Last night marked my sixth hour of civic service to the community garden, and there will be many more. The action last night was a community garden fundraiser dedicated to raising money for the fencing that will complete the community garden and open it for business (we hope).
They are about $10,000 short of the over $11,000 needed to fence the 2 acre lot in vinyl-coated fencing. I doubt they've made $10,000 as of last night, but I am sure that they got a little closer.
The evening was actually pretty exciting, save for the fact that it was an all-meat buffet with the traditional fixings of a Mexican feast. I helped hand out plates and set up the raffle, which was a great raffle. There were tons and tons and tons of garden prizes to win, like carrot planting sets for kids, nectarine trees, plum trees, organic potting soil, gift cards to nurseries and hardware stores. There were very few of those stupid fucking door prizes so often featured in fundraiser raffles like M&M dispensers and such. None of that, thank Odin.
My family won a nectarine tree and a free consultation with a landscaping agency, but not having room for the tree at our house and being renters, we donated it back to the community garden. I'll get to help plant it since I am volunteering, which pleases me. I would love to learn more about gardening and planting. The consultation that we won was also given to someone else because we are not that interested in getting a landscaping job done, and we have a gardener as a part of the rent agreement.
I was pretty disappointed about not winning the tree, because I really was hoping to win one and plant it, but the issue of never getting to pick the fruit because we're moving out of here in a year or two was undeniable. I have a better chance of picking some of it if I work at the community garden for a year or two when I can.
Volunteering for the gardens has been really fun so far, even though I have only been to one meeting and one fundraiser. It's mostly a lot of old people running it, which surprises me a bit. There are no alternative punk types pushing for the gardens to open; I think I will help alter that a bit with my s.o. and myself (and our friends, if any of them ever come back from Santa Cruz and other alternative-friendly towns).
I've reserved a plot for the garden for my family in the new location which they are trying to open, and I believe that if I volunteer in the garden, I get preference on a plot when it does open, which is a perk. I don't have a gardening space right now, and I would really love to have one. The new garden isn't that far away from my house; it's a fifteen minute bike ride. When we move it will probably be closer to our house as most of the ones we look at are "in town" and the garden is also "in town," so to speak.
The fundraiser generated a lot of interest, and hundreds of people arrived. The garden organizers were expecting 140 people or so, but I would guess there were at least 250 people through the doors by nights end, maybe more.
My only wish is that the community garden would promote themselves in a more "garden-friendly" way and have fundraisers that were geared toward a healthy, sustainable lifestyle rather than a meat-meat-meat and carne fundraiser like last night. Meat is so unsustainable that it's unbearable, and they should really showcase what their garden is about.
One really great fundraiser could be a concert at the gardens, if they could swing it with the oppressive governmental influences bearing down on them, oppressing their efforts to complete the gardens and have any damn fun.
The next fundraiser will hopefully be something a little less disgusting, from my perspective. Having a gardening class by donation, a pancake breakfast (with vegan pancakes, I hope!), or a garden dinner with a vegetarian menu featuring fresh-picked veggies from the garden would be fantastic. We need to change the view of the traditional fundraiser from appealing to the fatty, disgusting diets of yesteryear as the garden itself attempts to change those views.
I believe that change is possible, but only if we push the envelope.
No comments:
Post a Comment