have used for several years. I guess they felt that
they wanted to give back to us in some way.
Their
donation is a huge help to us. We heat exclusively with firewood and,
cook most of our stove-top meals on our flat wood-stove through the
coldest part of the winter. Then, since we don't burn any treated or
painted woods, all the ashes are clean and pure enough to use as
fertilizer in the gardens. Wood-ash contains most of what's needed for
plant growth except nitrogen and sulfur so it's a great resource.
LINK to article about Wood Ash Use for Lawn and Garden.
 |
| Jimmy Templeton-a man of generosity! |
Note: Just as I was writing this post, who should
drive up but Jimmy - head of the gleaners, with a donation of surplus
organic vegetables gleaned from the local Farmer's Market. He receives
more donations than he can distribute through his networks so, by
bringing them to us, he knows we'll get them into the hands of people
who will appreciate them.
This post is about gratitude.
This year feels like a real turning point. After having given away
everything we grew for the first nine seasons, many members of the
community who appreciate the services we provide have begun looking for
ways to give back. The Sharing Gardens is beginning to fulfill its dream
of becoming (as it says in our banner) "a common-ground gathering place
dedicated to the cultivation of
mutual generosity".
 |
| Rainbow over the Sharing Gardens - June 2018 |
Our first expression of gratitude goes to our sharegivers - the volunteers who come on a weekly basis during the growing season and join in the myriad of tasks involved in keeping the gardens thriving.
Cathy, Cindy, Jim, Sabine, Rook, Kat, and Jessie.
 |
| Share-givers enjoying homemade soup after a garden-session. |
 |
| Cathy
Rose - (left) helping us sort a huge donation of seeds. She is also
being our delivery person for CSA members in Eugene. We love you Cathy! |
We also continue to feel gratitude to
Oregon State University for its dedication to "service-learning"
(students receive college-credit for volunteering in the community). We
have been hosting 4-8 groups of students per year since 2012. We
estimate that's about 180 students who have spent three - four hours
each at the Sharing Gardens learning about sustainable living and how to
grow food. Here are some highlights from the four groups we've hosted
so far in 2018.
 |
| We
always share a snack with the OSU students. This provides a great time
for conversations about organic gardening and sustainable-living. |
 |
| We had an abundance of lettuce in March so OSU students helped us harvest it and... |
 |
| ...here they are displaying the lettuce we donated that week to Local Aid Food Pantry. |
We have a number of
"neighbors" who support the project
by bringing us leaves and grass-clippings on a regular basis or make
other donations of time and materials to keep the project thriving. John
Kinsey, Victor Stone and David Crosby bring us many
trailer-loads each, full of compostable materials each year. Keep 'em coming, guys!
Bob Nelson -
refrigerator repair and re-wiring of an electrical outlet that kept 'shorting out'.
St Vincent de Paul -
honored a warranty for a defective refrigerator
we bought from them last Fall. The warranty had expired but, because of
what we do, they let us come and pick out another refrigerator to
replace the one that 'died'.
George and Irene (
leaves and zucchini plants) - they've been donating leaves for many years.
Sally and Gary Smith -
donated a miniature greenhouse, still new in its box that we will pass along to a family in-need.
Uncle Craig Erken -
computer help.
Pete Alford -
pick up for Local Aid. Pete drives several miles out of his way to come pick up our donations.
Chris' Dad, Pete Burns, for being a
role model for community-service and teaching Chris so much about using tools.
 |
| Pete Alford - picking up a vegetable donation to take to Local Aid. |
 |
| Papa
Burns - Chris' Dad - chief of his town's volunteer fire department for
many years; he built their brick station-house by hand. Chris' Mom, Rene
drove the ambulance and taught first aid classes through the Red Cross
for decades. True community-servants. |
New for us this year is
our membership-farming (
CSA - Community Supported Agriculture). We have seven members/share-holders. Two in Corvallis, two in Eugene and the rest are more local. Special thanks to
Dr Kyle Homertgen (our local, vegan doctor) for his
strong encouragement to move forward with our idea and for being
our first subscriber.
 |
| Our first subscription food-box. April, 2018. |
And last, but not least, we wish to extend gratitude to all those who have made
cash donations. Though
we do our best to live simply and keep costs of the project low, there
are just some things that only money will get you (just try trading a
case of ripe tomatoes for a tankful of gas...).
Our largest donor by far is the South Benton Food Pantry-
LINK.
They invited us to make a presentation to their Board at the beginning
of the year, outlining the Gardens' income and expenses.They granted us a
very generous
annual grant of $1800 with no strings
attached so we can spend it on whatever the project needs to continue.
They also continue to allow us to add the Garden's trash in with their
weekly pick-up service. We don't generate a lot of garbage but this
saves us from accumulating enough to warrant a trip to the dump.
 |
| Chalk-sign, Llyn made for the Food Pantry in our town. |
Since January of 2018, we have received
cash donations from several other individuals, ranging from $100 to $500 each, for
a total of $1,100. Thank you so much!
John and Donna Dillard - our neighbors - who have
also donated paint and fencing material to the project and
tolerate our lackadaisical approach to weeding our common fence-line. Much thanks!
Rich Locus -
a stranger we met at a restaurant who, after talking
with us through breakfast, pulled out his check-book and
wrote us a
check, right on the spot!
Judith Peabody- Llyn's Mom who
gives generously, each year.
Rob Wiseman - a
local friend, former share-giver and repeated donor. We love you Rob!
LINK to Wish List
P.S.
We sure love hearing your comments! Won't you please take a moment and
leave them below so others can enjoy them too :-). Love, Llyn and Chris
We got a nice comment on this post from a friend of ours and guest-blogger to our site. She wrote:
Llyn & Chris --
Well, this post just begs a big THANK YOU
in return -- both for the work you do, and for faithfully reporting
back on your progress. This project is social experiment that I SO enjoy
watching unfold (better than anything on Netflix, let me tell you!)
Happy summer gardening!!
Tuula
Here's the post she wrote about the SG back in 2012:
December 3, 2017
 |
| Did you know that the average-sized deciduous tree can provide fertilizer for your garden worth about $50.00? This article outlines a few ways to utilize this mineral-rich resource, primarily through composting. |
Greetings friends, here in our part of the world,
we're headed into winter; the Gardens have (mostly) been put to sleep
and we have time to reflect on this past season and share with you in a
deeper way. Here's a post about our new "budding" relationship with our
local Grade School, and their help in gathering leaves for the Sharing
Gardens.
Early
in autumn, we were approached by the science teacher for 12-13 year-old
students at the school that shares our back fence-line - Monroe Grade
School. Marie-Louise has a classroom window that looks out on our
gardens and had been curious for many years about a way to partner with
the Sharing Gardens on a mutually-beneficial project. Her class was
doing a unit on "Sustainability" and needed to find a way to perform
"community service" (volunteering) that was related to living a
sustainable lifestyle.
 |
| It's challenging enough to keep a small group of college-age students focused and busy so we needed a project appropriate to a large group of 12-13 year-olds! |
We knew, from our experience coordinating "community
service" projects with Oregon State University that it can be a
challenge to focus the attention of even a small group of
college-age
students for an extended period of time so we had some concerns about
bringing much larger groups of 7th-graders to help us directly in the
gardens. After brainstorming for a few minutes, Chris had a great idea
when he suggested we coordinate a leaf-raking project in our small town
of
Monroe, Oregon.
 |
| Llyn and Chris presenting info about mulching and compost. |
In order to provide a
context for the leaf-raking, Chris and I visited Marie-Louise's
classroom
with some samples of leaves and grass-clippings in various stages of
decay to show the students how the leaves turn into soil-fertilizer. We
explained that, at the Sharing Gardens, we no longer
buy fertilizer from stores but
create soil-fertility primarily
by feeding the worms and micro-organisms in our soil. (We also use
wood-ash from heating our house). The fertile soil then grows the
nutrient-packed vegetables that we share in the community with those in
need. (If you want to know more about how the Sharing Gardens work,
click this
LINK.)
 |
| We brought compost in various stages of decay... |
A week later, the two classes of 16-18 students each,
took a short, walking 'field-trip' to the Sharing Gardens. We toured
the grounds in two
smaller groups so they could continue to make
the connection between raking leaves, and growing food, and living more
sustainably. We were happy to see some of the young people show a real
interest in what we do and how we live. One girl asked, "What's it like
to be a vegetarian?". Another asked sincerely, "How do you cook
anything
without a microwave oven?". One young man found a moth that had landed
on a plant and wondered if it would be alright if he picked it up.
"Sure," I said, "as long as you're gentle. The insects are our friends
in the garden." I watched him gingerly pick up the moth and shepherd it
around for the rest of the tour, placing it gently on another plant as
he left.
 |
| Garden tour: "Wow, compost!" |
 |
| Garden tour: Everybody loves shelling beans! |
We decided to make the leaf-raking itself -
truly voluntary - so we wouldn't have a lot
of students dragging their feet and resenting being
required to do it. We set aside two Saturday mornings (and later picked
one)
in hopes of having good weather, and to assure that enough leaves would
have fallen to make it worth everyone's time. Chris and I rode our
bikes around town the afternoon before the Leaf-Raking Day in order to
map out the route to rake the most leaves. Marie-Louise had her students
make a few posters which they hung on community bulletin-boards so
people would know we were coming. We also made fliers to distribute on
the day of the raking that explained the project and told people how to
donate
more leaves, if they were interested.
 |
| It's easier to fill bags if you work as a team. |
 |
| We picked a day after the leaves had really begun to fall in quantity. |
We
had a beautiful day to do the raking with crisp, sunny weather. We had
eight or nine students come help with the raking along with four
parents. We raked for about two hours and collected 37
giant bags of leaves. One of the parents had also done some raking with her two children at home and brought another nine bags!
 |
| Someone had heard we were coming and piled up all her leaves so all we had to do was bag them. |
It
takes a lot of leaves to mulch our entire garden, the orchards and
greenhouses! So far, we've never had too many leaves but this year, we
just might get close!
 |
| Leaf-raking isn't all work; here's one girl jumping in the raked pile. |
Special thanks go to:
First Alternative Food Co-op - $30 gift certificate to buy organic apple juice and popcorn for snacks
Monroe's United Methodist Church (our neighbor) - who provided bathrooms for the rakers to use before and after the project
The
parents who chaperoned
The
students who helped with the raking and
especially to Marie-Louise
for reaching out to us and for doing all the extra work of getting
permission-slips signed, buying the snacks and all the other steps that
made this a successful project. We look forward to continued
collaborations in the future!
Feel free to pass this post along to the
teachers in your life. Raking leaves can be a fun and meaningful way for
students to be of service in your community. We'd be glad to share our
experience and provide templates for permission-slips and fliers.
November 20, 2017
 |
| Abundant peppers! |
Greetings dear people - Well, the gardens are basically done for the
season. We still have some lettuce, kale and beets to harvest but all
the heat-loving plants are done. These past few weeks we've been
removing the old plants and beginning to prep the beds so they'll be
ready for next year's plants.
Here in the USA, it's
time for the holiday of Thanksgiving. Typically this is a time for
gathering with family and friends for a big feast and reflecting on all
we have to be grateful for. We'd like to use this time to express our
gratitude to the many supporters of the Sharing Gardens - human, and
non-human alike!
 |
| Chris and Adri washing carrots together for snack-time. |
Below are examples of how
community-support has been manifesting at the
Sharing Gardens in 2017. If you appreciate what we do and would like to
express your support, here is a
LINK
to our wish-list. And
thank you for the ways you are already expressing
generosity beyond your own inner circle -
extending the definition of
"family" to include people you are un-related to, and
the natural world within which we live
and are intimately dependent on for all our needs.
First we'd like to extend our gratitude to all the staff at
Oregon State University (OSU) who are developing a strong
curriculum for sustainable living and for the myriad of students who come to the Sharing Gardens each year for
'service-learning'
and give of their time to help the project move forward with the 'big
strokes' -- tasks that would be prohibitively time-consuming for Chris
and I and our core group of volunteers to do on our own. This includes
things like
planting trees, sifting manure, compost and coffee-grounds, dismantling garden-beds and mulching them for the fallow season. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
 |
| OSU students offering the ancient greeting of all happy volunteers: "Give long and prosper!" |
Next, we'd like to extend a hearty "thanks" to all the people who
come and actually help us in the gardens with the tasks great and small;
those who are willing to get their hands in the dirt in service of the
project. We call them "share-givers":
 |
| Sabine,
shelling walnuts, has been coming for three years. We never know what
sort of "organic" treats she's going to bring -- to share at snack-time,
or leave in our pantry. |
 |
| Jim
and Cindy Kitchen flank Chris with a tray of home-grown watermelon;
they too bring us gifts of food, clothing and housewares, garden-tools
and building supplies and have begun to include us in their family
gatherings as "uncle" and "auntie". |
 |
| Rook
Stillwater has become a regular addition to the 'sharegiver family'.
His soft-spoken nature and willingness to learn and to serve are a real
delight. |
This year we have also been grateful for intermittent volunteer help from other folks in the Monroe community:
Eva Fife (who also donated surplus
apples from her trees,
building supplies salvaged from a previous employer who needed to sell her property suddenly).
Christina O'Bryan who, despite having very challenging health issues came consistently for several weeks during
peak-weeding season. She also gave us a
spade fork for extra-tall people and introduced us to her neighbor
George Etsey who used his professional sharpening tool to
sharpen our riding mower and refused to take more than
$10 for his services!
Wanda Foster also joined us during our
peak weeding season and, when she had to leave town for a few weeks brought back a big bag of
wild Chanterelle mushrooms she'd gathered. The first of the season!
 |
| We are grateful for our neighbor, John Kinsey who shares with us hundreds of pounds of coffee-grounds he gathers from a local coffee shop, worm castings/compost he makes from kitchen scraps, leaves and lawn-clippings. |
George and Irene Dougherty always donate lots of
leaves and this year, when they heard of our herbicide contamination gave us about a dozen
zucchini plants as well!
Steve Rose -
tomato starts,
grass hay,
mushroom spores to start our own mini mushroom farm.
Pete Alford - picks up surplus produce from the Gardens and
delivers it to Local Aid - a Food Pantry in a nearby town.
 |
| Tina
and Swede Johnson donated five "rescue" blueberry bushes and about 8
gallons of un-shelled walnuts they gathered from their tree. Yummm! |
 |
| We
have several neighbors who donate leaves. Here's David Crosby with his
helper Brandon. Victor Stone also contributes leaves from his 20+ maple
trees. Stay tuned for our post about the Monroe Grade School's leaf
drive. |
 |
| Janaia
(l) and her partner Robin (not pictured), on a visit last year, brought
many hand tools, DVD's and books they thought we'd find useful that
they'd culled from their storage unit in a thorough 'down-sizing'
process. Here's the journal entry Janaia wrote following this dinner of
almost entirely local foods: "Not food? No eat!". |
Mid-summer, we had a
huge give-away of surplus accumulated pots and
flats that had been donated over the years and were
way more than we
could ever use! Four different groups of people came , each filling their car or
truck! The last two,
Gloria and Lynda insisted on leaving us with a
$40
donation!
Much of what we need to run the gardens
comes in the form of donations of time and materials but for those
things that require money,
we're very grateful for cash donations.
 |
| Llyn's mom Judy, always comes for an extended visit to help in the gardens and makes a generous annual donation. Thanks, Mom! |
 |
| Rob
(pictured) and his wife Elisa made two significant cash donations this
year. Rob also brought a huge load of high-quality potting soil we'll be
using with next year's 'starts'. |
We love our local Food Pantry!
 |
| The
South Benton Food Pantry - who receives the majority of our
garden-produce, donated $500 cash for the third year in a row.
When we have extra garbage (the rare items that can't be recycled,
re-purposed, composted or burned!) the SBFP lets us add it to their
weekly pick-up service. This year they also paid for the Gardens to buy a
used-refrigerator that we could set up in our garden shed for the
massive amounts of surplus produce that need refrigeration until it can
be distributed to charities. LINK |
We have a funny story about the refrigerator that the SB Food Pantry
donated to our project. We already had two refrigerators on the premises
- one in our kitchen and one on our back porch. The porch one was mainly
used for surplus garden-produce that we were going to 'can' or dehydrate
but, in peak season, we also stored produce waiting for distribution at
the Food Pantry as
their three fridges are often too full to receive any surplus.
 |
| Sometimes,
during times of peak-production, we have too much produce to fit in our
refrigerators! That's what we call a "high-quality problem"! |
We
went to St. Vincent de Paul's - a store for used-items and picked out
the one we wanted. As they were setting up the delivery time, they asked
us if we already had a fridge (they give priority to people who are
without a fridge). We didn't know that and said we already had one so
the manager, Jennie, said she thought it would come in about 10-days.
"Ten days!?!" we exclaimed, "That's too long to wait!". We told her
about our project and what the fridge would be used for and she said,
"In that case, how about we deliver it in three-days?". "Much better."
we said, "That would be great.".
Two days later, we got a call
from Jennie and she said, with a smile in her voice, "How about the guys
bring it over in a few hours?". Perfect. And they did.
 |
| Garden abundance! |
The real punch-line of this story is that, that very same night, with
no warning, our porch-fridge just completely died on us. We discovered
it the next morning before things had had a chance to warm up or thaw
very much and we transferred everything over to our "new" fridge. If it
hadn't been for Jennie's generosity and persistence to get our fridge
delivered as soon as possible. It's likely that much of the food on our
porch-fridge might have been irreparably spoiled.
 |
| Gratitude to the children who come to the Gardens and remind us to keep things fun! |
 |
| Gratitude to the birds, the bees and other pollinators, worms, snakes and great Web of Life that makes this all possible. |
And remember...
January 19, 2017
 |
| A "praying" mantis, giving thanks! |
The Sharing Gardens is a hub of giving and receiving.
People give what they can and receive what they need. We give thanks to
those who continue to contribute to and support the program; we
couldn't do it without you!
Last month we received
three cash donations, totaling $145. Much of the project runs on
donations of materials and labor but, as we all know, you can't fill
your gas tank by trading a basket-full of tomatoes! Thanks to Rob and
Elisa, Cecilia and Dave Gore and Cathy Rose.
Rob and
Elisa are a married couple that have bought land near-by. This is their
first experience at 'homesteading' and they are enthusiastic about
growing food, harboring wildlife and moving towards a more sustainable
lifestyle. We always enjoy their participation in the gardens,
especially knowing that much of the knowledge and experience they gain,
they're able to go home and put into practice.
 |
| Chris and Rob
planting Fava beans in the greenhouse. Since this pic was taken, we've
had several days in a row that never got above freezing and the beans
died. This is why Chris is always saying, "Plant for all contingencies"! |
 |
| Elisa - harvesting raspberries. |
 |
| That's Jen in the pink tie-dye shirt. |
Cecilia and Dave Gore (not pictured),
besides making a cash donation, have become seed-distributors for the
Sharing Gardens. We gave them a huge batch of seeds to share, some we'd
saved ourselves and some commercial varieties that had been donated to
the project. They have been taking the seeds to many gatherings in
Corvallis and doing their best to find good homes for them! Grow seeds!
 |
| Well-pipe makes good fence-posts. |
Long-time friend and participant, Jen Revais (above), donated about 200-feet of well-pipe.
This heavy-duty metal pipe has many uses for us including fence-posts
and trellises.
Thanks go to Dorene Wolfe, whose
daughter Dina is the pastor at the church that shares a parking lot and
property-line with the Sharing Gardens. Dorene is a can-do lady and took
the initiative to rake leaves all around the church grounds and cart
them over to our pile. We don't have a picture of Dorene but here's the
view we have of the church from our front yard (below).
 |
| Growing in partnership with our neighbor - the United Methodist Church. Love those leaves! |
Our last round of thanks goes to all the
wild-critters who have come to make the Sharing Gardens their home. You
enhance our life with your funny antics and help keep things in balance
by playing your parts in the great web of life. These first few pics
were all taken here at the Sharing Gardens.
 |
| Pregnant preying mantis. We see egg-cases frequently on wood-piles and fence posts. |
 |
| Baby "Racer" snake. We saw one that was easily four-feet long near one of our greenhouses. |
 |
| We grow some pretty big earthworms too! |
We
don't have any good pictures of the birds and mammals that live in and
around the Sharing Gardens; our camera just isn't good enough to zoom in
on them at a distance. But here's a story about the flicker family who
comes daily to our feeder. We've seen as many as five flickers at a time
in the upper branches of our walnut tree and one or two come regularly
to our feeder. They seem to enjoy the millet we provide (purchased in
the bulk-foods section, it's much less expensive than buying it as
"bird-seed mixed with other ingredients). I've watched them with
binoculars and they feed by extending their sticky tongues, coating them
with millet seeds and retracting their tongues full of the yummy
nibbles.
 |
| Flicker with tongue extended; they're in the woodpecker family and love eating ants. Photo credit: W.H. Sim LINK |
The
flickers are the only birds at our feeder who aren't intimidated by the
scrub jays. Though the juncos and sparrows are far smaller than the
flickers, they all feed happily side-by-side.
 |
| Western
Scrub Jay - though "bullies" at the feeder, they play an important role
in planting nut trees. They probably plant the majority of walnuts and
hazelnuts around our land in the leaves and straw we use as mulch. If
they're planted in good spots, we nurture them along for future nut
crops. Photo credit |
October 28, 2012
The
gardens would have cost much more to operate if it weren't for the
community support we have received in material donations; these include
materials we could use directly in the garden: lawn clippings, leaves, a
55-pound bag of powdered kelp, and spoiled hay. Tools and equipment:
thousands of pots and flats, canning jars, lawn and leaf bags,
hand-tools, garden carts and wheel-barrows. Services offered (Sam Bowman
- small engine repair) and countless volunteer hours - our core group
of gardeners gave 3-5 hours weekly to help us grow food. We've noticed a
definite increase in the amount of food being donated to the Food Bank
from the surplus of
other local gardeners. We are grateful too
that many people have offered their grapes, apples and nuts for garden
volunteers to glean and share. In addition to the numerous individual
donations outlined above, there are several families and groups who
stand out in terms of their generosity:
 |
| Jen Rivais picks up 'starts' for her garden in cart donated by Bud Hardin |
John Sundquist
gave us full access to his farm near Coburg where he grows dozens of
varieties of bamboo--many acres of it. We were able to harvest all the
poles we needed to build our greenhouse and set up various trellises and
tipis in the garden to support our beans and peas.
Germaine
and Larry Hammon very generously donated an 18-foot, 5th-wheel trailer
that needed minor repairs and detailing before we sold it for a full
$2,000.
 |
| Autumn Bounty! |
We are grateful to our new friends Jo and David
Crosby on Coon Road. They keep looking for ways they can support the
project. Here's a short list: hog panels, an electric, portable cement
mixer (to mix potting soil), a 5'x10' utility trailer we have fixed up
and painted (which we will either sell or use to go on materials-runs),
shade cloth, and lawn furniture. The Crosby's also continue to hire
Chris and I for odd-jobs around their property. This money goes directly
into the Sharing Gardens account to support the project.
The
Frystaks of Monroe paid for 20, 10-foot T-posts (to expand our
fence-line) and a new set of tires to be put on our old farm truck; they
arranged for the donation of three trash-cans of coffee grounds and 55
bales of wheat straw which Mark then picked up and delivered himself.
We're
excited about a new sense of partnership we feel with the United
Methodist Church adjacent to the gardens. They gave us free use of their
building, kitchen and grounds to host the Farm to Farm Century
Ride/Benefit.
We are beginning active conversations about cooperating on a series of
classes, movie nights and potlucks meant to inspire and educate people
about healthy eating, food preservation and other healthy-living
topics.
 |
| United Methodist Church - and South Benton Food bank, adjacent to the Gardens |
Chester Crowson, who passed away in February of
this year, for his initial open-handed generosity in extending us the
free use of his land, and well, and covering the cost of running the
pump set the Monroe project on firm ground from the start. We are
grateful to the rest of the Crowsons for their continued support. We are
exploring the idea of expanding the garden site to include more
winter-storage crops such as squash and potatoes, and to expand the
existing orchard area to include figs, berries and more apples and
plums.
July 22, 2012
One of our recent posts indicated that volunteer participation was down this year. Well, in the last few weeks, the summer weather has arrived (it's been in the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties...just glorious!) and the good weather has brought with it an upsurge in the gardens growth AND some wonderful, large, group-sessions with the volunteers. What follows is what we like to call the "Giver's Gallery" If you're local and you want to come join the fun,
here's a link to the scheduled times we meet at the garden.
 |
| Amy, Cindy and little Adri sort the many donated pots and flats. |
 |
| Cindy and Llyn gathering mulch from the field next to the garden. |
 |
| Another mulch-gathering session. |
 |
| Building a worm-bin. |
 |
| David Roux, Mike Briggs and Chris Burns on a sunny day. |
 |
| Doreen and Rann Millar in our new greenhouse. |
 |
| Planting fall crops. |
 |
| Trimming garlic. |
 |
| Jerry Crowson with Red Iceberg harvest. |
 |
| Jesse Perez waters starts. |
 |
| John Kinsey spreading fresh grass-clippings as mulch between plants. |
 |
| Larry Winiarski tilling this year's squash patch. |
 |
| Llyn and Jennifer Rivais putting collars on celery. |
 |
| Mike Briggs with elephant garlic. |
 |
| OSU students transplanting Spring crops. |
 |
| Rann Millar running the "beast"! |
 |
| Sierra and Mike painting the counter-top for garden sink. |
 |
| David Roux with a large donation of grass-hay from his property. |
 |
| Jennifer takes home a load of starts for her home garden. Llyn on the right. |
 |
| John Kinsey and Llyn planting out peas - Spring crop. |
 |
| Larry Winiarski sifting sheep manure for potting mix. |
 |
| Llyn and Doreen transplanting marigolds. |
 |
| Llyn and Ricardo planting onions. |
 |
| Chris gives Ricardo a lesson in wheelbarrow repair. |
 |
| Rob and Lucy planting scarlet runner beans. |
 |
| Betty, Mike and Sierra Briggs transplanting fall crops of kale. |
|
Life is good!
June 12, 2012
"So, are you getting enough volunteer participation this season?"
asked a visitor to the Sharing Gardens last week. The answer is, we're
getting "enough" but not very much. Of the 4,000+ seedlings we started
in our new greenhouse (mostly from seed we saved ourselves) and the
hundreds of those transplanted into the ground, we've probably done 95%
of them. But we're not feeling burdened by this and in fact, in some
ways we're feeling more supported than ever this season. The donations
we're receiving of cash and materials free us to spend less time earning
a living and more time in the garden (anywhere from two to six hours a
day) growing food to help those in need. Support is showing up in other
important ways, outside the garden, that help us keep things moving
forward.
 |
| Beautiful worm-compost. |
For example, Monroe resident John Kinsey has a
red-wiggler worm farm in his backyard. He takes kitchen scraps, weeds,
grass clippings and other organic material and feeds it to his worms who
turn it into fantastic compost and worm castings (poo). He also brings
us bags and bags of grass clippings from his own and other people's
yards which we use to mulch our plants. John is also growing this year's
garlic crop in his raised beds and will grow exclusively Jalapeño
pepper plants so that he can save pure seed. He lives close enough that
it will be easy for him to share in the bounty of all the other kinds of
peppers and garden produce grown at the main garden-site so it's a real
win-win all around.
 |
| Sam and Becky Bowman, with Chris. |
Sam Bowmen has been another friend who's been doing
all our small-engine repair and maintenance. Brother to Loren, who
started the Monroe Food Bank, and Curtis, who manages it now, he comes
from a family of community servants and has extended himself generously
to keep our tillers, mower and string-trimmer running smoothly. Sam and
John are both examples of people finding where their own talents and
interests can intersect with the garden's needs and, though they may not
be physically in the gardens with us, their support makes the gardens
possible.
 |
| Volunteers plant tomatoes amidst straw -mulch paths. |
Support has also come in the form of donations of
materials and money. Mark and Heather Frystak keep amazing us with their
generosity. Heather's family has lived in the area for generations and,
though Mark has "married in" he's become a major networker and advocate
of the Sharing Gardens by securing donations of coffee grounds (from
relatives who run a coffee shop in Albany) and straw from Soggy Bottom
Farms near Harrisburg (also part of his new extended family). The
Frystak's generosity has not stopped there. Mark keeps a regular watch
on the
Wish List
published on our website and, showed up with 22, brand new, ten-foot
T-posts. The really amazing donation followed our request for a set of
tires for our 1968 GMC pick-up truck. We were hoping someone might have a
used-set sitting in their barn or garage, that they're not needing
anymore. Imagine our surprise when Mark sent us an email saying, "Meet
me at Les Schwab tire store, and I'll make it happen." And he did. he
bought us a brand new set!
 |
| Amy, Cindy and Adri sort donated pots and flats. |
Our friends and neighbors, Larry and Germaine Hammon,
not to be outdone, have donated an 18-foot, fifth-wheel travel trailer,
in very good condition. We just need to do some minor repairs and
detailing and it's up for sale. All proceeds will go directly into the
Garden account. In the past six weeks we have also received a $1,000
grant from the OSU Thrift store, a generous cash donation from Claudia
McCue, several hundred dollars in donations from people who have come
for seeds and starts at our "Give-aways", and a full $200 donation from
the Circle of Children Village/School at Triangle Lake who received the
last of our starts on Sunday, June 3rd. Thanks got to Gini Bramlett and
the Tribune News for publishing so many of our posts and helping us
reach people who don't have internet access. Rann and Doreen Millar
bought the Gardens a subscription to the Tribune News so we can clip the
articles for our scrapbook. We are also grateful for the delivery of
sheep manure from David Wells and steer manure from Mike Spoerl (who
also gave us a 55-pound bag of powdered kelp.) Keep it coming!
April 10, 2012
Continued gratitude to
Chester Crowson who continues to let us
garden on his Monroe property for free,
and pays the electricity to run the well-pump. The Sharing Gardens wouldn't be happening whithout you!
Cathy Rose -
generous cash donation.
Bud Hardin -
wheel-barrow, garden tools and two garden carts. Gini Bramlett and the Tribune News -
for publishing our Wish List and articles about us.
Mark Frystak -
large donation of straw, camera and coffee grounds from Allann Bros. Coffee of Albany
. Keith Hazelton -
snow-day greenhouse rescue. Earnie Wilson and Eva and Jesse -
for joining our seed-saving network.
Craig Erken and Ray Kreth -
for technical assistance in getting our camera working again. Rantu Press, and
Rann and Doreen Millar -
for offering us cameras. The Millars have also offered to
share a subscription to the Tribune News. This will help us keep our scrapbook up to date.
United Methodist Church of Monroe -
paying for seven months of portable toilet rental. Best Pots -
discount rate for toilet rental.
David Mills and son, Tyler -
truckloads of leaves (from Monroe Telephone - thanks
John Dillard for suggesting they bring them to us) and two
truckloads of sheep manure - great stuff!
John Kinsey -
starting peas and onions in his greenhouse, help with transplanting and mowing the lawn at the Monroe site (a Herculean task!)
Linda and David Prowse -
multiple truckloads of leaves.
South Benton Nutrition Program - all your
love and support - we feel
appreciated by you!
 |
David Mills and son Tyler bring us a load of leaves.
March 25, 2012
Gratitude: We have a big thank you to extend to Larry Winiarski.
Not only did he hire us to help him set up his greenhouse for maximal
functionality but he let us start a bunch of seeds while we speedily
finished up our own new greenhouse in Monroe. If it weren't for Larry we
wouldn't have been able to get broccoli, kale, cabbage, lettuce or
spinach started in time. John Kinsey has also been a huge help.
He's started peas and onions in his own greenhouse, donated a
considerable amount of salvaged lumber for use in building the
greenhouse, and also helped us spread donated leaves in the gardens for
mulch. We'll be doing a whole post on John at some point. He's developed
quite an amazing set-up for growing red-wiggler (composting) worms and
he's provided the gardens with dozens of bags of their pure castings for
us to amend our soil and grow starts in. John Sundquist generously
opened up his River's Bend Farm and let us harvest all the bamboo we
needed to build the greenhouse (and more!). We also wish to thank the others in the community
who have hired us to do pruning and other yard-work jobs. The income
from this work is what is allowing us to keep doing the gardens as we
are financing the project primarily out of our own savings at this
point. Thank you all.
October 25, 2011
Financial support continues to stream in. Jean Yates, of Alpine, stopped by the gardens a few weeks ago, helped with the harvest and then wrote us a check for $200! Jenn Hughes and her partner David Kuhns, the organizers of the "Farm to Farm Century Ride" - a benefit for the Sharing Gardens, tallied up receipts from the ride and blessed us with a very generous donation of $2,000. Thanks again to all the volunteers that made the ride so fun and successful. Renee Forrer continues to be a big help as liaison between the Sharing Gardens and the South Benton Nutrition Program
- the twice-weekly lunch program for Seniors. Not only does she help us
with the gardening but shows up weekly to receive the harvest and take
it to the cooks for use in the lunches, and for the seniors to take home
as well. We received a full load of hay from a barn, full of sheep manure from Mylrea Estell. That will really heat up our compost piles! Linda and Dave Prowse gleaned dozens of pounds of apples from their trees and brought them to be shared. Arleen Looney also gave us access to her fruit trees for gleaning.
October 12, 2011
Gallery of Givers: A selection of pictures from the 2011 season.
 |
| Linda Zielinsky - donated a block of Mason Bees (to get us started), and wrote a beautiful post about their life-cycle. Link |
|
We always enjoyed it when kids came to
play with us. We were careful never to call garden-time "work" and to
let them know we enjoyed their visits whether they helped out or not.
This way they didn't feel that we only saw them for what they had to
give to us.
 |
| Kaitlynn - a
member of 4-H joined us many times during the summer. Potato-digging was
one of her favorite tasks. Kyra was visiting from out of town but
jumped in with great enthusiasm. |
 |
| Niko was one of our youngest helpers. he took his broccoli-watering task
very seriously and did a great job. It's amazing to see the focus kids
can hold if the value and enjoy what they're doing. |
 |
| Dustin is one
of those kids who didn't always want to garden with us but often stopped
by to say "hi". On this one day he became engrossed in harvesting
sun-flower seeds. I think he liked to harvest and take hoe something
that he personally enjoys eating. it made the garden-time more
meaningful for him. |
 |
| Many people
develop an aversion to worms, slugs and other "creepy-crawlies". Here,
Serena, too young to "know better" makes friends with a garden
gastropod. |
 |
| Here's Ismael
("My") in the corn patch. That's Bantam corn behind him, a variety that
doesn't usually grow taller than six-feet! Ours was nearing ten-feet
this year! |
 |
| Ricardo helping us to bring in the Delicata squash harvest. |
August 21, 2011
Each week brings new
surprises in support and generosity and there are also on-going
supporters who help make the garden's success possible.
Most recently we have some new, specific people to thank:
Bob and Cheryl Ballard brought us a dozen full bags of
dried grass clippings - great for mulching the potatoes and putting
under the burgeoning winter squash so they don't develop rotten spots.
Judy Todd has made a second cash donation.
We are grateful for our ongoing community of volunteers. People
help out in the ways they are able; we find tasks to suit everyone's
abilities. If you'd like to join in the fun of gardening without use of
herbicides and pesticides, and share in the harvest, here is a link that shows our regular volunteer times, or send us an email and we can add you to the list to receive weekly reminders.
It's been awhile since we thanked our on-going supporters. These are people and organizations that help make the gardens possible:
Chester Crowson - owns the land where we have the Monroe site. He
lets us use it for free as well as covering the cost of the electricity
to run the pump in the well.
Bud Hardin - made a lump-sum donation to cover the cost of a portable toilet at the Monroe garden site for a whole year! The toilet is shared with the Monroe Food Bank volunteers as well. (And thanks to Guy Urbach for approaching Bud on our behalf - it wouldn't have happened without you!)
Best Pots - is the local portable toilet service that provides a
unit at the Monroe garden. They have given us a generous discount on
the rental fee.
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| Weekly harvest - Alpine 2010 |
Mylrea Estell and Ray Kreth - our landlords - continue to
harbor us in a low-pressure and generous arrangement, making it possible
for us to volunteer so much of our time to the gardens.
Alpine Community Center - has umbrellaed us under their insurance policy so the activities at both garden sites are covered.
Alpine Chapel Park - has provided us the site for our Alpine Garden free of charge, since 2009.
Alpine Pump - Dorothy and Gary give us permission to put the gardens' trash into their dumpster.
Jennifer Rivais - empties the garbage cans at Alpine's Chapel Park as an on-going service.
...and The Tribune News - our great, local, weekly paper has
been very helpful in printing many of our posts and helping us circulate
news of the gardens to a much larger audience than we can reach
on-line.
If you've been itching to get involved in some way and would like to
know how you can add your "onions" to the pot, check out our Wish List
below, or come down on one of the volunteer days and share in the "stone
soup" garden.
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| Happy pumpkin picker - 2011 |
August 17, 2011
We've got a really wonderful core group of volunteers showing up once or
twice a week now. One day we had three mother/daughter pairs. And
another day we had four young people ages 7 to 11. My mom, Judy has been
visiting for two weeks and sister, Sue and nephew, Miles, joined in for
an afternoon, which was really fun. Here are a sampling of smiling
faces, happy helpers and a view of the garden's progress.
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| Miles plants broccoli |
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| Sue displays an early onion harvest proudly. |
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| Kaitlynn and Kyra with a bucket of potatoes freshly harvested |
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| Christine (Ms Bug) trims tomatoes |
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| Monroe Garden - celery in sleeves on left, lettuce-starts in middle, potatoes on right |
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| That's an 8-pound cabbage! |
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| Judy-mom, Chris and Jennifer - mulching with grass clippings |
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| Kaitlynn watering the lettuce and Brussels Sprouts |
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| Mark building a new compost bin |
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| Niko - our youngest helper, takes a turn at watering. |
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July 28, 2011
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| Kaitlyn helps Chris harvest garlic. That's celery in "sleeves" in the foreground. |
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| Kaitlyn with garlic harvest |
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| Larry
and Germaine harvesting and weeding beets. Our tomatoes (in A-frame
cages) are getting nice and bushy and starting to ripen steadily now. |
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| Weeding and harvesting. |
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| Renee
and Johan pull the last of the broccoli plants. Time to soak the
compost pile and tarp it so it will start to decompose. Renee has been a
big help this spring as she comes weekly to help and harvest food to
take to the bi-weekly Senior Lunch program in Monroe at the Legion Hall.
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| Danielle
sifting compost. Rich with worm castings and eggs it makes a great
top-dressing or tilled into the beds. This is the end product of our
hay-bale compost piles. |
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| Jan has been one of our steadiest volunteers this year. Here she is spreading straw in the garden paths. |
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| Ken helps build tomato cages. |
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| Jennifer,
Llyn and Dawn transplant Shag Bark Hickory tree seedlings. |
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| Larry
helps Chris plant and mulch potatoes. Curtis, at the Food Bank gave us
fifty pounds (!) of sprouting potatoes. I think we're going to have a
fine harvest this year. |
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| Fun at the gardens. John, Chris, Jennifer and Llyn (Sorry, Dawn, I cut off your face holding up the camera like I did.) |
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| Herman and Liz brought us a full truck load of grass clippings from behind their church. "Mulch" thanks! |
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| Our
kale harvest has been abundant this year. We were having a hard time
giving it all away each week till we added this sign at the Food Bank.
"Tastes like broccoli...Cook it like spinach..." Sometimes people need
help in trying unfamiliar foods. |
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| Mike Hall adds onions to 'what's cookin' at a recent community dinner hosted by Monroe's Methodist Church... |
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| ...and Phyllis Derr helps with the dishes. She's been donating her grass clippings for garden-mulch all spring. Thanks! |
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We
sold our dear little 1947 Farmall Cub to a young couple getting their
own organic farm started near Albany, Oregon. Glad to see the Cub's
going to a working home and won't just be a museum piece. These tractors
were designed for small-scale vegetable farming and 1947 was the first
year they were built. Their website is http://pitchforkandcrow.com/
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| Ken, a happy helper! Job well done. |
Aside
from the volunteers, pictured and "behind the scenes", we'd also like
to thank these people for their contributions to the garden's success:
Tina - ice cream buckets with lids
Renee and Johan Ferrer - T-post driver
Judy Todd - cash donation
Jo Ellen Watts - gardening boots and plant tags
Phyllis Derr - grass clippings
Chuck and Betty Conway - cash donation
Liz and Herman Koontz - grass clippings from Church of Christ mowings
The Tribune News who continue to publish our articles and wish-lists.
Tom Goracke - 30 bales of nicely rotting grass-straw, complete with pigeon poop "frosting" on the top bales. Keep 'em coming!
June 10, 2011
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| Lettuce ready for planting - April 2011 |
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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.
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| Jan with lettuce for the Food Bank |
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| Llyn with spring's bounty! |
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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.
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| A-Frame - tomato cages with mulch on the paths |
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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.
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| Seth and Ricardo take lettuce home to their families after helping us mulch the garden paths |
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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.
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| Jan, spreading mulch |
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| Jennifer and Llyn planting tomatoes |
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| Larry (the lawnmower doctor) starting seeds at the Monroe garden |
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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.
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May 23, 2011
The Alpine Park Clean-Up was fun for all who attended. There were
many of the usual faces and quite a few new ones as well. The main focus
was on mowing and raking the grass to be used as mulch in the Sharing
Gardens. We are very grateful to
Diamond Woods Golf Course on
Territorial Rd for their generous loan of a ride-on lawnmower for the
park's use, for a second summer in a row. Also in attendance at the
clean-up (but not pictured) were
Dorothy Brinckerhoff, Gary Weems, Ida
May Foster and Elaine O'Brien.
Here are some pictures:
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| Jack Jones on the lawn mower - on loan from "Diamond Woods" golf course |
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| Peggy rakes grass |
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| George loads it into the bins. |
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| Celeste Jones, with a rake and a smile. |
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| Her sister Cypress gathering grass-mulch |
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| Stacy Ann, another sister, also helps out. |
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| And brother, Shamus Jones, pulls weeds in the garden. |
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Basically, we figure, if you want to get the job done in Alpine, call the Jones family!
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| Celeste, Joanne and Cypress Jones in the park. |
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| It's a challenge, "keeping up with the Joneses"! |
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The
tree to the left was planted in spring of 2009 in honor of Alta Rainey
who founded the park in the late 1960's. She always loved dogwoods. This
spring is the first time it has bloomed.
We've
been so busy in the gardens that we haven't had time to post these
other pictures of volunteers who have been helping with the Sharing
Gardens this spring. Here's a sample of our happy helpers:
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| Rann, Doreen and Eva, transplanting in the greenhouse - March 2010 |
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| Volunteer Danielle with plants for her garden. |
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| Floy Alexander, 91, has lived outside of Alpine for close to 60 years. She happily receives some starts to plant in her garden. |
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| Orvel and Rann trimming bamboo for the pole beans to grow on. |
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| Timothy prepares beds with a spading fork. |
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| Ismael helps Chris repair the water pipe in Monroe. |
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| Steve Rose, at the Food Bank, giving away tomato plants from his greenhouse. |
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May 16, 2011
We have so much to be grateful for. The Sharing Gardens community--near and far--have been showing their support for the project.
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| Chris paints garden benches made from recycled materials, and refurbishes the donated trailer. |
Our local weekly paper,
The Tribune News continues to
publish frequent articles about us.
Many of the donations listed below have come as a result.
Fabric for the
Great Monroe Autumn Leaf Drive was donated by
Danette Puhek of
Alpine. She gave us a huge role of a canvas-type material that can be
sewn up by volunteers to make leaf bags. Our intention is to distribute
these around town once the leaves have begun to fall and come back
later to gather them for garden-mulching. Leaves provide valuable
organic matter to improve the quality of the garden-soil and feed our
"micro-livestock", the worms, bugs and bacteria that add their valuable
"manure" to our gardens. The colorful, reusable leaf bags will provide a
visual demonstration of our whole town's participation in growing food
to share.
(More fabric is still needed - see our wish list).
John Dillard, owner and manager of
Monroe Telephone Company read our wish-list published in the
The Tribune News paper and
has offered his company's services to laminate signs we
can post around the Gardens for people's information. We'll print the
signs from our computer and bring them over to them for laminating.
Greenhouse/nursery donations: The Oak Creek Center for Urban Horticulture at Oregon State University -
nursery pots and flats (
thanks Cody, for setting that up!).
Barbara Standley of Santa Clara -
pressure-treated lumber, saw-horses and nursery table tops.
Eva Fife -
straw bales for the muddy greenhouse paths, and
help with transplanting.
Knife River Corporation -
almost $3,000 worth of gravel to expand the parking capacity where the greenhouse is located.
Cindy Cantor for taking over the
watering of all the starts.
Garden supplies and plant materials: Bodhi - about a dozen
raspberry plants from his Eugene garden.
Jason and Christine -
sprouting potatoes. Laurie and Warren Halsey -
ten gallons of gray house-paint.
(We gave half of it to the Monroe Food Bank to spruce up their
interior after they did renovations; we're using some to refurbish the
trailer donated to the project earlier in the season by
Dick and Jan Skirvin.)
Gary Glore has brought us two plastic
compost bins to process vegetable waste/kitchen scraps. We've put them at the Crowson/Monroe site.
Thanks to
Mylrea Estell for the
bicycle
that Chris can use to travel to the gardens and back to our home,
cutting down on the use of gas to drive our truck, and increasing our
fitness as well.
Since we were denied grant-funding, we added a donation button on our website. We have had a strong initial response from supporters both near and far.
We'd
like to thank Dick and Helen Hewitt, Cathy Rose, Marian Spadone, Rann
and Doreen Millar and Sue and Scott Peabody-Hewitt, Claudia McCue and
Judy Peabody for their generosity.
April 20, 2011
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| Dustin digging onions |
The "Sharing Gardens" turned "two" on April 15th!
Hard to believe it's only been that long...This past few weeks we've
been dodging raindrops and spending time transplanting and preparing
beds with the trust that sunnier weather is on its way. Our young friend
Dustin McClintock showed up to help us dig up the last few onions that
wintered over. We always appreciate his willing smile and "can-do"
attitude!
Thanks to Jo-Ellen for bringing us several loads of leaves for garden mulching and the annonomous donors at both sites - keep 'em coming! 
Tomatoes: 49 pounds
More "thank-you's" are in order: Steve
Rose has been down to the Monroe site three times already this spring, mowing
the long grass, "scalping" off the first few inches of grass-roots and
soil and finally going another 4" down with the big tractor and
roto-tiller attachment but he's had to hold off on going deeper while
the ground has been too saturated. Adele "Gia" Kubein donated a load of brand-new pressure-treated lumber and plywood. Kat Conn gave us four big, food-grade plastic buckets and a few dozen chitted potatoes. Thanks to Ray Kreth, we got a lawnmower! Phil Ezell has taken over the mowing at Bert and Theresa's place by the Alpine garden and been bringing us grass clippings for mulch. Renee Duncan has contributed a stack of weathered, cedar fence-boards that we can use to build birdhouses and feeders with the kids. Thanks to the folks at Ten Rivers Food Web who have been re-posting our blogs on their wonderful site. Check 'em out! Thanks too to all those people near and far who have been sending us notes of thanks and support,
especially my mom, Judy Peabody (our biggest fan!) It really lifts our
spirits! We apologize if we've overlooked anyone. Please know that you are all appreciated. After all, this is your garden too!
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