Meals on Wheels? ~by Erica at High Rocks

Sometimes cucumbers just get away from us.  A few days without picking and you can end up with a pithy, over-ripe monster on your vines.  What’s to be done with such a thing?  The Jacox community of Pocahontas County, WV has an answer.  NAS-CUKE!  Using recycled materials, they transformed cukes, zucs, and squash into racing machines this weekend in the first annual produce race.    Grow Appalachia-sponsored cars made a strong showing and their drivers ended up winning a slice of the prize chocolate zucchini cake. 

Mother Nature vs Vegetable Farmer

Todd and Gary at the Market

Sr. KC here. I just got off the phone with my friend and local farmer, Todd Howard. He has been a wonderful gift to us here at St Vincent’s Grow Appalachia program both in the Greenhouse Mentoring program and as a partner in the sustainable agriculture movement in Floyd County. He called to see if any of my families had some extra beans they wanted to sell at the Farmer’s Market this weekend. Another of Todd’s many jobs is market manager for the Floyd County Farmer’s Market. The market had its best week last week and he really wants to keep the momentum going. He has been selling produce he and his partner Gary grow in two bottoms here. That was until yesterday about 10:30 in the morning when the rain came.

He noticed the rain was coming down pretty hard and walked out on to his porch just as his partner drove up. They decided to go check on the garden at Open Fork which sets in a bottom. When they got there they saw the creek was full and moving fast but not too bad. Then they noticed water coming over into the garden and within fifteen minutes there was four foot of water in their main market garden. Here is a YouTube video of the water.Todd's Market garden

When I saw Crystal this morning she told me that Brushy, the hollow where she and several of my Grow Appalachia families live, got hit hard and most of the gardens were gone. I’ve made some calls but haven’t gotten through. They are probably out cleaning up. Crystal lost everything but maybe three rows of beans. Her sister-in-law lost three bottoms and the hay bottoms on Route 7 were all flooded.

Farming in the mountains is a tricky business. Most of the land is hillside and rocky except for the “bottoms” where the creeks run. There is soil there and most of it is fairly fertile. And most of the time, if you don’t get flooded in the spring rains, you do OK. The weather has been bizarre this year with August being wet instead of dry. And then when you add man-made obstacles like holding ponds on strip mines that fail…well you get flood.

Todd is a market farmer so after he gave himself an hour to feel sorry for himself, he and Gary are out salvaging what they can to put up and then planting some more fall crops. As far as my Brushy families, they have lived on this land for generations. That’s why we put up so much”, one woman told me, “in case we have a year where we can’t, we wont’ go hungry”.

Home Visits ---Chad Brock------ Red Bird Mission

  Here at Red Bird Mission we have been spending time visiting some of our participants gardens; helping with any problems, helping to plant some fall plants, and collecting harvest information.
I am finding that even though the dry conditions had slowed alot of the produce, overall yields are looking pretty good. I think the biggest problem we have had is blight and blossom end rot on their tomatoes. Mostly, everyone is harvesting from their tomatoes, but are forced to pick them a little early and let them ripen inside.
   Even here at Red Bird I have had alot of issues with this, and like alot of our participants I sprayed faithfully, left at least two feet between plants and pruned the plants to increase air circulation. But still had problems.  The last month or so here have been very wet; rain every couple of days, high humidity and heavy dew nightly. This is an ideal environment for these fungus diseases to explode.

  We are seeing an increase in both vendors and customers at our weekend farmers market here at Red Bird Mission and are providing a much bigger group with the access to fresh local grown organic vegetables and providing some income to local farmers in a very economically depressed area. The food voucher program provided to local, low income families through Grow Appalachia and the Red Bird Mission Food Security Project has been a big factor in boosting involvement and helping to reach this goal. We anticipate it to continue once everyone sees the benefits of this market.

Henry Ledford's Garden

Henry Ledford's Garden/ Muskmelon

Hilda Hacker's Garden

Hilda Hacker's Garden

Ray Wagers' beans

Ray Wagers' summer squash

Ray Wagers' corn

Sue Collins' garden

Preparing Faye's Garden to plant a late patch of bush beans 

Faye Caudill getting tractor ready 

Faye Caudill's Raised bed

Faye Caudill's Raised bed

Audrey Hollen's garden

Audrey's tomatoes

Planted mustard/turnips with Audrey Hollen

Demonstrated starting cole crops from seed for Audrey Hollen 

Demonstrated starting cole crops from seed for Audrey Hollen

Audrey Hollen Garden

Bradford Garden

Bradford Garden

Bradford Garden

Sandlin Garden

Sandlin Garden

Great food, great kids. ~by Erica at High Rocks

 

This week we visited the Marlinton Middle School garden to weed and lay donated sawdust in the paths.  Principal Joe Riley met us at the garden and shared his excitement about the project.  This lush garden will greet students when the return to school in two weeks.  

We helped out beginning gardener Lori with weeding, harvesting, and preparing the site for a new fence while sunflowers watched approvingly.   Her sugar-baby watermelons are coming in and we helped her pick two pecks of beets and carrots which she is planning to freeze and enjoy roasted this winter.   

We visited Vanessa's 2^nd year Grow Appalachia garden where her daughter helped her spray a homemade concoction of garlic, cayenne, and soap to ward of those that would eat her bean leaves.   We worried that late blight had gotten her tomatoes, but the diagnosis from the WVU extension office was septoria leaf spot and fruit anthracnose—not great, but at least she can still get some tomatoes from infected plants.  We sprayed Serenade on the tomatoes to check the spread.  Our wet nights and misty mornings haven’t made for the best conditions for tomatoes recently.  Next year we will be advising gardeners to leave more space between their tomatoes and prune them to promote better air flow. 

We had fun in the Pearl Buck garden with Hillsboro Elementary students, harvesting and planting lettuce.   The kids that came to help left with ears of corn and bags of beans and lettuce for dinner that night. 

Project Worth Outreach holds Grow Appalachia Learning Camp

Hello. This is Alex Sanders, AmeriCorps*VISTA at Project Worth Outreach in Menifee County, Kentucky. Hope everyone is doing well today. Our next Grow Appalachia participants meeting is scheduled for Monday, August 20. This meeting will focus on taking care of late gardens and weather related problems.

This past week we held a Grow Appalachia Learning Camp that focused on gardening. We had 13 children attend this camp. The children discussed all aspects of gardening. Topics included the advantages of growing a garden which included raising healthy food and how much money you could save, raising an organic garden versus raising a garden that used chemicals, the satisfaction of raising your own food, the joy of spending family time together, how much work is involved in gardening and many other topics. There were many interesting gardening crafts and many books about gardening were read and discussed. The children were also given lunch every day. During the last day of the camp I asked some of the campers to answer 3 questions about the camp and below I am sharing some of the answers and a few photos. Also, below please find this week's recipe. Hope everyone is having as much fun with their gardening project as we are at Project Worth Outreach.

Grow Appalachia Learning Camp Questions

Name:  Ryan

1.         Do you like the Grow Appalachia / Project Worth      

            Outreach Learning Camp and why or why not?

Yes, I did because you get to have fun with my friends.  I liked the

crafts and lunches.

2.         Do you have a garden?

Yes, I have a garden.

3.         If so, do you like gardening?  If not, would you like to    

            have a garden?

Yes, I do because you get to have fun.  The other thing is you get to play

in the garden.

Name:  Carolyn

1.         Do you like the Grow Appalachia / Project Worth      

            Outreach Learning Camp and why or why not?

           

            Yes, because we learned a lot of stuff about plants and how they       

            grow.  We got a lot of new friends and got a good lunch.

2.         Do you have a garden?

Yes

3.         If so, do you like gardening?  If not, would you like to    

            have a garden?

Yes, I like chopping the garden out.  I like planting the garden and also

liked picking stuff out of the garden.

 Name:  Angela {Angie}

1.         Do you like the Grow Appalachia / Project Worth      

            Outreach Learning Camp and why or why not?

Yes because we learned a lot about plants and how they grow. 

I like learning about friendship and bad friends.  I also liked the

crafts to help us learn.

2.         Do you have a garden?

            Yes

3.         If so, do you like gardening?  If not, would you like to    

            have a garden?

No.  I don’t like to garden because of the hot heat and all the

time you have to  put in to help it grow.  But I like to plant the seeds.

Name:  JAMES

1.         Do you like the Grow Appalachia / Project Worth      

            Outreach Learning Camp and why or why not?

            Yes because it teaches you about gardening.

2.         Do you have a garden?

            No

3.         If so, do you like gardening?  If not, would you like to    

            have a garden?

            No, I don’t want a garden because I don’t like to garden

because it is hard work.

 Name:  Madilyn

1.         Do you like the Grow Appalachia / Project Worth      

            Outreach Learning Camp and why or why not?

            I like it because of the lunch and crafts.

2.         Do you have a garden?

            Yes, I do.

3.         If so, do you like gardening?  If not, would you like to    

            have a garden?

            Because I like corn.

Name:  Ben

1.         Do you like the Grow Appalachia / Project Worth      

            Outreach Learning Camp and why or why not?

           

            Yes, I did like the learning camp because it was fun,

interactive and passed time.  I also liked it because

I made new friends.

2.         Do you have a garden?

Yes, I do have a garden.

3.         If so, do you like gardening?  If not, would you like to    

            have a garden?

            Yes, I do like gardening.  I think gardening is a great way

to get fresh food.

Name:  Kimberly 

1.         Do you like the Grow Appalachia / Project Worth      

            Outreach Learning Camp and why or why not?

            Yes, I Liked it because people were nice and I liked the crafts.

2.         Do you have a garden?

            Yes

3.         If so, do you like gardening?  If not, would you like to    

            have a garden?

            Yes because it has vegetables.

Name:  Ervin 

1.         Do you like the Grow Appalachia / Project Worth      

            Outreach Learning Camp and why or why not?

            I liked it because it has free stuff and nice people.

2.         Do you have a garden?

            I have a big garden.  It has 24 rows.

3.         If so, do you like gardening?  If not, would you like to    

            have a garden?

            I love gardening.  I love picking cucumbers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed these photos from our Grow Appalachia Learning Camp.

This week's recipe:

Cabbage Rolls

8 large cabbage leaves   

1 lb. ground beef 

1 cup cooked rice

1/4 cup chopped onion

1 egg, slightly beaten

1 tsp. table salt

1/4 tsp. pepper

1 cup tomato juice

Cook cabbage leaves in boiling salted water to wilt.  Combine beef, rice, onion, egg, salt and pepper with 2 tablespoons of tomato juice.  Divide meat mixture among cabbage leaves, roll together and secure with toothpick.  Put in skillet and pour remaining tomato juice over this.  Cover and cook over low heat for about 40 minutes, turn often spooning sauce over rolls.  Makes 4 servings.  Enjoy.

Gail Mill

Note:  I submit these recipes as gived to me.  Please feel free to substitute healthy ingredients whenever possible.