2/2/2009 9:43:00 AM Living off the Land Local foodies say ‘carpe dium’
VVN/Steve Ayers
As many gardens and gardeners await the spring weather, Gardens for Humanity is making plans to grow the local foods movement. Representatives from a wide array of interest gathered this week to discuss ways to change the local landscape and the collective thinking by encouraging people to plant more gardens and produce more local foodstuffs.
Like the gardens from which it sprang a handful of years ago, the Verde Valley's local food movement is flourishing.
Farmers markets in Cottonwood, Cornville and Camp Verde are packed throughout the summer months. Sedona, long a missing link in the local food chain, will have one up and running this year.
The demand emerging from the markets is in turn drawing more people into gardening. It is also giving those who are already gardening a reason to expand, both in the number of rows planted and the variety of offerings.
There is also the added element of a staggering economy, bringing some folks back to the land as a matter of necessity.
Those who have long dreamed of developing a valley-wide marketplace, filled with foodstuffs grown in the neighborhood, rich in flavor and nutrients, and devoid of processing and pesticides, couldn't be happier.
And they are seizing the day.
Many of those who have dreamed of a sustainable local food base enterprise recently met under the auspices of Gardens for Humanities, a decade-old organization dedicated to gardens and all they have to offer, to plan for the future.
Gardens for Humanity has long had a vision that gardens are both spiritual and practical -- spiritual in the sense that gardens feed the soul, practical in the sense they feed the body.
The organization's new president, Diane Dearmore, believes in both principles, wholeheartedly.
At the same time, she realizes there is a cart-and-horse principle that needs to be addressed, specifically the idea that gardens must be in the ground before the soul takes flight.
The Gardens for Humanity meeting, held on Saturday and Sunday, brought around 60 interested parties to the table for a brainstorming session on how best to take advantage of a ripe situation and get even more people interested in the local food scene.
The participants were educators, businesspeople, representatives from the local irrigation companies, farmers, gardeners, market managers and a host of like-minded individuals with a host of backgrounds.
The exchange of ideas ranged from rooftop gardens, to capital gains tax reform, to creating a "food safe zone," to how to make the perfect vegetable soup.
But the two biggest issues were how best to educate the rest of the Verde Valley about the benefits of home gardening and how best to pair gardeners with gardens.
To date, Gardens for Humanity has identified 165 acres in the valley that has land and water available if the gardeners can be found.
Putting it all together into a cohesive plan that will motivate the rest of the clean-fingernailed world to get dirty is the ultimate problem and the one the group has decided to dig into.
"In a world that is struggling to define its future," Dearmore says, "a garden is the place to start."
Reader Comments
Posted: Monday, February 02, 2009
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Give me a phone number - meeting-location-address etc.
