Join Now! Sharing Garden's CSA

We are now accepting CSA subscriptions for our 2019 season. Hello friends, here is some information you might be interested in about our Sharing Gardens fund-raiser. In case you're unfamiliar with our program, we grow food with a small group of volunteers and give it freely to local food-pantries, (2,000 pounds in 2018) LINK. We are offering a small number of memberships to our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for the 2019 season. Participants will get a weekly 'share' of our home-grown, organic fruits and vegetables from May to November - with pick-up sites in Corvallis, Junction City and Monroe.  Even if you're not interested, if you're local to our area, could you please share with others in your network who might be? Much thanks!

What's new this year: Less plastic. Each weekly box will have a large, plastic liner that all - but a few items - will be placed in without separate plastic-bags. Liners will be re-usable. Less plastic - better for the Earth!

Weekly pick-up spots: Corvallis (Wednesdays - 36th and Polk - 2:00 to 6:00 pm)
Monroe - (at the Sharing Gardens - 1:00 to 5:00)
Eugene/Junction City: We will have a single delivery site in both Junction City and in northern Eugene on Sunday mornings (sites to be determined).

Here's a description of our CSA:

Llyn and Chris-Your local 'farm'acists.

What is a CSA? A CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is a membership-relationship between you and a farm. Members receive a "share" of seasonally available produce, on a weekly basis. This gives you the benefit of supurb freshness, knowing where your food comes from, how it is grown, and that you are giving direct support to the people who grow your food.

The Sharing Gardens CSA will provide weekly boxes of fruits and vegetables from May until November as it is available. 

Your subscription will bring fresh and local food to your family while supporting us in our mission to donate healthy produce to people in our community, through local food charities (close to 2,000 pounds in 2018). We will be focusing on familiar, staple crops; the things that are most popular at grocery stores and farmer's markets.

Home-grown fresh!

What's in my box? In the beginning of the season, boxes are less full as there are not as many crops ready for harvest in the spring. Over the course of the summer and into the fall, the boxes increase in the amount that's included so, over the course of the season, you receive generous value for your membership.

May, June: Beets, cabbage, carrots, chard, onions, kale, lettuce and radishes
July: same as above, AND early tomatoes. summer squash, garlic and cucumbers
August, Sept.: same as above, AND green beans, celery, large tomatoes, peppers, apples, pears, plums, blackberrries and grapes
Oct., Nov.: Most of above, AND winter squash.

Each member will be added to our special CSA email-list and receive recipes and ideas for using the produce provided.

Lettuce grown from seed we saved.

How do we grow your food?

No herbicides or pesticides
Soil-fertility created primarily through compost, worm castings, leaves, grass-clippings and wood-ash.
Slow-grown for maximum density of nutrition and flavor.
We encourage birds and beneficial insects for natural pest-management.
We grow all heirloom varieties (no hybrids or GMO) from 85% (or more) of seed we saved ourselves.

Healthy food for you and your family!

Cost of season's 'shares': $700 (payable either in full - when you sign-up, or in two payments of $400 - when you sign up and $300 by July 1st). This works out to about $25/week.

Payment methods: We can accept cash or checks made out to 'The Sharing Gardens'.

Where do I pick up my box? Members in the Monroe area will be able to pick up their boxes on Wed. afternoons from 1:00 to 5:00 at the Sharing Gardens.

664 Orchard St., Monroe 97456 

Corvallis: Boxes can be picked up on Wed. afternoons at NW 36th and Polk from 2:00 to 6:00 Eugene/Junction City: We will have a single delivery site in both Junction City and in northern Eugene on Sunday mornings (sites to be determined).

Can I share my membership? Yes, if you find someone to share it with.

Can I cancel my membership? Only if we have a waiting list. You will be refunded the balance of your fees if there is someone else who wishes to buy your "share".

To sign up for the Sharing Gardens CSA,  send an email to us at - ShareInJoy@gmail.com - We will email you an application for you to fill out and mail to us, along with your payment.

Questions? Phone: Chris and Llyn (541) 847-8797
Call: 8:00 to 12:30 or 2:00 to 6:30 (we keep 'farmer's hours' and take a nap each day :-)

Harvest Totals - 2018, Fall Highlights and Gratitude

Adri and Cindy; summer bean picking time!

Hello friends - Well the hubbub of the holidays is retreating in the rear-view mirror and we're settling back into our garden routines as days get longer and we continue to prep for the first round of seed-planting in mid-February. This post is an end-of-the-year report on our donations to local Food Pantries, some highlights from the end of last year's garden season and some gratitude to our supporters - near, and far.

2018 - A great year for peppers!

Harvest totals: 2018 was the first year we had a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture - LINK). We had seven 'share-holders' who received boxes of produce for 25 weeks, from Mid-May to early November. We had to stop one week short of our 26-week goal due to a killing frost but our 'share-holders' were happy with their produce; in fact the most common 'criticism' was that we gave them too much food! We also fed ourselves, and our core share-givers; those who help us grow, and deliver the food (Cindy and Jim, Rook, Sabine, Cathy Rose, Eliza, Rod and Thorin) with weekly boxes and additional surplus for dehydrating and canning purposes.  

So, a lot of food came out of the gardens!

Fall Harvest (ahead of the frost) - Cayenne peppers and green tomatoes.

"Green" tomatoes, ripening on the porch.

Our donations went to three food-pantries: South Benton Food Pantry (Monroe, Oregon) - they receive the majority of our donations as they are located right next to the Sharing Gardens. Local Aid (Junction City) - a full-service community center (professional-clothes 'free-store', fuel-bill assistance and more) - Here's a link to a short video about them. And God's Storehouse (Harrisburg) a simple pantry run entirely through volunteers and donations.

SBFP: 1,798 pounds of produce and over 200 'starts'/seedlings.

Local Aid: 630 pounds,

God's Storehouse: 75 pounds

Total donations: 2,503 pounds

Pete Alford - delivery volunteer to Local Aid.

Our donation-numbers were lower this year than in the past, but still quite respectable. We hope to provide as much, or more next year.

Summer in the Gardens: Bean tipi on the right...

...Bean tipi in the Fall! We grew many gallons of Scarlet Runner beans (our favorite!) -  a LINK to our post about Growing Scarlet Runner beans.

Fall highlights: We had gorgeous weather for much of the Fall; temps in the 70's, partly cloudy (with big, puffy, white clouds) - for many weeks in a row. This made it very pleasant to be in the gardens (though we could have used a bit more rain...). In early November we had several cold nights in a row which knocked out the heat-loving plants (tomatoes, peppers - etc) and mostly brought the season to its end.

Hedgerow of sun-flowers; we grow these mainly for the birds to enjoy.

A great season for leaves! The drier weather meant that autumn-leaves stayed light and easy to rake and bag. We are grateful to the City of Monroe for posting an article (included in everyone's water-bill) requesting people bring us their leaves. We estimate that 25-30 bags of leaves were dropped off by the town's citizens; we picked up another 18-20 (from folks who couldn't bring their own) and we gave away over 50 leaf-bags we'd saved from previous donations, dried and rolled in groups of 6. That's a bunch of bags that didn't end up in the land-fill after only one use! We continue to recycle them for future seasons.

One of the trailer-loads of leaves the Crosby's donated.

One of the 25 trailer-loads of leaves donated by the Stones

Our 'neighbors', the Crosby's raked up four big trailer-loads of leaves and delivered them to the gardens. And Chris worked with our other neighbor - Victor Stone - who loaded 25 trailer-loads of leaves using his front-end loader which we brought to the gardens and distributed as a thick mulch in garden-beds and around our orchard trees.

Llyn, distributing leaves to feed the Gardens.

Our "chip's" come in! We managed to connect with the foreman of the tree-trimming service that's been servicing our town and surrounding areas and invited him to dump loads of wood-chips here. We use them to cover our driveway, to feed our mushroom bin and to mulch around our fruit-trees. We received four big loads (and could have had more delivered but that's all we could use).

Chris and John Kinsey distributing wood-chips.

Bird-feeder party! In early December we invited Cindy and Jim Kitchen to bring four of their grandchildren for a bird-feeder party. It was a highlight for Chris and me during the holiday season.The Kitchen's daughter Jamie, brought three of her kids and two, sweet Mexican girls who she knows from the "English as a second language" program she leads at her children's school. After making several dozen feeders (with pine-cones we gathered on our land, peanut-butter and millet, and sunflower seeds we grew last summer), and garden-cart rides, we headed inside for homemade chili and corn-cake.  We look forward to some more kid-oriented activities in this year to come.

Bird-feeder-making party! Pine cones, peanut-butter, millet and sunflower seeds. The birds love 'em!

Li Hung, an exchange-student from China giving the kids a cart-ride.

Gratitude: Tina and Swede continue to gather walnuts from their trees and bring them to us. Being vegetarians, we especially appreciate this local source of plant-based protein. One of our two walnut trees fell over in December and the other one is leaning dangerously over our house so we've decided to prune it way back. This will mean our walnut supply will be strongly diminished next year so Swede and Tina's gift will be even more appreciated than before!

John Kinsey continues to find many ways to support the program. At this time of year it's mainly by bringing us leaves he's raked from his neighbor's lawns and through a weekly pick-up of coffee-grounds - a free resource from coffee-shops that we use to increase soil-fertility LINK.

Cash donations: The Garden received donations from four households totaling $850. Thanks to Judy Peabody, John and Donna Dillard, Jim and Cindy Kitchen and Mike Weaver for your generosity.

Last year's indoor pea-patch in April. They grew another 3-feet and produced copiously before quitting in June.

Looking forward: On Saturday, January 5th (new moon), we'll be starting climbing peas in the greenhouse.

We already have over 250 onions planted (for greens, and some will form full bulbs).

The first major round of seed-planting begins on Valentine's Day (Chris' birthday) - broccoli, lettuce, celery, and more....

OSU Service-Learning students from 2018 showing a week's lettuce-harvest to donate to Local Aid.

OSU students are scheduled to come assist us with whatever needs doing on Feb. 16th through their 'service-learning' program (4-6 students for four hours); we have been hosting groups of students several times a year since 2012!

We hope this post finds you thriving and finding ways to help make this world a better place.
As Mother Teresa once said,  

 “If you can’t feed a hundred . . . . feed one.”  Mother Teresa

Caleb, reaching for Whole Grain No-Knead bread - recipe (with home-grown blue-corn meal we grew ourselves - LINK, and other flours).

The Great Monroe 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 this month's 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 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 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.

"Veganic" Agriculture:

Since we began weening ourselves off the use of animal manures 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 four-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 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.

Thanks Giving

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.