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
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 we went to the Hicks garden site and planted 300 assorted onions and a berm of 25 strawberries, we still have so much more to plant at this one of a kind garden site donated by Sue Hicks. We hope to get a couple of the plots planted this season with good food that will be shared by so many! We are also looking into growing a crop that we could sell or could be had fore a minimum donation to help us with costs. We will keep you all updated on what crops we will have in abundance and welcome any suggestions?
Cheers and God Bless
yurbob
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
You know when we started GVGC we agreed that keeping the needs of the people ‘in need’ would always have to drive what we are doing, and it’s really a good feeling when that happens! We have now shifted into another gear by not just growing non GMO foods, but actually growing food demographically according to what each of the three pantries are needing. We found that there is still a lot of waste from pantries, and that waste was types of vegetables and food that was unfamiliar because of nationality. We know that people have great intentions by donating what they have left in their gardens, and by all means should continue, but maybe we as a community should put more thought into where we take that food? We found by doing just a little research that some pantries are in neighborhoods where more elderly of a European descent, while other pantries are more Hispanic, or Russian descent. What we have decided is to grow food to cater to the pantries we are involved with, and the response we were given was a feeling of incredible joy, in fact they had never heard of such a thing and can’t wait to get their first supply of Fresh naturally grown food. Two other components we will add, is for us as a team that grow the food to actually know and meet the people that will get it, so they too can feel connected to the food, getting to know the people that are actually eating the food you grow is really important, and one of the reasons why is because if we can engage the people in need then perhaps we can teach them how to grow their own food with our help. We could get garden spots in their area, even container type gardening and show the ones that are able to garden how to be sustainable, feed their families and teach their neighbors what they have learned!
Thank You to everyone who in support of what we are doing!
Cheers and God Bless
Bob and GVGC
We are so fortunate to have such a caring team. Jason and Art have really been putting in the hours at the Terry garden site. We are hoping that along with our other sites that this season will be one to remember. Donating this food we grow to families in need is what it’s all about, and along with the education component it really makes our efforts feel complete! Feeling really excited and hopeful for what the Lord has in store for us! Our first 20 footer!
Cheers and God Bless
Bob Dinges
Terry site Hoop
Complete with a zipper door!
Site manager Jason with our new addition to the family, Art, getting the small hoop up at the Terry Site so we can begin our planting. The start of the ‘A’ team!
This is one of the site we will be planting this spring, we have started soil amending and are putting together a plan that will be beneficial to everyone concerned. Lots of naturally grown food will be coming out of this garden real soon!
Giving Vegetable Gardens Charity 