Share your Land…Share the Wealth (of food)

I was browsing the web today to look for good ideas for my planned vegetable garden as it was to wet outside to get anything dones and I found some great things. One is the idea of sharing land with other to do a small community farm so that you can all share in the bounty of your work.  That of course sounded wonderful to a person know to have two black thumbs, though I swear that a streak or two of green is finally breaking through.  I have tried to fix my yard for the past five years and it still looks like no one cares for it.  Though in my defence I have been batteling 40 years of live and let grow from the previous owners, but I still admit that my knowledge of how to make things grow can be summed up as green (and not in the growing sense:-( ).

I think back to the days when I was growing up and spent most of my free time at my grandparents where half the yard was devoted to food growing and wish I had paid more attention and not rushed to get through daily chores to play.  I see the garden and every once in a while I remeber something my MeMaw told me about growing but she probably is looking down on me shaking her head and wondering if anything stuck in my thick skull or if it seeped out my ears.  In her defence she tried but I was more interested in the tools in my PopPop shed then helping her in the gardens.  Now I want my children to know what it’s like to eat what you grow and it’s a basic skill I think everyone should know a little something about.  Only I’ve come to realize that the little I know seems to be seed goes in the earth, add water and sun and then wait for it to die.

 So far I have grown sunflowers without to much problem but as they have little to no disease or bothersom pest I can’t take much more credit then planting the seed and occasional watering.  Anything else hasn’t really made it to the end stage.  Though I got one out of four or five of those unroll and watch it grow ready made gardens to grow last year.  That still puts my average way too low to be anything but an enthusatic black thumb garnder.   

My little garden to-be...I hope

So this year I am determined to work at it till I get it right.  I’ve already shown that I can keep a plant alive for six months in the house (that is my all time best record so far) and it still looks happy.  So last fall we went to the local dump to get the free compost and mulch to set the garden up for this spring.  My yard is lucky if I have 6in of soil before you hit clay so we decided a raised garden made the most sense.  Last weekend we started our seeds for the garden as we are hoping to get two harvest from the garden as we do have a long growing season here in Maryland. We also got a dwarf apple tree to be planted to shade our a/c unit and give us some nice apples.  I’m all about duel purpose if possible.   So enough backstory, for now, on to what I found today.

 One thing I found is two social networks that are trying to help people looking to grow food to people who have the land but not enough time or experience.  Of course there was none seen in my area but hey at least they are out there.  I may be up to sharing my land if I can find people on there that I can get along with.  Wish I could open my land to everyone who wants it but I’m a mother to four children and the extra lot to share is attached to my home so that is just not feasible or responsible in my opinion.  Of course one can hope to find people that it would work out with but at this point it’s a no go.  Below is a link the the one social network I joined to see if I connect with others.

Visit Hyperlocavore

The other place I found which I am even more excited about is Cromwell Valley CSA which let’s people in the community help through either working a set amount of hours or give a finicial commitment to share in the bounty of the farm. The CSA in the name means that it is a community supported agriculture farm that let’s community become members of the farm and in return for their finicial and or  hard work they are entitled to a weekly share of it’s bounty. I’ve already sent inquires to see how how much I can get involved as even the commitment of a full non-working member is only $500.  I know that can seem a lot but take into account that in my area 24 weeks is the miniumal amount of harvest weeks.  So that means I can get a full share of whatever is harvested that week for only a little over $20.  Thats is not much when you look  at the prices of fresh produce in your local suppermarket, added to that the farm is dedicated to organic farming so the value just keeps climbing.

 I am hoping to actually opt for the work program which just requires 75 hrs per full share and can be divided among family and friends. So my hubby and I and even my oldest all can share the work and it comes out to 25hrs over the spring and summer.  That is definetly within easy range for us.   My other excitement about working the farm is that they will teach you what you need to know as you do it.  The jobs needed are varied and can be as easy as sitting behind a computer and being a techie, to running the stand at the local farmers market, to including atcual physical labor around the farm.  So in other words as becoming self-sufficient is in my plans and I have been working towards it this would be a great way to increase my knowledge for it, and yes you guessed it, I’m essentially getting paid in food to learn a skill that would copst me money to take classes or workshops.  So for me I’m hoping for a win win to come out of it.

I’ll check in to let you know how it’s going and post pictures of my hopefully personally bountiful garden to come.