Leaving a Garden Space

Some of you may know I've been gardening with a local church for the past couple of years.
I was looking to start a community garden in my town, and the local Ag Extension gal heard from the church group that they were trying to start a community garden. So she connected us, and I got on board, thinking I could help them with their project, and save myself the trouble of finding a bit of city park or corporation land.
I've had internal misgivings from the beginning. I thought, "I'm supporting a church, even if it is indirectly. Am I really comfortable with that?"
And at first I was comfortable with it. They had me and another gardener that weren't church members, and the level of proselytizing was low, and based mostly in one-on-one conversations, and I know, meant as kindly outreach. They were serving community members, and there was talk of sending the excess veggies through the local food pantry.

The food pantry never saw anything. Instead, time after time, the excess was distributed among gardeners and church members.  This bothered me a little, but I knew at least some of those gardeners and church members were on fixed income, or raising families, and I thought, at least it's getting to someone.

Then I hear this year, they turned away a local family that was looking for gardening space. Because it "would take too much organizing," and I'm not sure why that is, except that they didn't belong to this church. But I don't either, so why they got turned away... I don't know. And that bothers me a lot!

And they've been spraying chemicals. Roundup for what I considered a small weed problem. Some other herbicide (unnamed, see communication note below) on the patch of sweet corn, that's right next to one of my plots.

Communication has been lacking. They make plans to till something or spray something, but then if those plans don't pan out, they just do whatever they want when the whim takes them. I lost my hill of watermelon this year because someone decided that June was a great time to till, so they just did it one day, and they disregarded my plot markers and just tilled right through the middle of it.That bothered me a lot, and led to a angry email exchange.

I didn't feel like I was part of a community garden, I felt that I was part of a church garden, for church friends to garden in. I talked with the lead about my concerns, and she admits that the Community she was wanting to serve with this "Community Garden" was the church community, and not the neighborhood/town.

How insular. How disappointing.  I guess I should have known better... should have listened to my conscience.
So I told her I'm not returning next year.  I don't want to use my precious time and energy to promote and assist a garden that's only going to serve a small church group.  Nope. I'll finish out this year and harvest what I have planted, but no way am I putting more of my time or energy into this project.

What does this mean for my gardening? The community garden space is about half of my gardening space right now.
The short answer is, I'll find land elsewhere.  I found more this year through friends. If the farmers market EVER OPENS I'll have a card at my table explaining my need for more land, and I can distribute those amongst my customers. Hopefully I can find more growing space that way. If I have to put out an all-call to my friends this winter, I can try that too.  If I have to scale back my operations, I can do that.  I might, maybe, if I can find the time to take off work to do it, talk to the city council about a city sponsored community garden. (The city council meets at the oh-so-convenient time of 10am on Thursdays or something like that.) I may need some time off from community gardens though, even secular ones. So no promises on that one.

- Jennie

Nooooooo!!!

*Sigh*

So, I thought the LeMars Farmers market started this Saturday, but apparently it doesn't.

The other seller I chatted with yesterday said that it used to open in June, but the veteran sellers were worried that the cold wet spring would leave them with nothing to offer, so they moved it back to July 3rd this year.

JULY!!!  FFS people!

I asked the Chamber of Commerce person in charge of the market if I could sell MY stuff early, because I DO have veggies to sell. She's avoiding the question. *sigh*

I have lettuce and peas and rhubarb and scapes ready to GO! I was so stoked for this weekend.

Now what am I going to do?

Put up a table in my lawn and sell from there? :-D Put an ad in Craigslist?  Sell door to door?
.....  This is so frustrating!

On a funnier note, I was visiting one of my favorite sellers last night. She's originally from Korea, married an Iowa farm boy and raised two daughters in LeMars. She walked us home and was introduced to my front yard garden.  Guess which crop she totally flipped over?

Scapes of course. :-D The hardneck garlic is the star of the garden again this year. And the scapes are perfect for harvest this week. She couldn't believe that I had some. Apparently green garlic with scape attached is a prized veggie in Korea. She had become resigned to Americans not knowing what it was. I had to promise to order her some this fall and help her plant. And then I had to cut 4 scapes off so she could cook up a BIG dinner with them. :-D She's lucky I like her.  I was planning a big order of garlic this summer.  I have saved my seed for 5 or 6 years now, and not had any problems. But if I want to grow more next year, I'll either have to eat NONE of this year's garlic or order some more heads from Seed Savers. Yea, we're just going to order more heads, because garlic fresh from the garden is too heavenly to abstain from. So, ordering some for Su won't be a problem.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
:-D I will eventually sell some veggies.  This is only a setback.
Have a good weekend everyone. Go support a farmer's market.
-Jennie

My Urban Homestead

For those unaware of the hub-bub in the urban-food-growing-blogosphere this week, check out this post from Madame Crunchy. (I won't bless the DerV's with web traffic.)

I'm a non-rural food grower. I grow and save seed and store food, all on my urban plot of land, just like those Pasadena folks. Doesn't that make me an urban homestead? Apparently the DerV's think not. They've decided they have rights to multiple phrases and in the interest of "the protection of the term and concept" they have triggered a tsunami of ill will by trying to enforce their ownership. Protection from what? I'm sure they think they are protecting it from green-washing large corps. Somehow they think sending cease and desist letters to other small urban homesteaders who use the term, is serving that purpose.

There's a facebook page that's sprung up in response.

One of the phrases they own now is "Path to Freedom," which is kinda close to my own blog title of "My Path to Freedom." Hopefully they don't send me one of those C&D letters, as I'm pretty sure I'd not go willingly.

Naturally, when I started this blog, with the title I chose, I was aware of the DerV's site. I did some searches with my short list of site names, and did stumble across their site. I also found many others with similar names and themes and decided that the phrases I had settled on were not owned and I wouldn't be stepping on toes.

I didn't follow the DerV's site very closely, as they seemed a little weird, plus they're growing season is radically different from mine, and they have systems that I couldn't dream of doing with just myself and hubby and baby. (They have 4 adults and no kids, that's a lot more man power.) So, I've not really been back to their site since I started this blog.

Since the eruption of this drama I have found more of the DerV's writings, and it only confirms my suspicions. Weird cultist stuff. I don't want to throw stones, I'm not exactly normal or vanilla. But, some of it is just weird. They've been deleting massive amounts of data over the past couple of days, shutting down sites, pages and contact means. Circling the wagons if you will. Not a very neighborly way to handle the outcry. Sad to see the community in these straits. I'm hopeful that we can pull through this stronger.

Not sure if this will change my blog here. I'm not certain I want to relinquish my title, I'm fond of it. I'm also not sure if I want to be associated, however loosely with the DerV's.