Returning to Our Roots

Dear friends of the Sharing Gardens, near and far, 

Well, winter Solstice has come and gone and the days are becoming imperceptibly longer as we inch back towards another growing season. Chris and a handful of other dedicated share-givers (volunteers) have been harvesting, sifting and bagging the worm-compost we 'grow' in our greenhouse paths. We've removed all of last year's plants from the greenhouse beds and gently dug in a combination of the worm-compost, coffee grounds and wood-ash so these they will be ready for 2022 plantings. 

As of January 7th, we've already begun to plant the first cold-tolerant seeds in the greenhouse beds: beets, carrots, green onions and spinach. This will be our third year that we grow food without the use of commercial soil amendments, animal by-products or manures. At a time when supply-chains are challenged and petroleum-based fertilizers and amendments that must be mined and shipped around the planet are becoming more scarce and expensive, we are grateful that we've found ways of generating soil-fertility from waste products and locally sourced materials. 

We've had an amazing windfall happen over the last month which is the main purpose of this post. Llyn's mom, Judy (left) has decided to make an annual gift to our charity which will adequately cover all the project's expenses as well as provide surplus for us to use on infrastructure upgrades and to help others in our community. With this generous donation and the financial security it brings we've decided we will no longer offer the CSA (What is a CSA?) and return to the roots of the project.

Sun-Ship greenhouse - 2021

For the first nine years of the Sharing Gardens all our expenses were covered through grants, gifts, and our own savings. We created the CSA four years ago when our financial resources were beginning to thin out. We saw it as a way we could use the infrastructure we'd already built to cover expenses, but it always felt like it was a compromise from our original intent to "give without thought of receiving" and trust that we would be provided for. 

So, in 2022 we will return to the original form for the Sharing Gardens and simply grow food to share with those who volunteer or contribute in some way. The sizable surplus will be donated to food charities in our area. 

If you live near us and you'd like to get your hands in the dirt, you're welcome to come help in the gardens and take home some of the day's harvest as our way of saying "thanks". (Volunteering at the Sharing Gardens). 

Help in the garden, share in the harvest!

 We wish you good health and inspiration and a sense of fulfilling purpose in the year to come. Thank you for all the ways you help make this world a kinder place for all.

Warmly, Llyn and Chris

Rewilding at the Sharing Gardens...

Monarchs in Pismo Beach, CA by Steve Corey, CC license

Those of you who've been following our Blog know that the Sharing Gardens is dedicated to fostering habitat for the flora and fauna that call this place "home". We've had several successes in the insect realm:

Last week we discovered a preying mantis in our celery patch - left. We haven't ever noticed any baby mantises though they're super-tiny so it's not surprising, but we have noticed several egg cases each year. They like to lay them on wood or metal surfaces. 

Preying mantis egg-case

We found another adult a few years back too. They're such intelligent, conscious, engaging creatures the way they cock their heads and look right into your eyes.

Preying Mantis - Sharing Gardens - 2017

We have also been very happy to see increasing numbers of Swallowtail butterflies on our land. When purchased the land in 2014, one of the first things we did was to plant groves of various trees to provide us with a source of leaves for mulch and compost, and to provide wildlife with a greater diversity of habitat. We selected sycamores and aspens because both are fast-growing trees and don't mind having their roots wet in the winter when our land sometimes gets deeply saturated. We didn't know it at the time but aspen trees are one of the natural host-plants for swallowtails! (A host plant provides food, and/or a place for butterflies to attach their cocoons). Each year we see more and more of these colorful beauties.

 A Swallowtail butterfly on  one of our marigold patches.

We found this Sphinx moth on the end of a bamboo pole in August.

I (Llyn) have been developing my skills at propagating Showy Milkweeds - a host plant for Monarchs. We now have three established patches that self-sow and return yearly. Though we've yet to see any Monarchs (we're at the very northern-most reach of their migration-range), each spring, when the milkweeds are blooming, they are just covered with other kinds of pollinators: butterflies and bees of various kinds. Here's a post I wrote about our Milkweed/Monarch program.

Showy milkweed in bloom.

Happily, many frogs have taken up residence on our land as well. We love to sleep with our windows open on summer nights and hear their chorus of croaks as they commune with joy. Here's Adri with a pair of them she carefully caught on a volunteer-day.

And our sunflowers, and Birdseed Millet-patches provide plenty of food for many kinds of birds in our neighborhood. Some of the plants we leave for them to enjoy in the field while some of them we harvest, dry and store so we can distribute the seeds throughout the winter. (That's Jazmin - right - with a Mammoth Russian sunflower head).

And here's an article that describes how, in England, hundreds of land-owners of relatively small plots (churches, houses, city parks) are contributing to a massive movement of "re-wilding" that now amounts to about 600,000 acres! So, every little bit helps!

Healthy Soil - Healthy People - Healthy Planet! Dr. Zach Bush

Hi Folks - The gardens are really growing beautifully now. We're harvesting spring-greens for the S. Benton Food Pantry and our CSA boxes and busily planting out crops - both inside and outside the greenhouses.

This post features a link to a very important video by an amazing doctor, Zach Bush who details the connections between the health of soil and our physical health.

Over the past thirty years, our food system has become increasingly more toxic at the same time that there have been radical increases in many chronic illnesses. It's only reasonable to assume that many of these disease conditions are the result of depleted soils and ever more toxic chemicals in our environment. Many people have become increasingly dependent on the so-called "health-care" industry (which is often more about "disease-care" if you really look at it!) - seeking health through dependence on pharmaceutical drugs and a woefully misinformed medical establishment rather than taking responsibility for healthy life-style choices. 

This video contains important info that you won't find through the main-stream media or from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), World Health Organization or other main-stream health professionals. We hope you'll take the time to watch the video all the way through. We think you will find this info both informative and inspirational.

 LINK to video: Chemical Farming & The Loss of Human Health - Dr. Zach Bush

Dr. Zach Bush (image: below) is as an MD who specializes in internal medicine and endocrinology, who is also an internationally recognized thought leader on the importance of microbiomes when it comes to health, disease, and nutrition. He’s doing remarkable work to save our planet, and he believes that we still have an opportunity to reverse the damage done and create the most verdant, bio-diverse planet to have ever existed. 

Dr Bush says on his site:“My work is dedicated to the health of humanity and the planet we call home. It is critical that our pursuit of optimal health and longevity begin with an effort toward a collective rise in consciousness such that we would begin to thrive within nature, instead of fighting that nature that is life itself.

If you'd like more info, here is a beautifully written post about Dr Bush's work published on the Natural Blaze news aggregate. It features several other video clips as well.

We've begun sending out CSA boxes of early spring greens!

If you're local and would like to increase your family's consumption of organically-grown fruits and veggies, it's not too late to sign up for a CSA membership. LINK

Our food is slow-grown, without the use of any chemicals. Our gardens not only feed our CSA members and volunteers, and serve two food pantries but we provide habitat for much local wildlife as well. 

 

Last year, members' costs averaged out to be about $2.00/pound for some of the finest, freshest organically grown produce around. Our prices haven't risen in three years though the quality and variety of foods we offer has multiplied. For info about our CSA, here is the LINK.

We're not doctors but we do operate a "farm-acy"!