Gallery of Gratitude-Garden Update

Hello folks, Spring has sprung here in the southern Willamette Valley of Oregon. Oh sure, we could still get some frosts but daffodils and crocuses are blooming, hazelnut trees are casting their pollen to the wind and some of our Asian pear trees actually have buds opening (we hope they can hold off till the pollinators begin to fly in earnest). 

With all these signs of spring, can summer, with its luscious, ripe tomatoes be far behind?

This post is an update about winter at the Sharing Gardens with a gallery of pictures to bring you our latest news.

We've begun hundreds of 'starts' in our raised-beds and many more in pots on our potting table. It won't be long before we're enjoying the very first spring-greens: lettuce, spinach and beet-tops, with enough to share with our supporting circle of volunteers and CSA members.

 

Summertime bounty - Sharing Gardens CSA

Speaking of our CSA, it looks like this is going to be our best season yet! Our raised beds have the most beautiful, fluffy, nutrient-dense soil. For the last two years, we have stopped using manures, other animal by-products and commercial fertilizers to create soil-fertility (veganic agriculture). 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.

We still have a few spots left so let us know if you'd like to become part of the Sharing Gardens "family". (Pick-up sites in Junction City, S. Corvallis and at the Sharing gardens in Monroe). LINK to CSA

Mushrooms: We've been mixing "mushroom compost" (hardwood sawdust blocks impregnated with mycelium from various edible mushrooms) into our raised beds and potting mix. The compost is a by-product of a local, organic commercial mushroom growing company. The compost adds "tilth" to the soil, worms like to eat it and the mushrooms also provide a slow-release nitrogen in a form accessible to plants. A side-benefit is that we're having mushrooms fruiting right in our garden beds! The mushroom compost has been fruiting since January and we've grown and given away over 50 pounds of shiitake, oyster and chestnut mushrooms. If this process continues into the warmer months, we should have plenty of mushrooms to continue to share.

Blocks of mycelium-infused sawdust (rt) are shredded and mixed into our raised beds.

Chris and Jim sifting oyster-mushroom blocks.

Chris harvesting oyster mushrooms.

Here's an oyster mushroom coming up in a patch of onion plants! We also have chestnut and shiitake mushrooms fruiting.

Our latest greenhouse is done! We've named it the Phoenix because it's made almost entirely from salvaged materials, many of which came from our neighbors the Dillards, who went through a period of construction and re-landscaping on their land in 2019. They gave us all the cinder blocks we needed and much of the lumber for the arches.

Framing the Phoenix greenhouse. All materials, with the exception of some lumber, screws and hinges are salvaged and re-purposed.

The Phoenix was the pet project of Chris and our friend Donn Dussell. They started work on it in late fall and just finished it this month. It will extend our growing season both earlier and later. With our two other larger greenhouses, we now have approximately 3,000 square/feet of greenhouse space!

Though we didn't document all the steps for making this style of greenhouse, we do have a step-by-step guide to making a greenhouse out of a carport frame. Here's the link.

Donn, leveling the cinder-block base.

Chris and Donn carrying trusses.

...installing cross-pipes salvaged from Barbara Standley's nursery.

 

Inside the Phoenix. Raised beds all around the sides and a wide bed in the middle. The grass clippings and leaves are spread in the paths which become worm-compost which we harvest in the fall. See post on how we do this.

A beautiful early-morning view from the backside (north) of the Phoenix.

We'd like to expand our group of volunteers this year. Volunteering provides a hands-on experience in growing food in a healthy, sustainable way. We have activities for all levels of interest and abilities but would especially like to find a few committed folks with strong backs and the flexibility to participate in some of the more rigorous aspects of growing food. LINK to volunteering.

Come, join the fun at the Sharing Gardens!

We have so much to be grateful for! Thank you to the many donors who are already making this a year of abundance. In addition to those mentioned earlier in this post, thanks to:

John Kinsey for the hundreds of pounds of compost he makes in his giant worm bins and the coffee grounds he gathers each week in town. Here he is in his Elephant garlic patch.

Catherine Henry - for all the thoughtful ways she supports the project (most recently: seed donations)!  

Becky Bauer - for all her help processing produce to be dehydrated,  taxi service to dental appointments, for friendship and all the other support for us and the project. 

Cathy Rose (left), though a woman of modest means, always extends herself graciously with generosity. This year she's pledged $10/month through an auto-payment program with PayPal. Every month when we receive the notice that its been deposited to our account, it brings a smile to our faces. It's like a little gem of generosity! 

A small thing, but the South Benton Food Pantry continues to allow us to put the Garden's trash in their bins as needed. Thanks, Janeece (program manager) for this service.

And last but not least David Roux and Dallice Drake made a donation of $250 to help us make healthy food available to those most in need in our community.

And remember: “We may need a doctor, a priest, a policeman, and a lawyer a few times during our life. But we need a farmer three times every day.”

Jazmin delivering veggies to the food pantry.

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!