Sunflowers!

Grant Barto, one of our friends from the Appalachian Early Childcare Center, gets excited as his Grow Appalachia sunflower bursts into bloom.  Grant got sunflower seeds like the rest of the daycare kids when we shared songs and stories of gardening with them a few weeks ago.

Jammin' to the Oldies - Cowan Community Center

       This past week Grow Appalachia participants came together at the Cowan Community Center to learn safe and tasty jam canning practices from our resident canning expert, Liz Ison.  Many women, and a husband and son, showed up early in the morning to take on mountains of peaches, strawberries, raspberries and wine berries (a special berry picked by one of our friends up at the Letcher County Extension Office).  With the peaches, raspberries, and strawberries, we made traditional canned jam, setting up an assembly line once our fruit/pectin/sugar concoction was all boiled to put it all in jars and seal them up.  With the wine berries however, we made freezer jam.  The jam was essentially made the same way as canned jam but instead of canning it, we put it in freezer safe plastic containers which can be kept in the freezer and removed whenever you are in the mood for some biscuits and jam.

       In just over three hours, our group made sixty-some jars of jam, sending it home with everybody who came to help and distributing it to some of our older and less mobile participants up and down Cowan.  In addition, everybody who came by got to take home some pectin, jars, and biscuit formula so they could recreate our enormous production in their own kitchens.  One of our participants brought back supplies for her daughter to make peach jam with; she said that her daughter had several children who would love to help out with the canning process and speed things up for her.  Many hands do make light work, as we discovered that day!

Nell Fields

         One of our less sugary treats for the day was the chance to hear Nell Fields speak to the group.  Nell Fields works with a local non-profit called Faith Moves Mountains, which works primarily through the established church communities in Letcher County to implement healthful living programs.  Part of a partnership with the University of Kentucky, heir programs aim to research and understand how Kentuckians make decisions about their health, and to encourage healthier decisions.  The three main programs in operation now seek to address three things: smoking cessation, cancer screening, and healthy energy-balanced lifestyles.  Nell spoke to us primarily about smoking cessation, and the programming that Faith Moves Mountains has available to individuals who are interested in quitting.  Through the Cooper Clayton Smoking Cessation program, individuals have free access to motivational videos and patches, and Nell advocated the health benefits of attending these lectures and quitting smoking, and offered the resources of the organization to anybody who had a desire to stop smoking.  It was lovely having our very own participant spread the word about available resources to improve health in the county in a setting that was comfortable, intimate, and casual.

To learn more, go to their website!  Faith Moves Mountains

Salsa at the Breaks Interstate Park

Cowan Community Center - Salsa on the River!

Follow the link above to see our first video, featuring hiking, a beautiful river, and some delicious, homemade, Grow Appalachia salsa!

Salsa Night at the Cowan Community Center

Some south of the border flavor was brought to Cowan the other night with our latest program, Salsa Night! Participants came with an apron, heels, and bushels of excitement for salsa making, followed by some salsa dancing.  Our resident canning expert, Liz, led us through the steps to make salsa, and with all the extra hands chopping, slicing and dicing, we made thirty pints of salsa as a group.  Everybody got to take home some salsa, and neighbors, friends, family, and gardeners who couldn't make it to the program all got some themselves.  Everybody also went home with some of the salsa spice mix that Liz swears by, Mrs. Wages.  Most people's tomatoes haven't come in yet, so this was perfectly timed so when the tomatoes do come in in droves, everybody knows how to make delicious salsa and can it effectively.

Chopping the peppers! 

The kitchen crew.

Filling the cans.

Post salsa making, people were in the mood for some dancing, cranking up the salsa music that had been filling the community center all night.  Our intern taught everybody the basic front, back, and side steps, and before long people were tangoing across the floor.  We had a blast with everybody and are looking forward to "Jamming with the Oldies" this week!

Dancing away!

Angie Mullins proudly carries our her freshly canned salsa.

Dinner at Cowan Creek Mountain Music School

Dinner on the Grounds at Cowan Community Center

This past week, Cowan Community Center hosted its eleventh annual Cowan Creek Mountain Music School, drawing participants from as far away as Utah, Maine, and Chicago to learn traditional mountain music.  One of the evenings, the Grow Appalachia program joined the festivities providing dinner, serving a meal made of garden-grown vegetables and traditional local food.  Music school participants and Grow Appalachia gardeners alike enjoyed the delicious meal.  A basket for donations for the dinner was set out at the dinner, and $200 was donated for mountain music school.  This money will provide a "Grow Appalachia Scholarship" for one student next year at the music school.  Music school participants sang for their supper, providing the music for the following square dance which was enjoyed by all.

Part of the entertainment for the evening included a walking path around the community center, lined with the rain barrels that Grow Appalachia participants painted the week before.  Strolling through the woods it was a pleasant evening to admire the artistry and talent of our gardeners!  The water barrels are literally pieces of artwork: art at work.

We were lucky to be joined by David Cooke, Grow Appalachia director from Berea College, for this wonderful evening, and everybody was excited to see the man who made it all happen.  Just as Three Sisters Gardening grows corn, beans, and squash in perfect harmony, music, food, and community came together that night for peace, love and happiness.

David Cooke (Grow Appalachia Director, Berea College), Carol Ison (Director of Cowan Community Action Group), Nell Fields (President of Cowan Community Action Group), and Valerie Horn (Grow Appalachia Coordinator for the Cowan Community Center) make a short presentation before dinner is served.  David was presented with a handmade quilt, tacked by our very own gardener Hazel Rayburn, and canned vegetables and fruit from Becky Collins.

A water barrel on the walking path, painted by Lydia Thurman.

The beautiful spread: chicken and dumplings, made by Carol Ison.

Rondall and Sharon Meade, Grow Appalachia gardeners, enjoy the company and food. 

Everybody is excited or a delicious meal.

Swing your partner 'round and 'round!

Greetings from Cowan Community Center!

This past Tuesday was a rain barrel painting extravaganza up Cowan!  Beginning at eight in the morning and ending that night around nine, the Grow Appalachia participants of Letcher county painted twelve phenomenal works of art.  Debbie Fields, who lives up Cowan, was there helping with painting and tracing designs onto barrels as people began to paint them.  She was a great help and made it much easier for everyone to be extremely happy with how their barrels turned out.  

When calling participants to invite them to the activity, one participant, Becky Collins, asked how much it cost to come make a rain barrel for her garden and when we told her it was free, she got so excited that her grandmother, listening to her side of the conversation, thought someone must have been in a car accident or something.  Becky's barrel turned out beautifully and Becky hung out there all day painting and chatting.  This was truly a fun and sociable community event.

The Letcher County Conservation Office provided further funding for this specific project, giving us the opportunity to provide more materials for program participants.

Becky Collins getting started on her rain barrel.

Post-tracing, pre-painting.

Drilling holes for the spigots.

One son helps his mom paint their grandma's rain barrel.

Installing overflow valves.

Painting, painting, painting!

"I'm painting a rooster for Jerry [my husband]; he'll love having a big rooster sitting out in our garden!"

The Riley family paints a sea-themed scene on theirs.

Liz paints a black bear to sit out in her garden.

Debbie's owl

The finished barrels!

Seedtime on the Cumberland Festival

Greetings from the Cowan Community Center!

The shared stand.

This past weekend in Whitesburg, a local media organization, Appalshop, hosted a festival called Seedtime which is devoted to celebrating Appalachian people and traditions.  Part of the festival included an array of booths on the main drag, and the festival organizers asked two GrowAppalachia sites, the Pine Mountain Settlement School and the Cowan Community Center to set up shop and talk to people about GrowAppalachia and the projects that they've undertaken.

Items given away by the Cowan Community Center.

The Pine Mountain Settlement School reps and their information/seeds.

Seeds and books the Cowan Center brought to engage children visiting the stand.

In preparation for Seedtime, the Cowan Community Center gathered garden goodies together for a free raffle.  One of the gardeners is a phenomenal canner and preserver, and she jumped to donate sauerkraut, pickles, salsa, jams, and jellies for the raffle.  In addition to canned goods, we gave away organic fertilizer (much milder than any fertilizer that you can buy around Whitesburg: Harmony and Azomite fertilizers) and some bug repellant (also much less noxious than the normal type used in gardens in the area: Spinosad Lawn and Garden Concentrate).  Another vendor at the festival had been eyeing the organic fertilizer all weekend and when the time came to draw for it he was there, fingers crossed, as if we were drawing for a four-wheeler.  His aunt ended up winning the fertilizer, and offered to share it between their two gardens so both walked away, quite excited with their win.  The woman who won the bug spray ended up being a master gardener, a woman who took classes in gardening and whose garden was consistently checked up on by her teachers.  She said she'd been searching for this sort of bug spray, that it was exactly the sort she needed in her garden.  A lot of connections were made that weekend with similar individuals who did have a background in gardening and will be valuable tools in upcoming iterations of GrowAppalachia.  Quite a few non-local individuals stopped by the stand, and were curious about how GrowAppalachia started/where the money came from.  All of them were excited to hear about John Paul DeJoria's ideas and benevolence and the support that Berea has been providing to all of the sites.

A festival attendee checking out Pine Mountain Settlement School's corn grinder.

Mitch Whittaker, a representative from the UK extension office of Letcher County (a partner of the Cowan Community Center) attracting crowds to the GrowAppalachia area as he shows off birds the center has rehabilitated.

A great variety of individuals visited the stand: those who said they loved to garden but had no way of tilling, no idea how to make their cucumbers grow right, all the way to those who had gardened their whole life and wanted to share their favorite way to grow peas.  Some people visited the stand who had their own community garden projects underway (like an organic gardening initiative just begun in Letcher County) and were looking to engage and collaborate with the GrowAppalachia project.  Others still came visiting to try and collaborate with community gardeners on documentary work; one man from southern Virginia was interested in working with Letcher County to preserve Appalachian gardening tradition and create a collective understanding of the food process, from garden to table.  It was a wonderful experience, to chat gardening with the people of Letcher and surrounding counties for two days, learning and sharing with everybody.

Early Appalachian Childcare

Greetings from the Cowan Community Center!

Last Monday, the Cowan Community Center planted the daycare center's garden with the help of ten enthusiastic daycare attendees.  With daycare workers, community center workers, and some more experienced gardeners working on hoeing the rows and preparing the land, the children fell on the task of putting the plants in the ground with gusto.

When we arrived at the daycare, a couple of the children were "planting" their own gardens in the sandbox, and were eager to volunteer themselves to help plant the big plot behind the playground.  Veronica assured us that she was a "wonderful gardener," and that everybody was always asking for her advice on their own plants.  Needless to say, many hands make light work and with the prowess of kids like Veronica and all the other helpers, the plot was in and beautiful in no time.

Most of the garden was dedicated to rows of peppers, tomatoes, squash, beans, peas, corn, sweet potatoes, lettuce, and cabbage, but on half the plot we planted watermelon, gourds, and pumpkins around the edge so they could crawl out into the rest of the field and not take over the plot itself.  Everybody was really excited to see where their garden goes, and can't wait to continue with more garden-themed activities in the weeks to come!

Before!

"Digging like a dog"

Planting peppers!

Surveying the land.

Community gardener, Chase, helping to plant some corn.

Home Visits and New Intern

Hi!  My name is Lydia Thurman, and I’m a rising sophomore at Duke University studying physics and math, and I'm in Whitesburg for the summer as part of the Robertson scholarship.  I’m interning with the Cowan Community Center, working particularly with its Grow Appalachia program.  

Beautiful lettuce patches in Cowan!

 Today and tomorrow we’re paying visit to each of our twenty eight gardens, checking up on progress and making sure everybody who needs it has access to the labor they need in order to till, weed, and plant in their plots.  Everybody we visited was proud of their gardens’ production, and excited to show us around.  Lettuce was in high supply, and a few of our gardeners were talking about selling some of their lettuce and mustard greens at Seedtime, a local arts festival coming up in a week.

The Soon-To-Be Daycare Garden.

Starting Monday we’re working with the kids involved with the Appalachian Early Childcare program, beginning with arts and crafts and sharing stories about the rich history of gardening in the Appalachian Mountains.  Then, through collaboration with some of the other gardeners in the program who have been really successful, we’re going to begin to plant in a plot the daycare center cleared recently.  The vegetables from the daycare’s garden will then be used for healthy daycare snack options and lunch/dinner events to pull together parents, children, and the daycare staff in collaborating and contributing to this communal garden.

Cowan Community Center and Revelation Ranch---Giddy Up Garden

Revelation Ranch is an equine ministry in Letcher County.   The owners, Peri and Ricardo Pardo relocated to Letcher County from Boone, North Carolina after a mission visit to the community.    They and their children, along with 23 horses have made Letcher County home and many locals now consider them family.   They have over fifty school age children that they work with during the school year and have a summer long camp for children.    The Pardos were eager to begin growing some of their own food as they provide food for the children and often their families for meals during camp.   Although, they are experienced with the horses, they had little experience in the garden.   The Pardos recruited an experienced gardener from the community to help with the planning and now have their garden growing.    The farm they are on has no shortage of  hands for working in the garden.   The first day of camp began with getting the corn, beans and vegetables in the ground.  To learn more about Revelation Ranch visit their website at http://www.revelationranchequestrianministry.org/ or visit them on facebook at PeriandRicardo Pardo.

Cowan Community Center Grow Appalachia partners w/Appalachian Law Center

On Saturday, May 12th Cowan Community Center Grow Appalachia shared some of an early spring harvest for a reception for Appalachian Law Center at Summit City in Whitesburg, Kentucky.    As the date was early, vegetables were limited, however a basket of fresh greens were delivered.    Lots of the mountain staple lettuce and onions along with a variety of greens including kale, turnips, mustard, spinach adorned the table.    Another participant was able to deliver some beautiful radishes.     Fresh parsley, rosemary, thyme, chives, mint and dill were available for chef Anna to sprinkle in the delicacies.   The food was delicious and the crowd was appreciative of the homegrown element and EVERYONE loves the Grow Appalachia program.

Cowan Community Headstart Finds a Sunny Day to Get Their Garden in the Ground

 Inch by inch, row by row

Gonna make this garden grow

Gonna mulch it deep and low

 Pullin’ weeds and pickin’ stones

 Please bless the seeds I sow

Please keep them safe below

Plant your rows straight and long

Give her love and care

Mother earth will make you strong

Gonna make it fertile ground