Full-Circle Generosity - A Year-End Overview

A cornucopia of garden-bounty!

Hello Folks - Wherever you are in the world we hope you are healthy and finding creative ways to respond to the challenges of these times. Finally, the pressure of the autumn season has lifted. The harvest is long-since gathered, food-preservation projects are complete, seeds have been dried, winnowed and sorted, grant reports written and we can finally relax into the season of stillness in preparation for the coming year of new growth and possibilities.

Here is our end of the year overview with Harvest Totals, a gallery of highlights, and gratitude for all our supporters near and far. You are appreciated!

 Our 2nd largest greenhouse, the Ark - April 2020. Full of carrots, beets, greens and veggie-seedlings.

...and here's the same view taken in early December 2020! We're still harvesting late-planted lettuce and arugula. With last season's parsley still going strong.

Burgundy Globe onions being laid out to "cure" in the greenhouse. These were then covered with fabric so they weren't in the direct sun till their greens dried making them last longer in storage.

Harvest totals: As our regular readers know, the Sharing Gardens is a unique model for a community garden. Instead of separate plots, we all garden together and share in the harvests. The surplus is distributed among food charities. LINK: Overview/How it works. Our grand total of harvests for the year was approximately: 6,100 pounds.

How we reached that total figure... 

This year, we donated to:
South Benton Food Pantry and Gleaners - LINK: 1,110 pounds. We also donated approx. 200 veggie seedlings for Pantry customers to plant in their home-gardens.

Junction City Local Aid - LINK: 1,501 pounds. In addition, we processed an additional 601 pounds of produce gleaned from the Corvallis Farmer's market, composted any produce not fit for human consumption, and donated the rest to Local Aid, keeping that much food out of the waste-stream.

Tomatoes galore!

CSA members received a total of 2,689 pounds which worked out to an average amount of 15-20 pounds per week (depending on size of family).

Though all the above harvest totals were carefully weighed each week, we estimate that we grew an additional 700-900 pounds of unweighed produce including all the food Chris and I ate and/or preserved through canning and dehydration, or shared with volunteers and friends of the garden. For a grand total of approximately 6,100 pounds for the year.

You can see why they named this variety Elephant garlic!

Seed-saving: This has been a great year for seed-saving. We primarily save varieties that are running low or the seed is getting old. We save and use over 90% of our own seeds which helps us be more self-reliant if supply-chains shut down and, over the years, our seeds have become adapted to our local climate and conditions so they're more likely to thrive. Seed-saving is one of those homesteading techniques that's fairly easy to learn. If you're interested, here's a link that describes methods for saving several different varieties of seeds: LINK: Saving Your Own Seed. We have many varieties of seed to spare. Please be in contact if you are in need. LINK: Contact Us.

Rook - planting Sorghum...

...Mature sorghum plants which we are using in our hot-cereal and as a flour in our Corn Cake recipe. We also grew plenty for re-seeding next year. Our favorite variety is Kassaby. Easy to grow and delicious! (variety pictured: Ba Ye Qi)

Our Diamant Mill for grinding grains. Chris hooked it up to an old motor with a belt.

Our CSA was a big success. We had six full-paying members and were able to provide half-scholarships to two other low-income families through a grant provided by the Benton Community Foundation. We intend to keep our CSA member's circle small in 2021 in order to maintain high-standards for our members and still have plenty to donate to the food charities we serve. So, if you're local and wish to be a member, please let us know soon to reserve a spot. Cost and details can be found HERE.

Provence and Sweetmeat squash.

We grow our produce 100% "veganically" (no animal manures or animal by-products) and no store-bought amendments or fertilizers. Just leaves, grass, weeds and kitchen scraps, coffee grounds and wood-ash. LINK: Veganic Fertility

Leaves and grass clippings are donated by people who live in and near Monroe.

We dry and fold the bags and wrap them in bundles of 5 or 6 for people to re-use.

Some leaves are donated by the trailer-full! Here's Llyn putting some on a tarp to distribute where needed.

Donations: This year we received $2,900 in gifts from individuals. A special thank you to Karen and Peter Josephson-Stoel who, in addition to being CSA members for the third year in a row, donated $2,000! Judy Peabody was also especially generous with a donation of $650. Thank you to the others who donations ranged from $25-$100. Cathy Rose, Karen and Stanley Salot, Del Rainer and Pete Alford.

Grants: $300 from The Evening Garden Club and $1,200 from the Benton Community Foundation. Because our living/garden expenses average about $600/month, these contributions go a long way. 

We have also received much community-support in the form of tools, firewood and materials for gardening and building. Thank you to everyone who has supported the project in these ways.

John Kinsey with his worm "incubator". He makes hundreds of pounds of compost for us each year. Retired, he says it keeps him "from going crazy"! He also makes weekly stops at a local coffee shop and brings us coffee-grounds to help with garden fertility.

Judy Peabody (one of our most generous donors) who also comes each year to help in the garden.

Donn Dussell, has been volunteering all year on a weekly basis, helps us keep our equipment in good working order and made weekly deliveries of our donations to Local Aid.

 

Jim Templeton and Chris unload two cords of donated firewood.

Volunteers/Intern opportunities: We would have a very difficult time keeping this project going without the dedicated help of our volunteers/share-givers. Though it's amazing how much we get done with a core group of helpers, looking ahead, there is room for a few more folks who'd like to join our little gardening "family" and learn by doing, how to grow food that is nutrient-packed, delicious and light-on the environment. Preference will be given to those who can commit to regular times in the garden. Please let us know if you're interested. Contact Info

Volunteers/"share-givers" of all ages and abilities:

Cindy and Chris filling the compost bin with autumn garden clean-up.

Jim and Chris feeding young plants "compost tea".

OSU students sifting coffee grounds.

Cindy and Jim Kitchen putting collars and grass-mulch around broccoli plants. We cut the bottoms off the pots so we have re-usable collars to give protection from cold winds and slugs.

Donn, sifting compost for use as fertilizer and potting mix.

Young girls help gather rose-hips for use in winter tea-mixes.

Salvage and re-purposing: At the Sharing Gardens, we have a strong commitment to keeping materials out of the burn-pile and landfills. We are almost finished building our newest 18'x30' greenhouse (below) made almost entirely out of salvaged materials! So far we have spent under $150 on lumber and screws and hinges. Everything else was gifted or salvaged!

The Phoenix greenhouse: made almost entirely from salvaged/re-purposed materials.

This year our winter salvage projects have included two loads of cedar decking material which we will use for making raised beds and other construction projects.

Wildlife habitat: We are also "sharing" our gardens with the local wildlife who come to eat and make this place their home. Birds, small mammals and countless pollinators enjoy the Sharing Gardens as an oasis in an ever-encroaching world.

Adri and Kaylynn hold up Showy Milkweed plants that they helped start from seed. These will be planted in the ground next spring.

During early-summer blooming, our already established milkweeds (pictured) were covered in a variety of bees and flies and a few swallow-tail butterflies. We haven't seen any Monarchs yet but maybe, if we keep increasing their habitat, we'll see some in the future.

Swallowtail butterfly on our lavender. We discovered that Aspen trees are one of the host plants - for egg-laying - for these beautiful creatures. We planted 50 of them back in 2014 once we knew we'd be here permanently.

We enjoy hearing from you! If you have any comments, please leave them below so everyone can read them. We look forward to this coming season with positive anticipation! Llyn and Chris

Cocoon Time

Found in our gardens.

Chris and I have been asking ourselves lots of "meaning of life" questions this year. There's so much in this world that is frustrating and saddens us. Most of it seems beyond our control. But what we do have choice over is where we put our attention. There is much in the world to feel grateful for, and inspired about too.

Some people feel a calling to stand up and fight what they see is wrong with the world and, if that is their calling, who are we to say that they are wrong? For us though, we're more inspired by building the new. This Buckminster Fuller quote says it beautifully:

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

It's cocoon-time again. After months of lightened restrictions of our daily activities, most of us are being asked to curtail our freedoms in the world once again. Perhaps this time holds a hidden blessing. If we each use this cocoon-time to slow down and bring love and grateful attention to the simple day-to-day tasks that comprise the majority of a lifetime,  collectively we can lift the consciousness of the planet and heal our relations with each other, and the natural world of which we are an inextricable part.

We like to think of our selves as cells in the body of the planet, and humanity as an organ. This metaphor helps us realize that when we are generous and caring, we're actually only giving to our Self! Imagine if the cells in our hearts thought that their function was more important than that of the brain so they began hoarding all the nutrients that flow freely through them for themselves?

Something is going on on Earth these days that is much larger than any of us can fully comprehend but we believe that Life can be trusted. Let's use this next period of cocooning to connect with a deeper sense of purpose and actively choose the projects and people and elements in life we wish to encourage and cooperate with. And, let's also ask ourselves, what shall we stop doing? What are those activities and relationships that were absorbing our attention before the cocooning that we may wish to gracefully release?  

If you have any doubts about the power of cocooning, check out this 4-minute video about a caterpillar turning into a moth. You will be amazed!

 

Autumn Leaf Drive

Our beautiful hickory tree!

The Sharing Gardens is now accepting autumn leaves to help build up our compost piles in preparation for next year's growing season.

Neighbors bringing leaves.

We are blessed to have two "neighbors" who bring us leaves from their oak and maple trees that amount to ten or more trailer-loads full each year. We use them to cover large areas of our gardens so they have time over the winter to compost and feed the worms and other soil-organisms and suppress weeds.

This year, we are very happy to announce that Monroe's City Hall is including a flier about our need for leaves in the November newsletter which is mailed to all the town's residents in their water bills.

Here is the text of the mailing:

Please bring bagged leaves and grass to:

664 Orchard St., Monroe (bright yellow house behind the big, white Methodist Church) and leave the bags in a pile under the big, hickory tree at the back of the church parking lot.

Please no animal waste, trash or sticks/branches, no holly or roses (too sharp), or black walnut leaves (they can kill plants - LINK). Just leaves and grass 😊.

Free bags to share...

We have plenty of previously-used lawn/leaf bags to share. They are available in a trash-can underneath the hickory tree.  Please take only what you can use.

Please don’t fill bags too full and tie them lightly (so we can re-use them).

We would prefer that you bring the filled bags to the Sharing Gardens but if you have more bags than you can bring in your own vehicle, please save up enough bags to make it worth our trip to come get them. Place them on the curb, up-side-down (so no rain gets in) and email us (shareinjoy@gmail.com) or give us a call for pick-up. Chris and Llyn (541) 847-8797 (Before noon or after 2:00, please. We take a rest mid-day). End of flier.

 

  To see our Wish List - Click Here.

"Veganic" Agriculture: 

 (For a full post on "Making Your Own "Veganic" Potting Soil in Your Greenhouse Paths - Using Worms" CLICK HERE).

Since we began weening ourselves off the use of commercial fertilizers, animal manures or animal by-products (bone-meal/blood meal etc) as a source of soil fertility, we have turned increasingly to leaves, grass-clippings, wood-ash and coffee grounds as a replacement. There is a saying that, "for every calorie you harvest out of a farm or garden, you must put at least a calorie back in". In a typical year we harvest and share over six-thousand pounds of produce. We have to replenish a huge amount of organic-matter so our soils don't get depleted!

Each year we must replenish the organic-material to keep our gardens fertile. That's a lot of leaves!

Llyn spreading leaves

We tarp the leaves with various recycled materials (such as lumber-wrap) to keep them from blowing away. This is called "sheet-composting" or "solarizing" and it has the added benefit of killing many weed-seeds that germinate in early spring which means far less weeding for us later in the season.

There are many materials that work well for solarizing: carpet-scraps, old pieces of green-house plastic (greenhouse plastic is specially coated so it's protected from UV-rays and won't break-down as fast - beware of using regular plastic sheeting because, as it disintegrates it breaks-up into many little pieces which are then polluting for the environment). Black plastic works too.

Another great source of solarizing material comes from lumber-yards. Much of their lumber comes wrapped in a woven plastic "paper". They give this plastic-wrap away for free and it appears that it holds up fine for at least two seasons.

Tarping the leaves keeps them from blowing away and kills many weed-seeds that germinate in early spring.

We use metal fence-posts and pieces of pipe to weight down the tarps/plastic.

Please note that all of these materials we use are re-purposed; most of them were headed for the land-fills and by finding uses for them we extend their life-times.

We weight down the edges of these materials with fence-posts, metal piping or whatever we have on-hand to keep the tarps from blowing away.

Another neighbor collects used-coffee-grounds from a local coffee-shop and brings them to us. We now have over 150 gallons of them stock-piled for the spring! We heat our home exclusively with wood and use the ashes as another source of soil-fertility. Here's a post about the "Benefits of Coffee-grounds and Wood Ashes in the Garden".

Leaves make excellent mulch for trees...

We add leaves to the raised-beds in our greenhouses too...

Here are some links explaining this style of deep-mulch gardening that we practice:

Benefits of Deep-Mulch Gardening

Grass-clippings for soil-fertility!

Grass-Clippings and Leaves for Fertilizer

Mulch We Love, and Why

More on Mulch

Something to be aware of when you're using donated mulch materials...Some materials - particularly un-composted horse manure can contain high levels of herbicides and can pollute your soil and compost-piles if you are not careful. Here is a post we wrote about our experience with this:

Herbicide Contamination?

This compost pile was made entirely from leaves and grass-clippings...

...beautiful compost leads to...

...bountiful harvests. Buttercup (green) and Delicata (white) squash.

...and playing in the leaves is just good fun too.

 

 

 

 

 

West Coast Fires - Garden Update

Morning skies - 9/8/2020

Hello friends - As most of you are probably aware of, for the past week, the west coast has been suffering from intense wildfires and their associated smoke. We've had some requests for an update on how we are being affected, so here you go:

Monday Sept. 7th, 2020 (Labor Day) was a bit warmer than average but skies were clear.  Some time around sundown, all that began to change as sustained, dry, hot winds began to blow from the north and east - directly opposite of where we get our normal, prevailing winds - bringing smoke from the fires in the Cascade mountains - pouring into the Willamette valley, where we live. Periodic wind gusts exacerbated the problem and exploded the wildfires rapidly. Fortunately there were no significant fires in our immediate vicinity and so no threat that our 145 year-old wooden farmhouse would catch fire. The easterly winds were so hot and dry that some flowers and grassed on the east side of our host were browned and withered overnight!

Looking into our front yard. The day never got brighter than twilight. 9/8/2020

Sharing Gardens - Tuesday Sept. 8, 2020

We slept with windows closed but still we woke to dangerously smoky air-quality within our house and eerie, orange skies. Outside air-quality levels quickly shot up to hazardous levels and the smoke was so dense on Tuesday the 8th that we had to use lamps all day since light-levels never got stronger than twilight. Fortunately, Llyn's Mom sent some info on how to make a low-tech indoor air-filter using a box-fan which we began doing soon after.

Box-fan/air filter with wet towel. Really works! Here's a LINK - with info on how to make your own fan-air filter and other disaster preparedness tips.

Day two of the smoky deluge. Skies are a tiny bit clearer/ 9/9/2020

We briefly lost electric power on the first night but were fortunate that it came back on before the morning.  Others in our valley were not so lucky and spent over sixty hours without electricity during the worst of the smoke. For those who get their water from wells, this meant no running water. They lost refrigeration and the ability to cook food and had no power to run fans or air-conditioners to clear the air in their homes. Very stressful!

Air quality on Sat. Sept 12. No longer orange but still very hazardous! There are apartments less than 100 yards across the street, out this window that were completely invisible to us that day.

One of our wildlife gardens (food and flowers for birds and pollinators) - Sat. 9/12/20. usually we can see the neighboring school's athletic field out this window...

Everything outside became covered in ash. On the first day of the smoke we ran sprinklers on much of the gardens to rinse the plants' leaves, so they could continue to breathe and grow, even though sunlight was so heavily blocked for many days.

For many of us farmers, these fires couldn't have come at a worse time. Most everyone who grows vegetables in our valley was just heading into peak harvest time. The air-quality made it dangerous to be outside for very long to do necessary harvesting and all the Farmer's Markets got closed both on Wednesday and Saturday which meant there was nowhere for the harvests to go even if farmers could get food out of the fields!  

A sample of our harvest the previous week - before the fires came. Many vegetable farmers in the valley were just heading into peak-harvest time, ourselves included!

The gardens in peak production - picture taken late August 2020.

The ash got so thick on our greenhouses that it made them downright shady inside! We also had some concern that the ash might be caustic and contribute to the plastic's degrading so Chris got out there with a hose on Thursday and rinsed off the bulk of the ash.

Chris rinsing ash off the Ark greenhouse - Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020

Chris rinsing ash off the Sunship greenhouse. Air-quality was still very bad.

The Sharing Gardens canceled most of our CSA orders (members who receive weekly boxes of food) and, because very few people were venturing out of their homes during the worst of the smoke, two of the food charities we provide produce for had to put a limit on how much food they could receive. Much of the produce, once harvested and refrigerated is stable for awhile but our 110 tomato plants were just coming into peak production and they are very perishable. What to do? Fortunately, one of our friends and volunteers - Cindy Kitchen - who was aware of our plight began calling around and discovered a drop-off site for fruit and vegetable donations for victims of the fires, who had been forced to flee their homes. Cindy also found a food pantry in Corvallis who was running low on their fresh vegetable supply so we were able to send them some food as well.

Cindy arrived on Thursday afternoon to help us with the harvest. The skies were still quite smoky but had lost their orange hue. Outside air-quality was still dangerous so we used face-masks while harvesting and boxing the produce.

That's Cindy - on the right (with husband, Jim - Sept. 2014) who helped harvest and find homes for our produce this past week.

A sample of the harvest we sent to those in need during this past week of fires.

At the end of the week, when we tallied up all the fruits and vegetables that had been harvested and shared, it was our largest weekly total of the year - 534 pounds! (This compares with the three previous weeks of approximately 300 pounds each). We were so happy that all this great food didn't go to waste!

Meanwhile, being forced to stay indoors, Chris and I moved forward on food-preservation projects, which is always a big part of any September's activities. Our friend/volunteer Becky came over and helped us shell walnuts from last year (to store in the freezer) and brought some prune-plums to share - which we cut up to dehydrate. We also made raisins from our own grape vines.

Grapes we harvested to turn into raisins. Don't they look like jewels?

The smoke is finally starting to lift. The winds are shifting and bringing relief from ocean-breezes. Some of the fires are reaching containment (though it's likely that many won't be fully extinguished until the rains begin to fall in earnest later in the season).

It's hard to believe how much cleaner the air was just a few months ago. This view is taken of the gardens just as you come in the front gate. July 17, 2020

The Ark - greenhouse - July 17, 2020. Full of ripening tomatoes!

Our nearby town of Corvallis is doing an amazing job of providing food and shelter for some of those being evacuated from the fires. Some people are being housed in vacant hotels/motels; others, who have their own recreational vehicles, have been welcomed to the fair grounds. We discovered, the day after we made our food donation to the evacuees, that SO many locals had made donations of all kinds of food that, at least temporarily, the evacuation center could receive no more food donations!

Corvallis' Sustainability Coalition organized a partnership between local restaurants and farmers and volunteers to prepare thousands of delicious, complete meals both to evacuees being housed in motels and those who had ended up at the fairgrounds. If you would like to support their efforts, here's a LINK to their site.

Our much-used birdbath.

The wildlife are experiencing real challenges this week too. We have a shallow birdbath made from a terra cotta plant tray and, prior to the fires we only needed to refill it once a day but during this past week it's getting so many visitors - both for bathing and drinking - that we've been refilling it three and four times a day. I wonder if the ashes are irritating to their skin?

Wildlife needs extra help, now too.

The deer have been finding their way past the deer fences that totally surround three acres of our property. We've had to herd them out for the past three mornings. They're probably thirsty too, and tired of eating food that tastes like ash! Still, we can't let them roam free in our gardens and orchards because of the damage they can do to plants.

Everyone we talk to knows someone personally who has had to evacuate or actually lost property in the fires. Some are still waiting for permission to return to the site of their homes to see if anything still remains. We pray, wherever you are, that this message finds you safe and with the support and resources you need to get through these challenging times. And, if currently you are in a position to help others less fortunate than yourself, we encourage you to do so...

...especially those who aren't in a position to help themselves. Llyn with baby bunny who got scared out of his nest and couldn't find his way back home - Spring 2020.