Final Harvest - Food is Where You Find It

The Rowe Community Garden was a fertile and productive resource all summer and kept growing good veggies right up until our big frost 3 days ago.

Just before the frost last week, several of us went down to continue harvesting kale, lettuce, broccoli and herbs.

 

 

 The bulldozer is coming soon to excavate the garden for the 20 parking spaces that the expanding rural health care clinic needs, so we are digging up as much of the rhubarb and asparagus as possible to transplant to other gardens.
The rhubarb has all been removed.
Now the asparagus gets our attention for transplanting.

Its easy.

Grab a shovel and dig.

 The roots are within 8-10inches from the surface of the soil and there is a 100 x 20 foot long row of asparagus that needs to find new homes, quickly.

30-40 clumps make a very nice asparagus bed.

Dig up an area for a asparagus bed, plant the clumps at the same depth they were previously, add soil and compost.... and Voila !  You have an asparagus bed!

 

Its all on a spur-of-the moment thing here.  Most people are thrilled to get free asparagus roots and just start digging a few trenches in their yards.  This is the best one I have seen so far.

It belongs to my friend, Mev, who has been canning veggies from the big community garden, my small garden and fruit that we have scavenged from abandoned fruit trees we have found in our travels. (Pears!)

She has boundless energy and is a darned good cook. She also spent hours down at the gardens weeding for the Food Shelf.

Here is a portion of the harvest that she has processed and shelved in her cellar.

She has given an equal amount away to kind friends and seniors who do not cook much.

This bonanza of food is fresh, home grown, organic and wickedly healthy and delicious.

                     She made the BEST tomato sauce from my tomatoes and spiced pears from an old homestead farm tree we found outside her surgeons office!!

Here she is doing a "shake down" of a 100 year old pear tree that no one knew was there until I saw it as I was driving to the parking lot.

 

She brought rope and a grappling hook to get the job done after her doctors appointment.

 

 We continued to return to this fruitful tree every week.

She also has a keen eye that can spot a choke cherry tree on the side of the road or in the woods.
Of course we have to stop and fill our bags so she can make choke cherry jam and other delicious concoctions.

Waste not, want not.

The toils of her hard labor.

And she makes her own wine too. (top shelf)

Whats your favorite thing that you canned this year ?
Have you scavenged for food lately?

Community Garden Update 1

Spring has been busy planning the garden and getting everything ready for the gardeners.

Truckloads of three year old composted cow manure were dumped on the garden.

What a wonderful sight!

I spread a lot of it on the asparagus row.

A local farmer brought his Kubota tractor with a rototiller attached and mixed the leaves, soil and composted manure into a beautiful fertile mix.

 

 The asparagus was coming up strong in the 90 foot long row FULL of the delicious spring veggie!

Doctor Rowe's garden is still feeding many people in the village.

Many volunteers came down to periodically cut the asparagus during the past 2 weeks and share it with friends, the elderly and neighbors.  Everyone was thrilled to receive gifts from the garden.

  One afternoon two full bags of asparagus was collected.

 The garden was peaceful looking as we drove away that afternoon.

The weather has really slowed us down in our plans, but it has actually worked out well.

Last week we had 3 freezing cold nights and three frosts. On Saturday it snowed.
Then there were 3 more days of hard, cold rain that caused some flooding in different arts of the state.

Good thing noone planted anything or the extreme weather would of killed it all.

Then this week we returned to start measuring off the individual garden plots.

Cedar posts, stakes and a large ball of twine were donated by our local librarian and her farmer husband.

We quickly made a plan.

Mavis, the Garden Dog, supervised every aspect of the work.

Linda grabbed my measuring tape and a few stakes and measured off the 20 x 10 plots.

 

Cedar corner posts were put in by Brian.

Belinda got control of the big twine ball and started roping off the plots.

Once the rope was up, the garden really started to take shape.

With such great help and enthusiasm, soon there were

8 plots ready to go!

Brian on the edge of the woods putting in the last corner post.

The benefits of volunteering:  picking all the rhubarb and asparagus that is growing.

And the weeds too....

The garden is taking shape.

 Rhubard crisp is in Linda's immediate future.

Belinda likes to eat it raw.   A bit tart, she said.

Asparagus for supper.

400 seed packets were donated by Agway of Montpelier.

Most are organic.

 

Every imaginable kind of veggies, herbs and flowers.

 

It was like Christmas going through all the seeds and picking out different varieties to plant.

Any seeds that are leftover after the gardeners and volunteers pick them over, will be available for anyone in the village that need some.

 

We were all amazed at how it only took 90 minutes to get the plots set up, the 5 posts dug in, the weeds pulled and the ready to eat asparagus and rhubarb picked.

All the gardeners are meeting tomorrow night at 5 pm to pick the plots they want and get the details they need to know and to help put up the deer fencing.

Last Monday Linda and I drove the 80 mile round trip to get a solar charger and the deer fencing.

A herd of 6 deer bed down very near to the garden and we want to STOP their midnight munching madness IN the garden.

We purchased 40, 5 foot fiberglass posts, 200 insulators, 2 rolls of polywire and a solar charger.

Five of us dirt divas met in the cooler evening and started putting insulators on the posts.

Many hands made the work fun and fast.

Then we measured and placed a fiberglass post every 6 feet, all away around the entire garden.

It looked good.

The math came out perfect and we used all of the 40 fibergalss posts that we purchased.

The rest of the fence will go up in bits and pieces as we meet at the garden.

The solar charger goes in next.

Once that part of the project was done, it was time to go thru the seeds with the 2 new gardeners.
They chose one of the bigger plots so will need lots of seeds.

So many to chose from!

Another family wanted a plot so I drove the seeds over to them so they could pick out the ones they wanted to grow.

 

The next evening I went down to the garden and was delighted to see that someone had already planted their plot!

Better yet, they used wooden spoons and forks to mark their rows!!

 What a great idea.

The view overlooking the garden is looking better and better as it all takes shape.

New friendships have already been formed and the creative juices are flowing.

It is going to be a wonderful summer.

Now we just have to raise another $150 to pay off all the deer fencing and buy a few rakes and hoes.
(we haven't been able to find any at yard sales, recycle or anywhere else)

How is your garden growing and have you got any good gardening tips you would like to share ?
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