Anathoth Community Garden Newsletter
March 2008
Greetings garden friends,
“The revolution is coming. God’s revolution. And I’m glad to be part of
it.”
Not what you’d expect to hear from somebody at church. But when Tom Gray, the
unofficial garden manager of Seagrove United Methodist Church’s new community
garden, spoke up last Saturday at the first PING workshop, he spoke for many.
The day began with about thirty of us spreading locally-produced horse
hockey on the newly built mule-team-plowed garden beds. At noon we broke for a
pot-luck feast. In the afternoon we moved upstairs to the sanctuary for a series
of talks centered around hospitality in the garden. At days end we gathered in a
circle—or rather “a kidney” according to Rev. Chris Franks—and passed around
first the bread, then the cup.
Toward the end of the day Beth, the woman next to me, exclaimed, “I’ve been
in church all my life, and this [the community garden] is one of the phenomenal
things I’ve ever been involved in.”
Beth and Tom and the good folks of Seagrove UMC aren’t anomalies.
Here at Anathoth we get contacted almost every week from churches in North
Carolina and beyond—Missouri, Illinois, even California—who’ve caught the
community garden bug. Like our own Anathoth members, like the folks at Seagrove
UMC, these people sense that something is not quite right with the American Way
of Life, a too-easy life of consumption with no connection to the thing consumed
much less the person or community or watershed who produced the thing. The folks
who visit or write to us yearn for a deeper connection with their food than they
get from a trip to Shop N’ Save. They want to learn how to grow their own food.
They want to know their neighbors. They want their church to serve the hungry
and homeless and stranger in their community by growing and eating food with
them, so that strangers become neighbors, and neighbors become friends. Instead
of entrusting their childrens’ minds to television they’d rather see their kids
romp and play with other kids at their local garden, where they can discover
such creatures different from themselves as toads, voles, honey bees.
While some might dismiss all this as a passing fad or even some kind of
horticultural hysteria, I don’t think that’s the case.
True, it is trendy to “buy organic,” or “buy local.” But what I’m seeing
and hearing among church-folk in NC and beyond is that this upsurge of interest
in community gardens isn’t so much hype as it is homecoming. What we’re talking
about is a return to a way of life that most communities have practiced for most
of human history. After 50 years of growing isolation and ennui, people are
rediscovering that they need each other.
The last 50 years of cheap fossil fuels, says writer Bill McKibben in this
month’s issue of Orion Magazine “has made us the first people on Earth with no
need of our neighbors.” We need to embrace nonindependence, says McKibben,
because “in a world that seems likely to grow a little tougher all around, with
weird weather, rising prices, and falling profits, a neighbor is what you’ll
need most.”
We’re intoxicated on the fumes of cheap fossil fuels which drives not only
our big cars but our endless consumption. Which drives our unhappiness. We’ve
been up in the clouds too long. We need to get our feet back on the soil. But
don’t despair. There are padded landing zones, gentle places that will soften
our fall when we drop back out of the ether. Places like Seagrove. Anathoth. And
the hundreds of other church-supported gardens that are cropping up.
God’s revolution will not be televised. You can’t buy it. You may not even
see it. But that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t already begun. As Tom Gray says,
it’s like a mycelium whose roots spread unseen underground until the temperature
and humidity are just right. And then it springs up in all its fecund glory
right here. And right there. And over there. And way over there.
Home front news: we have confirmed three interns for the summer: David
Hamilton, Chas Edens, and Katy Philips. All three come to us with stellar
qualifications. They will each be with us from roughly mid-May thru mid-August.
Thanks to our new high tunnel (unheated greenhouse), we have bumped our planting
dates up a month earlier than last year. In late January we started broccoli,
cabbage, tatsoi, pac choi, spinach, swiss chard, and 6 varieties of lettuce,
including a new one that’s speckled like a rainbow trout and has the
slippery-sounding name of forellenschluss.
March Garden Hours: Mondays 1:00-4:00pm
Fridays 9:00-12:00noon
Saturdays 9:00-12:00noon, potluck
following
Upcoming March Events:
March 5th—Duke Divinity Students from Rev. Joe Mann’s “Town and Country Church”
class to visit Anathoth and Cedar Grove UMC. 3:30-6pm.
March 15th—30 youth and adults from 1st Baptist Church of Henderson, NC coming
to
Sat. workday 9-12noon and will join us for the potluck.
March 19th—Fred will speak on “poetry and place” at Duke for Dr. Ellen Davis’s
class
“Reading the Bible with Agrarian Eyes.”
March 25th—Fred will teach a workshop in Chapel Hill from 5-7pm for UNC students
at
the UNC community garden.
March 29th—PING workshop “Starting the Spring Garden: Compost, Seed Starting and
Soil Preparation. 9-4pm. Workshop taught Fred plus Rob and
Cheri
Bowers. Free, but please register at:
http://www.cometothetablenc.org/ping.html
Looking Ahead:
April 16th—Fred to speak on panel for Local Foods conference at Carolina
Friends
School.
April 19-20—Carolina Farm Stewardship Assoc. annual farm tour comes to Anathoth.
April 26th—PING workshop “Biointensive Gardening” 9-4pm
May 16-18th—“Creation Care and Gardening” workshop at Camp Chestnut Ridge. Fred
will co-teach with Rich Church. For more info see:
http://www.campchestnutridge.org/content/view/85/120/
May 31st—PING workshop “Children and Youth in the Garden” at Fuqua-Varina UMC’s
Covenant Community Garden.
June 6th—NC Contemporary Art Museum to host community party at Anathoth in
honor
Of the Anathoth Documentary Photography workshop led by Taj
Forer.
Fred Bahnson
Garden Manager
Anathoth Community Garden
919-357-8107
www.anathothgarden.org