This is our half of a garden plot at the county park. (And this is what happens when you’ve been away from your garden plot for six months.) Yesterday was our first day back in the dirt since late October.
Two feet. That’s how much the weeds grew. Russ took the shovel and I grabbed a trowel, and we just got going. The ground, thankfully, was soft from the soaking rain from the day before.
It’s my seventh growing season in Amish country. Hard to believe, but here we (still) are. Seven years in our backyard that I first found as an overgrown jungle of weeds and transformed into four raised and two in-ground beds. It was a dream come true to grow this much food — arugula, rapini, radishes, and lettuce in the spring, making way for cucumbers, herbs, tomatoes, okra, chile peppers, and tomatillos in the summer. Potatoes, too! Kale and chard in the fall. And still it feels like magic to witness the transformation of seeds.
Some folks have two televisions, two cars, two ovens. Russ and I have two gardens: One for us and the other for local food pantries. A certain kind of serendipity paved the way to our second garden last spring: Our friends had a giant plot that they wanted to share, and I had just learned about a local program coordinating home gardeners with food pantries.
A few years in, Adopt-a-Pantry is a partnership between the Master Gardeners of Lancaster County and the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank. The idea: Donate what you grow. Last year, the program donated more than 15,000 pounds of produce; this year, the goal is 25,000 pounds.
I did little documentation in my first year as a participating gardener. I was getting to know the soil at the new plot and getting into the groove of managing two gardens. But this year, I’m determined. The Adopt-a-Pantry peeps have partnered with the Fresh Food Connect app which should help home growers like me keep track of their produce donations. (And it’s free and open to anyone.) I’ve got new friends who know more about growing vegetables than I do, and I just scored a bunch of seedlings at a plant giveaway over the weekend.
And in this space, I’m going to document the highs and lows of our pantry garden. For me, for you, for inspiration, for conversations about food access.
This dirt girl is excited. More + very soon.
xokod
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