Gardens get blitzed by construction for a cause
OROVILLE >> 530 Farms on Miners Ranch Road was bustling with activity Friday morning as volunteers armed with drills and staple guns constructed planter boxes for Butte County Local Food Network’s Spring Garden Blitz.
The nonprofit’s volunteers built 21 boxes in two sizes — 4-by- 4 feet and 4-by-8 feet — on Friday. Additional volunteers will be delivering and installing the boxes in people’s yards throughout the Oroville and Berry Creek communities on Saturday and Sunday. When delivered the beds, which include a bottom made from hardware cloth to keep out underground varmints like gophers, will be filled with dirt from Lake Oroville Landscape and plants from GRUB Grown Nursery and Farm.
The cost for a 4-by- 4 foot garden bed was $115 and $185 for a 4-by-8 foot bed. A limited number of scholarships for a free 4-by- 4 foot raised bed were also available.
“We had 63 people sign up, 21 in the Oroville area, to get the garden boxes. Out of the 21 requested in the Oroville area we gave scholarships for all but five boxes. Four of those boxes
are going to a woman with nine kids. We don’t usually scholarship more than one box but we’d really like to support her in teaching the kids to grow their own food,” said Pamm Larry, the network’s director.
In 2020 the Local Food Network conducted a spring and fall Garden Blitz installing 103 beds in Chico, Gridley, Paradise, Concow, Yankee Hill and Magalia. This spring the group is focused its attention on Oroville, Berry Creek, Thermalito, Palermo, Gridley, the rest of South County and Chico.
In addition to signing people up to get a box, Larry also handled rounding up volunteers and finding a central location in in Oroville where she could stage for the event. Stefani Hancock, owner of 530 Farms, stepped up donating her property for dirt, lumber and supplies staging as well as a place with plenty of room for the volunteers to construct the boxes.
“Nothing tastes as fresh and good as homegrown produce that you’ve grown with love. If we can contribute to the community by helping with the Garden Blitz, we were all for it. Helping everybody we can with food production is a benefit for all. Our commitment through the farm is to get healthy food to everyone any way we can,” said Hancock.
The premise of the Garden Blitz is similar to the Victory Gardens of WWII. In that instance the government mobilized and put huge resources into supporting and encouraging everyone to grow gardens in backyards, front yards, churches, businesses and community spaces. Through this nationwide effort to become more food secure, 42 percent of the nation’s vegetables and fruits were grown in Victory Gardens. Today local food, including gardens, only supplies about 2 percent, according to Larry.
“We don’t call them Victory Gardens. That name is just too painful for our Japanese neighbors but what we did during that war, with the gardens, shows what a concentrated effort can produce — food security. We can do it again,” said Larry.
Among the Local Food Network’s goals are increasing farmers market sales by 10 percent by 2021; supporting the increase of local food production to meet 10 percent of local demand by 2025; and to see 2,500 kitchen or larger gardens planted by 2025. The Garden Blitz is one means to this end.
“I built planter boxes back home in L. A. so this seemed like a great opportunity to get some of my volunteer hours in while helping the community doing something I know how to do,” said Anthony Martinez, from the California Conservation Corps.
Another corpsman, Damien Limon, said he volunteered for the Garden Blitz because it “helps the community and the environment.”
The Local Food Network will host its second Garden Blitz of 2021 in the fall and Larry hopes more people will sign up to purchase boxes, get box scholarships and volunteer.
“Just this week we received a $4,000 grant from North Valley Mutual Aid so we should be able to do more garden boxes and scholarship more,” said Larry.
For more information on the food network, visit www.bclocalfood.org.