Thursday, May 22, 2008

May 22, 2008

Ok boys and girls, I'm gonna do a bit of rambling here so try to keep up.

This Sumner Community Garden thing has turned out to be far more than I had ever understood it to be. I must admit that I imagined this as being little more than a city having some unused land and deciding to make a few dollars by renting plots out so those of the gardening ilk could spend a summer digging in the dirt and producing small batches of fresh veggies for their own families. I had heard rumblings through emails about sharing extra with each other etc. You know, if I have an abundance of beans and my neighbor has extra zuchinni we would naturally help each other out and stuff. Then on another occasion I spoke with Answer Man and he mentioned something about another field where they were doing some gardening, but I thought little of it and went about my business in my tiny little gardening world over at Plot 68.

Then came The Meeting. The big Sumner Community Garden Dessert Social Meeting of the Gardening Minds.


All I can say is wow. Turns out this thing is much much larger in scope than I had ever imagined. Answer Man (leaning on the table in the back of the picture)turns out to be a Sumner City Councilman with a vision. A vision of an ever growing group of gardeners coming together to produce not only vegetables for themselves and their families but for the community as a whole. Turns out the "other field" is actually really a pasture of sorts which Answer Man and his team of answer men are busily transforming into something of a community farm where the idea is to have large plantings of vegetables which would not be sensible or convenient as small garden crops. Rows and rows or corn, potatoes, pole beans, pumpkins, and I don't even know what else, have been or are soon to be planted. Concrete reinforced bean poles are being constructed to be placed in the proper locations at the ends of said rows. Hopes were voiced that we may end up with 3000 ears of corn or more. We might end up with 100 lbs of potatoes per person. Halloween and Thanksgiving pumpkins might come from our own patch. I can only imagine the numbers of peas and beans we may have on our hands as the summer progresses, and the only requirement for participating in this grand harvest is that one participates in the work beforehand. Hell, there is even talk of building a coop and buying chicks and beginning the production of our own organic egg supply. All we would do, says Answer Man, is decide how many eggs we would want a week and buy the proper number of chicks, then help in the caretaking, etc. There was an objection (based moral grounds) to the raising of chickens in this fashion, and this visibly raised Answer Man's hackles. The body language at this point in the meeting was unmistakeable, and I'm telling you now that Answer Man is not going to be deterred on this point. He is hell bent on having fresh organic cruelty free eggs every morning for breakfast and I would put my money on there being a coop full of cackling hens before the month of June has passed.

I AM IN!

An email containing the minutes from the Sumner Community Garden Dessert Social and Meeting of the Gardening Minds has been promised and I will post them as soon as I have them in my possession.

Also, the "Steering Commitee" (thats Answer man and his band of Merry answer men) has decided to open the gardens up for year long gardening. Plot #68 is mine not just for the summer but for as long as I care to keep it. I may now plant winter crops or just a cover crop, if I so desire.

This is so cool.

--It's Fosco, Dammit!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Awesome! You thought you were getting a small patch to plant a few veggies (and the extra one for flowers) and here you are: a proper sharecropper! ;)