Vegetable Tourism

On May 7, the day before Mother's Day, I will be out at a big garden/small farm on Dallas Highway, playing docent. The Garden (of Mr. Kastner and Mr. Hankerson) is on the Master Gardeners' tour of gardens this year, and I signed on to help. I've been going, and hauling my family with me, for the last few Saturdays to help get things planted and to learn more about The Garden so I can do a good job.

I've learned quite a bit about what is being planted, why those crops were chosen, and how the soil is prepared. Since I usually work with much smaller plots of veggies, this has been a real learning experience. The good news is that I'm ready for questions!

Every year, the Master Gardeners send around a request for volunteers to help out at all the gardens on the tour. Different gardens are on the tour each year, but it's been awhile since a food garden was featured. One of the great things about this garden is that a lot of food it produces is given away to people who really need it (going to pantries and shelters, for example).

Making sure everyone has access to good food is important!

When I was visiting the Energy Bulletin website this afternoon, I saw a link to a video about a much larger project that's dedicated to providing good food to as many people as possible. The project is called Incredible Edible, and it started in a town called Todmorden in the UK. It takes watching five YouTube videos to hear the whole talk, but it's worthwhile. The whole town of 17,000 people has much better access to fresh produce than before, partly because it's growing all over the place. The group also has put effort into making sure people know how to prepare the food that's being grown. It turns out that this is a very important piece of the local, fresh food puzzle. Video five brings up the topic of Vegetable Tourism, which made me laugh, but then I remembered what I'm doing a week from Saturday . . .



I hope that The Garden gets some good vegetable tourism next weekend!