Touring Edible Columbia
Entry from CCUA Photography Volunteer Elizabeth Medling
I was one of the first people to arrive at Comedor Popular, the starting point for the Edible Columbia tour. My husband and I missed out on it last year, but we had bought tickets at Earth Day this time to make sure we got to go. Unfortunately, he didn’t check his calendar first, so due to a conflict I was on my own. Afraid of being late, I ended up being too early instead. For a few minutes, it was just me, a friend I had talked into taking my spare ticket, and the Peaceworks associates organizing the tour.
As the room filled up with other tour-goers we signed in, dropped off our tickets, and divided up among the vehicles for the tour. I grabbed a seat on the bus kindly lent by the Salvation Army for the event, and off we went.
Our first two stops were places I was already familiar with - the Kilgore’s Garden and the Urban Farm. Heather, our Education and Volunteer coordinator, told the crowd about the CCUA’s edible landscaping work with the Kilgore’s pharmacy and why we chose the plants that we did to grow at that garden. The produce is donated to the Nora Stewart Early Learning Center, so the plantings are planned around what the kids eat: blackberries, strawberries, and apples, but also peas, radishes, and lettuce.
We moved on to the Urban Farm and walked around the shed and greenhouse. Heather explained the rain garden at the base of the property and its work to cut down on the local mosquito population before moving on to the chickens, who are always one of the bigger attractions at the farm. They were the backdrop for the tour’s group photo this year, too!
Afterward, we all loaded back up into the tour vehicles and traveled a few blocks over to one of the Community Garden Coalition (CGC) neighborhood gardens. We were met there by Dan, the coordinator for that particular garden, and he showed us around. That particular lot has been a community garden for nearly a decade, and it definitely shows. They have established communal asparagus and strawberry beds, a few fruit trees, and a horde of naturalized garlic plants that no one can seem to eat enough of to clear out. Several tour-goers were given tarragon plants that Dan dug out of his own plot on the spot! He said that it has been running rampant, so he was happy to share.
Back on a bus that now smelled like a kitchen, we were driven down into a different residential neighborhood to see what a private home-owner had done with their land. The front yard contained a pergola-like structure that housed cleverly-disguised solar panels to provide power to the house itself. The couple had gotten their total power-usage down to the point that the panels provided more than enough energy for their home most of the year. They did have to modify their life a bit to reduce their power needs, however. They don’t, for example, have a freezer. They eat seasonally, in part from the garden that is also in the front yard - the back yard is too shady for either the solar panels or a vegetable garden, so around the pergola are raised beds, rabbit-proofed fencing surrounds strawberry patches, and okra plants hide tucked in among the irises.
Our last stop was at one more CGC garden on Worley next to the Health Department. They also make use of a solar panel, but theirs charges batteries for gardening equipment and runs a pump for the rain barrels collecting water off of the garden shed. This is one of the newer CGC gardens, having only been started in 2011. They still have room for expansion, so they add on a few more plots each year. Another feature here is a teaching garden for participants in the WIC program at the health department, where they can learn to grow food at home and eat what they grow at the CGC site.
By this time we were running a little behind schedule - everything was so interesting! - so we were ushered back to the vehicles and cruised back to Comedor Popular for tasty dinner.
The best part of this tour was seeing just how much effort people in Columbia are putting into sustainable, local food sources. This was only a fraction of what is going on, and it was impressive all on its own! The CCUA and CGC have many more sites that we didn’t visit, and home gardeners all over town are working to produce some of their own food. I’m already looking forward to next year’s tour.