Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Pego Rice <firekeeper38@yahoo.com>]

I must have missed the one on food gardening in street
medians. I do understand that Green Guerrilla's still
search out vacant and abandoned lots, but
organizations like Heifer International have been
making real strides in building both marketable urban
and small farm set ups.  Some of the urban area
set-ups have been more like raising Tilapia for sale
to local restaurants.  These projects may have very
small start-up costs but they still have to have rent
as part of their budgets.

I have known many street people, some have been
friends for many years and I have fed quite an number
of abandoned teens over the years.  I suppose it is
possible for them to laugh at people who are working
with them to create a future, likely even, since there
are "trust issues" <---groan and roll eyes> and it can
take quite some time to plow through a lot of fear and
displaced anger to create a real working relationship.
 I have over all found it to simply be the decent
thing to do.

The Community Gardening movement has also progressed,
one of my local Community Gardens is coordinating with
the Food Pantry, so their garden has a lot of people
in distressed positions that are learning to garden
and taking that knowledge to cut their food bills in
measurable amounts. A number of Community Gardens have
learned to focus their efforts narrowly and let the
results spread.  Not all of these things bear fruit
immediately, that's OK, some thing simply take the
time they take and a person's responsibility is simply
to do their part and let those seeds work their way
out in their own time.  While finding a mode that has
borne or is likely to bear good results is a
responsible thing to do, demanding instant, huge
results (or else I quit) is a little arrogant.  I am
happy to get a solid percentage now and let later take
care of itself. Goodness knows, my Mom and Dad's vain
efforts to interest me in kitchen gardening took it's
time, what, 20 years?  Only 10 if you include patio
plants and potted herbs.  Certainly I can only hope
Dad is watching from the "Great Beyond", Mom has gone
a little myopic in a nursing home.  Only my last
surviving Aunt was ambulatory enough to see my growing
efforts over the years and even she has passed before
seeing these current results.

In all, though, dealing with these sorts of people is
NOT for everyone.  Few people have the patience to
deal with the results that come with throw away
people, nor the humility to accept that "There, but
for grace, go I"  Most react to these people with an
atavistic fear that wants to reject any such
possibility.  If you can't deal with these things your
energy is best used elsewhere.  But dismissing the
many people that have worked successfully over the
years, is, I say quite primly, not very well informed.

Yours Pego

<<Well, we're all free to disagree, and I disagree. I
do not agree anything that gets people excited about
growing food is good. ...... The usual reaction is,
gardening is too much work and too little results.
Forget it. Medians and vacant lots make the worst
possible start. 

Sure, making vacant lots into gardens are a cute story
for Link TV et al.......And if it's a group effort,
who's doing the work and providing the know how, and
who's picking the harvest? Talk about a mess. 

Go right ahead with street theater and art swaps. The
street people willeither laugh at you or mug you.>>



 
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