Biodynamic Farming Weekend Intensive
Saturday, July 9 at 1:30 PM to Sunday, July 10 at 4:00 PM in EDT
Living Web Farms: Tickets Available here
176 Kimzey Rd, Mills River, North Carolina
Join The Barefoot Farmer, Jeff Poppen, and local growers Amy Hamilton and Craig Siska, for an accessible immersion in biodynamic growing. Learn preps and soil secrets, read from Steiner and hear Jeff’s interpretations after 30 years of practical experience. Plus, gain perspective from two local growers who are leaders in our biodynamic movement. This will be a weekend of invaluable information!
https://www.facebook.com/events/579433468884931/
Carolina Moment: The Lord’s Acre [VIDEO]
WLOS.COM, SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP, MATTHEW YATES
We’re on the nightly news! Thanks WLOS for letting folks know what we do and for giving our intrepid interns the opportunity to share why they work hard to grow food and community.
Carolina Moment: The Lord’s Acre
FAIRVIEW, N.C. — Every Thursday at 8:15 a.m., interns and volunteers alike come together to harvest food grown on the Lord’s Acre farm.
They provide food to Food For Fairview, The Welcome Table, the Share Market, and Green Opportunities. They produce 9.5 tons of food annually.
News 13 photojournalist Matthew Yates takes us into the garden for this week’s Carolina Moment.
Veterans Healing Farm Film [VIDEO]
Some of the best folks you’ll ever meet with huge hearts, sharp minds and willing backs who have created a bridge for veterans returning to civilian life. All right here in Hendersonville, NC.
Veterans Healing Farm is a non-profit community farm based and operated in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Their mission is to aid veterans reintegrating into civilian life by growing produce, raising farm animals, and conducting seminars on holistic health and sustainability.
Veterans Healing Farm helps to create thriving micro-communities of veterans and civilians who build deep friendships, implement innovative gardening techniques, and foster physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
Visit their website here.
www.VeteransHealingFarm.org
Gardens That Give WNC 2015 Garden Tour
Visit Local Gardens That Give Away Produce to those in need of food
MOST gardens – 8:00 – 12:00 Saturday June 6th
Suggested donation $5/person for entire tour
List of Public Tour Gardens
ASHEVILLE
• Grace Covenant Community Garden, 798 Merrimon Avenue, Asheville, NC 28804 Nancy Hogan nancy.hogan@hotmail.com and Terri March Terri.March@buncombecounty.org are the contacts
The Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church Community Garden is a three season garden spanning the months of spring, summer and fall. The garden is planned, planted, tended and harvested by vested gardeners from Grace Covenant church and from nearby neighborhoods. The garden is nurtured by 5 teams who work on an alternate basis with 2 teams minding the garden each week; the 5th team tends the herbs. About 75% of the vegetables produced by the garden are donated to community agencies and organizations who work to ease the pains of those who are hungry and in need of better nutrition. http://www.gcpcusa.org/#/our-community-garden
• Love & Fishes – ONLY OPEN FROM 9 – 11 297 Haywood St, Asheville, NC 28801 (Downtown Asheville area across from Hunter Volvo on Patton Haywood Street Congregation Church is an old small red brick church The Love and Fishes Garden is behind the church) Contact person is Lynne Michael @ lmichaelnine@gmail.com
The ‘Love and Fishes Bountiful Garden’ is a sacred space where folks come together for a common purpose — to make fresh, organic produce available to all who gather at the Downtown Welcome Table and those visiting Haywood Street who have limited access to fresh produce. Barriers that commonly divide people from different backgrounds or with different life circumstances disappear when they work side by side in the garden. Strangers quickly become friends. It is in these unlikely friendships that we catch glimpses of God’s kingdom!
• The Kenilworth Church Giving Garden, at Kenilworth Church – 123 Kenilworth Rd. Asheville 28803. Katie Adams is the contact person. KENILWORTH OPEN FROM !0:00 – 1:00 due to food distributionkenilworthpresbyterianchurch@gmail.com
The Kenilworth Garden Project is a farm to table initiative to serve the clients of Loving Food Resources. . Loving Food Resources serves patients living with HIV/AIDS and anyone in hospice care in all seventeen WNC counties. It is our hope that by growing and distributing nutritious food from the same location more hungry people will be served. The garden was founded in 2011 and has donated over 2,000 pounds of food. If you work in the garden you also get to share in the bounty of the garden! It is a win/win situation… Feed your family and feed the hungry in our community. If you would like to volunteer in the garden, or have questions, please contact Katie Adams 828-273-3747 orwww.kenilworthchurch.org
EAST & SOUTH EAST
• Dr. John Wilson Community Garden, Dr. John Wilson Community Garden is located at 99 White Pine Drive, Black Mountain, NC 28711 Contacts: Diana McCall, Garden Supervisor, diana.mccall@townofblackmountain.org
828-337-8932 or Jill Edwards, Health Services Programs Administrator
jill.edwards@townofblackmountain.org 828-669-2052
Started in 2004 by town resident Dr. John Wilson on town owned property, the community garden strives to share fresh produce with families in need, provide growing space for the community, and educate all ages on the benefits of growing and eating fresh produce. In addition to the area used for annual vegetable production, the garden maintains a medicinal and native species trail, mushroom forest, and nearly 100 fruit and nut trees and shrubs. http://www.nccgp.org/…/inf…/dr.-john-wilson-community-garden
• The Lord’s Acre, 26 Joe Jenkins Road, Fairview, NC 28730. Susan Sides is the contact person: thelordsacre@gmail.com or 828-628-3688
The Lord’s Acre began in 2009 with a group of concerned citizens who wanted to provide fresh food for their local food pantry. Since then we’ve expanded our acreage under production, trained 19 interns, added a SPROUTS program for young children, offer creative ways for folks to do service in their community, conducted a community food survey, began a Share-the-Harvest market, provide our local Welcome Table with food, and more. Our motto is: “There are many types of hunger. Everyone is hungry for something. Everyone has something to give.” It’s our hope to create and inspire innovative ways of bringing community together around food and gardening, thereby strengthening neighbor-to-neighbor bonds that will provide a lasting solution to hunger. www.thelordsacre.org
WEST
• The Sand Hill Community Garden, is located at the Buncombe County Sports Park on Sand Hill School Road. Elaine Sargent is the contact person: email: sargent_e@charter.net phone: 828-808-2645
The mission of Sand Hill Community Garden is to share in garden space, knowledge, and labor with all members of the community. Using organic growing practices we promote community health and wellness by providing fresh produce for garden members and local people in need of food. The garden is sponsored by Buncombe County Parks, Greenways and Recreation and is located at the Buncombe County Sports Park on Sand Hill School Road. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sand-Hill-Community-Garden/398036656887147
HENDERSONVILLE
• Veterans’ Healing Farm – 19 Mahshie Ln, Hendersonville, NC 28739 Contact persons: John & Nicole Mashie – veteranshealingfarm@gmail.com (704) 928-6949 http://veteranshealingfarm.org/
Veterans Healing Farm is a nonprofit community farm whose mission is to aid veterans reintegrating into civilian life by growing produce, raising farm animals, and conducting seminars on holistic health and sustainability. We foster a thriving micro-community of veterans and civilians who build deep friendships, implement innovative gardening techniques and help cultivate emotional, physical and spiritual health. The goal is to personally empower vets through the realization that their own efforts and contributions are important to our community.
• The Friendship Garden – 1735 5th Ave. West, Hendersonville, NC, 28739
(First Congregational Church) Contact: Milton Stewart – greenbriar13@gmail.com
828-692-8630
First Congregational United Church of Christ is located at the corner of 5th Avenue West and White Pine in Hendersonville. It is about a one acre vegetable garden on church property. A spring on the site is used to pump water for the sprinkler system. A local beekeeper keeps a hive of bees and we grow vegetables including cabbage, squash, collards, okra, beans and potatoes. We start many of our own seeds in a small greenhouse and our produce is donated to IAM (Interfaith Assistance Ministry) and Hendersonville Rescue Mission. The garden is maintained by two dedicated church members with regular assistance from several other members.
Patchwork Urban Farms (Asheville, NC)
A new type of farming – here in Asheville. No land? No problem.
From artists to musicians to farmers, Asheville, NC is truly an oasis in the generally conservative rolling landscape of North Carolina, a home to the motivated younger generation committed to changing their world. Our short visit only gave us a taste of some of the unique approaches people in the area are taking on living an alternative lifestyle; yet within the few days of our visit, we came across one of the most unique approaches to urban agriculture we’ve seen thus far.
The number one irrigated crop in America is not corn or soybeans, but grass. The common lawn is our biggest waste when it comes to talking about utilizing our urban and suburban spaces. Now viewed as almost a measure of status and abundance, grass has become deeply imbedded in our idea of pleasantry. Patchwork Urban Farms has a unique way of addressing this issue. Sunil, the founder, is beginning to transform these lawns into gardens to feed our neighborhoods, producing something we all could use more of: real food.
The idea is to have multiple “Patchwork” plots all over the city provided by private parties. The average American does not have time to maintain a large garden, even if they have the perfect space for it. With work, kids, school, a house, and a million other commitments, it is often times just too much to take on. Patchwork is approaching this reality by trying to pair farmers with time and no land, with people who have the land and no time. The landowners offer their backyards under contract to be farmed in exchange for a share in the CSA produced from all the sites. It is a true win/win, as the owner does not have to tend to the land, but still reaps the aesthetic and edible benefits; in turn, the farmer gets a variety of sites to work with. Sunil also describes his quest in the terms of his desire to “shift the consciousness of land ownership from exclusive to inclusive,” changing the focus to communal as opposed to individually held properties.
Sunil really doesn’t feel he has chosen this path for himself: “It just started happening to me.” There is a clear path laid out for this entrepreneur, as within months of beginning to advertize his desire for property, he was handed three sizeable (and one quite developed!) patches to work with. During our visit we were able to see all three, scattered within a 15-minute drive from one another close to the heart of Asheville. The first, called Pearson Gardens, was owned and operated by a non-profit called Bountiful Cities for 15 years. Completely run on volunteer power, the land had seen many ups and downs. After hearing of Sunil’s vision, Bountiful Cities proposed he take over management of the 1.5-acre site. It has provided quite the “incubator” home base, as many established perennials and infrastructure were already present. Sunil harvests most of his produce from this garden, supporting at 18-member CSA within six months of Patchwork becoming established. He also has a flock of chickens (just beginning to lay!) for their egg CSA. Although currently personally funded, Sunil is working on a crowd-sourcing campaign to be launched in the fall to kick start some larger infrastructure needs; with his model, however, it’s clear he has become good at working within a tight budget.
Read the entire article here: http://drivingfoodhome.com/2014/08/04/patchwork-urban-farms-asheville-nc/