‘PJC Farming’ Update: Heirloom Vegetables Growing and Herbs Ready for First Harvest
Dill companion-planted near cucumber, with sunflowers and tomatoes in background. Photo courtesy of Melissa Bailey.
After some arduous workdays and many seed and seedling donations from Sow True Seed, Southern Seed Exposure, and Grow and Share, the PJC Farming project is off to a green start. The half-acre in production has southern heirloom varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, melons, and pollinator-friendly flowers, as well as jalapeños, amaranth, tomatillos, basil, dill, sugar peas, and the mexican herbs epazote and cilantro. Read More
Ashe Outreach Ministries Receives Over 1,000 Plants from Grow and Share
Thanks to Grow and Share for donating over 1,000 plants last week to Ashe Outreach Ministries’ Outgrow Hunger Program! After our first Come to the Table Conference Steering Committee meeting at RAFI’s office in Pittsboro, we loaded up Rob Brooks’ truck with heirloom varieties of tomatoes, tomatillos, melons, okra, cucumbers and summer squash. Rob will share the plants with residents of Ashe County involved in the pilot year of Outgrow Hunger, which aims to strengthen rural food security by facilitating backyard family and church gardens and increasing the amount of local produce in Ashe County’s emergency food supply. Click here to learn more about Outgrow Hunger, and here to learn more about Grow and Share.
CTTT Survey: Click here to evaluate our conferences, workshops, and materials!
As we look back on the first five years of Come to the Table and look forward to the 2013 conferences, we are asking for your feedback. Have you every participated in a Come to the Table event, conference, or workshop? If so, please take 10 minutes to fill out this survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Cometothetablesurvey
Your responses will help us plan for the years to come. Thanks!
Growing Food and Growing Community: Workshop and Discussion at Mt. Olive
This past week, church leaders, laity, farmers, and students gathered at Mount Olive College for the Down to Earth Ministry Conference. Come to the Table joined with The Interfaith Food Shuttle to facilitate a workshop on “Growing Food and Growing Community: Feeding Rural Neighbors with Local Food”. Over the past few years, Eastern North Carolina has ranked high in national studies on food hardship and childhood food insecurity. In 2010, the state’s first congressional district had the second highest rate of food hardship in the country; 31.8% of congressional district residents struggled to find affordable, healthy food for their families.
Helping the Land to Remember: Poems, Faith, and Farming
"Zucchini flower sans zucchini" by Kenneth Moyle
Anatoth Community Garden’s founder, Fred Bahnson, spent a season starting garden workdays (and our garden network meetings) by reading a poem. You’d be surprised how smoothly a strategic planning meeting goes after everyone in the room has spent a few minutes quietly listening to something beautiful. Fred ended all his emails that year with three lines from Rainier Marie Rilke: “Though he works and worries, the farmer never reaches down to where the seed turns into summer. The earth grants.” On stressful days, when my inbox was full, those lines of poetry were welcome reminders to, as the bumper sticker says, “Let go and let God.”
I haven’t had too many meetings with Fred these past couple of years, but I try to keep a little poetry in my days to keep me on track. In honor of National Poetry Month, I’d like to share with you three poems that I find myself turning to often. Read More
