We are having a work party this coming weekend on Saturday the 14th. Hands On Greater Portland will be out as well as many of our supporters. We hope that all of you might consider coming out and helping, because many hands make for light work, and it’s a great time to meet and make friends with like minded goals, not to mention doughnuts and coffee, did i mention coffee and doughnuts? It will be a fun time, so bundle up, bring the kids and lets have some fun at the farm site!
Well we finally got our first major deliveries finished this week. We harvested 138 pounds of produce, 115 pounds of Allisa Craig sweet onions, Red River red onions, Candy onions along with 23 pounds of zucchini. The harvest went to Rose Haven Women and children day shelter, Independent Living Resources, PACS (Portland Adventist Community Services) and Ronald McDonald House Northwest. I know what we do isn’t in huge quantities that look amazing, and the pounds astronomical, but we grow all the food on donated land and along with a small team of labor we work really hard to make sure the people that need the food get, get the food. We are mostly out of pocket and everyone involved is dedicated in making sure everyone we can possibly reach, gets the opportunity to eat fresh, non GM, GMO or GE foods that are grown naturally with organic practices. I post the pounds donated because we work so hard to grow the food, and so much time, effort and love goes into each planning, planting, maintinence and caring for each crop, that we are really proud of ourselves for being able to accomplish those tasks. I really give all the credit to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for putting me on this path, and DOC for the opportunity to learn and get hands on experence. It’s a small payback for all the taking I have done in my life. I hope we will be able to continue to grow food and disperse it where it is needed most, in our community of elderly, shut-ins and the disadvantaged. I also want to thank everyone who follows us, and helps us with our needs, thank you all and God bless.
-yurbob
April is feeling more like June, if you ask me? The weather has been beautiful, and the yard is full of our favorite insect, the honey bee. I decided to let our Halsey garden go fallow this season because of the addition of the Bybee and Leighton garden sites. What that means is that, the last season of collards and kale I let bolt, and that’s like a calling card for pollinators, so many flowers and the yard is just humming with bees. We hope that sometime soon we will be getting a colony or two and possibly be able to share some honey with some of the agencies we support? My thought was to put honey in small baby food type jars and give them away to people in need? We will be planting the Terry Site again this  year after it was left fallow for a few seasons so we could rotate crops, and be better stewards of the soil. We pray that everyone has a great season growing food, and make an effort to share some of it with someone that wouldn’t normally have access to healthy food. Remember to try and use heirloom varieties if you can and shoot for some OMRI certified or naturally made insecticides and soaps for deterrents!
Cheers to a successful 2016!
Bob Dinges
Organizer and Founder of Giving Vegetable Gardens Charity
As this heat wave hits us here in Portland Oregon people are thinking spring is officially here, not so, we could still be hit with a bit of cold, so be patient, plan and get your soil ready. Plant your peas, asparagus, onions and carrots, but be careful with leafy vegetables by clotching them or perhaps use some poly cover. Here’s some pictures of what we did last weekend at our new Leighton site and prepping the last section at the Albina site as well as the new to us utility trailer that was donated to us by the Gillenwater Farm, what a gift, this is really going to make our logistics a whole lot easier!
So for a long time we have talked about being “self supporting through our own contributions”. Trying to create a product we can sell on the open market to help with the costs of running our charity.Some of the products we talked about, were a sauce or salsa of some sort, but until we have reached that cross road I have decided to donate the proceeds from the sales of my ceramic art to Giving Vegetable Gardens. My Face Book site is Yur bobs art, I’m hoping I can sell or custom make pieces to order, I have a few things that I do make and sell and that’s the bull skulls, coffee mugs, bowls and assorted styles of fish. The skulls and fish range in price according to size and glazes and types of detail, if you are interested in possibly purchasing one of my pieces please contact me through the yur bobs art site and we can talk about what you might like to order and a price. I will be setting up a Pay Pal site so there’s a way to pay, if you would like to send a payment for a particular item that you see in a picture we can work that out as well. It takes money to grow, harvest and transport the vegetables and fruit we grow to all the different agencies we support, so I’m hoping that this might help us to help others.
Cheers to you all!
Your Bob
Today was a really great day for Giving Vegetable Gardens, we had a bunch of volunteers from “Hands On Portland” come out to the Albina Community Garden for a few hours and help us get things in shape. What a blessing to have such a great group of people come and give of themselves to help others. We were able to get compost hauled to our covered site so we can begin the process of amending that soil for this coming spring, along with weeding in multiple beds on the farm site, as well as the raised bed site I want to give Hands on Portland a big Thank You for all your help today! I want to thank AJ for bringing hands on Portland into the garden what a great organization, and Dan for making it all happen and his ability to direct and get a plan that will work in such a short time. Another person is Ernie, for coming to get me and helping wheelbarrow all that compost, for hooking up the two tillers at Canby rentals for us to buy, for the use of his trailer and for being a great friend! Cheers to everyone that makes what we do possible!
Always yurbob
We have been so busy trying to get the Albina site ready for this new spring season, this will be our first season on this property and hope it will be a good one? We already have onions, blueberries, fava beans, and strawberries planted and have the herbs in the cold frame, so they will be ready soon. We will have a video coming out this summer on grafting tomatoes, we will be doing this video with Lettuce Grow Garden Foundation, so stay tuned for that! Here is some new pics of the Albina site, enjoy and remember to let us know if we can help with planting and soil advice!
Here are some pictures, before and after pruning one of the trees today. The orchard is in need of attention, and we hope that once we are finished that the crop will be a good one? We hope to continue to nurse these apple trees back into shape so we can all enjoy it’s fruit. I am going to apply on our behalf, and see if we can dry farm a section of this land until it gets turned into a soccer field? Who know the city could always change their mind?
I have been so busy with school this last 2 months, and have been putting off the whole getting planted for winter crops. We have decided that we will put in a ton of garlic, let the Swiss chard winter over along with some other greens, we will pull everything else, mulch and compost the rest of the beds and say good night to the garden…well as much as you can say goodnight anyway. This last year has been a real eye opener to what we need to do and how we need to partner up with other vegetable growers. Better planning, more volunteers and hopefully more of our family members would get involved this next season? It was really great to have Jami here last summer, she was a huge help and no task was too small or big for her, we hope she will return in the spring to help us do it again? Jason was the garden master in Beaverton at the Terry site, he grew the best quality vegetables and kept a steady flow of them to the pantries, we can only hope and pray he will do it again next year and take on an even bigger role…feeling hopeful : ) We need to figure out a plan for the Hicks site and also the Navajo site? We might have to drop the Navajo site if we can’t get a solid a crew to manage it, Kathie Katie said she would help with it, but it would be so nice to have some students from Clackamas Community Hort. Dept. help with the site?
Cheers from yurbob
It really feels good to make a difference in the lives of the clients of Independent Living Resources, being able to deliver fresh natural produce to them is really a privilege. We want to give Evelyn Villegas a big Thank You, for making it possible for us to team up and give good food to a lot of good people that are handicapped and challenged! It is so gratifying to watch how fast the fresh vegetables are taken home, cooked up and eaten! Partnering with ILR has been one of our best moves yet, we hope we can serve that community for years to come!
Cheers and God Bless
All of us at GVGC
Giving Vegetable Gardens Charity 