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"!

What Makes Our CSA Unique? Wanna Join?

Beautiful Sharing Gardens bounty!

Hi Folks - It's that time again. Spring planting has begun at the Sharing Gardens! Already we have beets, carrots and spinach sprouting in our greenhouses. If you'd like to join our CSA family in 2021, now's the time to let us know.

As most of you know, the Sharing Gardens is a unique kind of community garden. We share all of our surplus produce with local food charities, providing their recipients with access to delicious, nutritious, organically grown fruits and vegetables that they might not otherwise have access to. Your CSA membership helps us keep this service available.

Our greenhouses extend our growing season...

What makes our fruits and veggies unique? 

• Grown with locally sourced, "veganic" fertilizers: LINK
• Slow-grown food: because our food is grown without heavy, nitrogen-based, commercial fertilizers, our produce has less water-weight and more nutrient-dense.
• No herbicides or pesticides
• Wildlife-friendly
  

We provide food boxes from early May to mid-November (weather-permitting). Early birds who sign up before our official starting date (early-May) may receive additional smaller boxes of our early crops. And, though sometimes our heat-loving crops quit producing before our season officially ends, we try to always grow lots of winter-storage crops and make these available to our members to finish the season.

At the peak of the season, our boxes provide enough produce for an average family of four, or a couple who are focused on a plant-based diet. If you receive more than you can eat, we encourage you to befriend your neighbors and share the bounty or, if this is impractical, we have had couples who requested a customized smaller box. It doesn't cost less but they feel good knowing that they're supporting our project and that their surplus is going to feed those in need.

Our preference is for members who can pick up their weekly boxes at our garden-site in Monroe but if we have enough subscribers in Corvallis, we will arrange for a pick-up site there.

Cost per CSA "share": $700/year. ($400 payable ASAP/balance of $300 due July 1st)

For more details, CLICK HERE. You can reach us directly through the email or phone number at the bottom of that link.

Garden-bounty brought to you by your favorite "farm-acists"

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.