Community Gardens
This is from Wayne Sabine. Wayne and his wife Dilys operate Circle S Farms, a Certified Organic Farm in Tilley, NB
For the lion’s share of my adult life, the dream of self-sufficiency has been a goal toward which my meandering life path has headed. It has been like the carrot in front of the donkey, just out of reach. Life experience has taught me that one can’t do it all alone. One needs a community of like minded people. Like the Good Book tells us, all parts of the body are needed to make a properly functioning whole. We each have different gifts and talents which when combined toward a common goal make the whole stronger than the sum of the parts.
Hopefully the recent flood and its aftermath will have the effect of bringing the community of Perth-Andover together as a properly functioning whole and not push us into the mind set of only looking out for ourselves. With the current technology available and the ease with which we can travel, it is easy to spend less time interacting with our neighbours.
One of the needs we all share is food. With the dominance of supermarkets supplying food and food like substances, many people are not only disconnected from the source of food and what it takes to produce it, but also the nutritional value of what they buy. As the old saying goes “you are what you eat”. With the prevalence of health problems like diabetes and obesity it is not hard to draw the correlation between diet and health. By supporting local initiatives like Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), community orchards, and community gardens; we will not only be drawn closer as a community, but we will also have the added benefit of improved health.
“If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors’ prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities – and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared.
Wendell Berry
