A crash course in changing the world.
It is March in 2020 and I am hosting the Vineyard Community Garden's Annual Spring Planting Dinner. There are over 50 people in attendance and all of them have grown with this project, in knowledge and in Spirit! The project started out with three women who had a dream to transform their community through a micro-enterprise centered around a community garden project. When we started, we knew little about sustainable gardening and had no resources to speak of. With every step in the building of the garden at the Vineyard, doors opened and volunteers and supplies were offered! We were able to obtain heirloom & cross pollinated seed from the Seed Savers organization http://www.seedsavers.org/ so that we are able to harvest seed as well as the bounty of fruits & vegetables.
Our garden is supported by and supports a diverse community, senior citizens work alongside young children and the homeless, tilling the soil, building the plots, and planting the seeds. Food grown in our garden is used in our Caring Kitchen to assist in feeding the hungry, and also the Vineyard Cafe, another phase of our micro-enterprise that caters wh***some, organic foods to corporate offices in the area.
In 2010, our local economy was at its lowest levels in history. The unemployment rates in Florida were higher than anywhere else in America and there were many families in our area struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table. As an Agent of Evoke, I was charged with finding new and innovative ways to help end hunger in a sustainable way.
In our community, the people relied on foods that have been grown and shipped from thousands of miles away. This was ludricrous as many of the poorest were illegal migrant workers, recruited to Florida to work for Citrus, Sugar and other agricultural intrests, but who had left the fields to take "permanent" jobs in restaurants, hotels and other tourist based industries that paid them minimum wages or even less.
We had a vision that a garden would provide the opportunity for people to grow their own organic food free of chemicals and pesticides and work side by side - learning each others language, teaching our children gardening skills, sharing stories, and also learning about the sustainability of our earth. It would also provide a source of exercise and mental renewal to the elders and the homeless of our community -Gardening is good for the soul! Our vision included a ten year "growth" program that would eventually enable us to employ disadvantaged women and homeless workers to work part time in our cafe, playcare center and Soapworks.
I am amazed at what God has done! I sit here with my granddaughters, who are both master gardeners and an inspiration to everyone who knows them, partaking in a feast of savory soup made with vegetables grown in our hydroponic greenhouse, mixed green salad (which grows so plentiful during the sub-tropic winters), citrus fruit from our grove and crusty, multi-grain bread made from organic grains purchased from a sister co-op. Indeed, I am so grateful for all of the co-operative relationships we have made in the past ten years. But my biggest debt of gratitude is to the Evoke game and the challenge it brought to my life.
You see, I was once a student of Werner Erhard and Rudolf Steiner and alive with the fervor and joy of making a difference, but I had grown complaicent and even fearful in the proceeding years. I was brutally attacked by someone I was trying to help (from the homeless shelter I worked at) lost my mother, my father and several good friends all within a couple of years, and in my grief, I found that I didn't even want to leave the house - let alone think big thoughts anymore! And yet, even though I kept to myself, I still prayed for something bigger than I was to bring me back from my self-imposed exile.
And then I saw Jane's TED speach on CNN - and I was intrigued. . .
Ten years later the Vineyard Community Garden is a haven of green-peace. We work with a master of Biodynamic Gardening who has taught us about agriculture as a way of living, working and relating to nature based on good common-sense practices, a consciousness of the uniqueness of each landscape, and the inner development of each and every neighbor partner. We are striving to be self-sufficient in energy, fertilizers, plants, and production and have structured our activities based on working with nature's rhythms; using diversity in plants, fertilizers, and animals (chickens and goats). We concentrate on sustainability as the measure of a healthy operation.
Our enterprise model, and our approach to the community, is invitation, purpose and integrity,
We demonstrate cleanliness, order, focus on observation, and attention to detail and being prompt and "present" in doing one's job. And our focus on "being present in the moment" has brought substantial and measurable healing to our community and it's residents! They have ownership and a voice in what we plant, nutritious foods to eat, and the opportunity to contribute to something beyond their own needs.
We have been invited to share our model with other community organizations and so appreciate the principles learned from the work of Werner and Rudolph, as explicitly lived out by the Hunger Project
http://www.thp.org/what_we_do/mission/principles that are supporting us in making a difference for our community, and our world.
I raise a glass of home-grown wine and toast the next harvest. . .
When Alchemy calls, I will answer and offer a small army of transformed gardeners to share what we have learned together.
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