Mill Lane Community Gardens
It would appear -- at least from 400 feet up -- that the Amherst Community Garden program is having a bad year for participation.
Which I find surprising since the town is proud to have a book and plow for a town seal.
Amherst Town seal
Although maybe someday my suggestion will take hold: changing it to a BANANA.
Certainly it isn't the cost of participation at between only $15 and $35 per year per plot. And the space at Mill Lane (owned by Amherst College) is not even restricted to Amherst residents only.
Amethyst Brook Community Gardens
Maybe someday when pot is legalized ...
Elisa Campbell's lupines at Mill Lane Gardens
6 comments:
Maybe it has something to to with the lack of rainfall so far this season.
All that food is for sale down on Rt. 9 and food is cheap. With big box stores like S/S and Whole Foods, which locals love, they can get most of what they need. People also tend to not accept any food or produce that is not perfect (local stuff is often mixed perfect and not), thus all the waste at the grocery stores and farms(which is widely accepted).
That being said....
I think it's the communal part that folks are shying away from, not gardening....do you see the crowds at Hadley Garden Center (outdoor) and Here We Grow (indoor/outdoor) most days. The community is fine, but driving to a little garden is silly and people know it...no need to garden to be part of the community, there are plenty of other ways.
Most growers/gardeners grow at home and are doing so more than ever. Some are even growing organically, gasp.
So, I don't think this community garden reflects to much on the community or the gardeners locally. As we all know, most plants and Massachusetts number one cash crop are grown primarily indoors and pretty soon, primarily by megasized government mandated companies at the request of voters.
Excellent use of the drone. That shot illustrates the issue quite well. This is about the same level of utilization that the Mill Ln Community Gardens have had for several years. If not for Ms. Annie's octo-plot, there would be nearly nothing there at all, regardless of rainfall.
By the way, there is a hose available a Mill Ln, so the low rainfall argument doesn't hold much water.
Folks probably have given up for the same reason why I gave up on the UM Family Housing garden plot across from Wysocki House (911 North Pleasant) -- everything you grow being stolen before you get a chance to harvest it yourself.
I started in the summer of 1994 and I always knew that about 10% of my harvest was being stolen, not all with thieves with four legs, and I simply planted more so that I would have enough to make it worthwhile to "can" it for winter. There was (and is) an attitude amongst many in the Chinese community that I found rather infurating, essentially "What's mine is mine, but what's yours is actually ours and you should be sharing it with me."
One summer, it got so bad that people would walk into my garden plot while I was standing there, point to my choicest things while speaking Chinese and while I did everything short of physical attacking them to make it clear that they did NOT have them, they'd steal everything that was ripe right in front of me!
(Bear in mind this involved climbing over a 3' fence, it wasn't a case of not knowing...)
They defended this practice by claiming that since I hadn't explained -- in what I believe to have been some dialect of Manderin -- why they couldn't steal the fruits of my labor, they thus were entitled to take them. When UMass backed them on this, I said to hell with it.
I somehow don't think I could steal stuff in China and justify it by saying that since the owner hadn't explained -- in the Yankee Dialect of English -- why I couldn't take things, I was entitled to do so. I gotta wonder how this would play out as a defense against an accusation of rape -- if a woman doesn't explain, in a language she doesn't know, why she doesn't want to have sex with you, it means that you are entitled to do so -- even though she is screaming "no" (A fairly simple-to-understand English word) at the top of her lungs?
Anyway, I suspect folks aren't gardening anymore for the same reason I stopped -- there really any sense when you know everything will get stolen before you can harvst it.
I thought you were not supposed to plant anything until Memorial day weekend, due to the risk of frost. I enjoyed the use of Mill Land gardens, and even managed to produce a few things, and it was fun. The amount of weeds in the soil was amazing. You could leave town for a couple weeks in the mountains or at the beach and find everything overrun. My occasional use of roundup (tm) was not appreciated, though.
As I live in Europe now and see some very successful community gardens (called 'allotments', using the British terminology) they are very successful for an important reason: towns cede control over the gardens to a local non-profit run by a board of allotment-holders, and your allotment becomes yours for as long as you pay the minimal rent and keep the property in good condition. No calling up a part-time student hanging out at the city hall to beg for your allotment back each year, you know that if you invest in improving the soil and the allotment, you get to keep it. Families put up sheds, sheltered areas to rest and talk to allotment-neighbors, share ideas, and have the sense of community that is so special. There is precious little community without some vesting of property rights and a management body with which the community can operate and manage itself.
I see CSAs, with the cultural and social benefits they offer, as making community gardens less worthwhile now. It is a lot more fun, and with the expertise available the work may be hard but will not be futile, which is how people find things at the community gardens.
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