...we tend to grow.
Grow Local Colorado is a group of volunteers dedicated to promoting local food, local community, and local economy.
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Donate here through our partnering organizations, Beanstalk Foundation and Colorado Gives.
On the donation form, check "Add a dedication to your donation" and enter "Grow Local Colorado" in the Name of addressee field. Beanstalk will then forward your generous and tax deductible gift to us! |
Thanks to Our Community... We Tend to Grow
We're thinking on our 2021 growing season and feel so very grateful for every single contribution of help in the garden, a kind word, resource sharing, collaboration and funding that came our way. Our gardens grew in 2021 from 14 to 17 sites! We couldn't fully take on all the garden space offers that came our way, in fact. This is quite a lot to manage for a small organization. We hope that you've been seeing the tangible results of all your support last year. Together we were able to harvest and share 9,637 pounds of fresh produce, which exceeded our previous year's number by over 3,000 pounds. Fruit was abundant on the trees, so we mobilized with our great partners at Metro Caring food pantry to increase our ability to capture the bounty. This amounted to approximately 9,700 pounds of apples, pears and plums that were distributed not only to this food pantry, but to shelters, free farmers markets and schools. And a big thanks to those generous homeowners who shared this fruit and kept it from going to waste. We wish we could have gotten to ALL those trees! Kudos to the multiple groups and individuals who jumped in and repeatedly showed up to help. We are grateful to have had funding to support an additional garden leader (Holly) and re-institute our intern program. We began a partnership with Spirit of The Sun to create an indigenous permaculture based food forest. It was an honor to be asked to consult and help bring out a group to reinvigorate the garden space at Four Mile Historic Park (Evolve Vacation Rental - looking at you!). Slow Food Denver was amazing in providing a consistent volunteer group to help manage one of our largest spaces, not to mention we were able to share our produce with their Lil' Sprouts cooking classes. Our collaboration with the Grow Food Feed People coalition has been so helpful in sharing resources and valuable knowledge. There has been such support from the Denver City Greenhouse over the last two years in offering space to grow our spring plantings. This group of plant educators, food growers and food relief organizations all work together to create greater access to this produce. If you know about our Earth Day seed giveaway, you know we have shared seeds at that time but also throughout the season. It's important to note that seeds are becoming less available and so the generous donations from multiple seed companies have been much appreciated.
The above recounting is the outcome of our collective actions. Whether you came out and spread coffee grounds, packaged seeds, tended a garden, helped harvest, or donated, we thank you. It really does add up and it demonstrates the power of community. GLC was established as a response to climate change and economic equity. The mountain of issues that are our realities are quite sobering and may seem insurmountable. How have we decided to address this? Step into a garden. There is hope if we become more aware and act in our own ways. For example, we see the benefits of a local food supply now more than ever, due to Covid and intermittently disrupted supply chains. We see the benefits of locally harvested produce picked at its height of nutrition and not traveling thousands of miles using fossil fuels, losing its flavor and health. We see a benefit in repurposing available green spaces to create food gardens. We feel it's our responsibility to share our harvest with those that need it most. So instead of being overwhelmed, we step into the garden as a place to act. We're reminded that we cannot rise to the myriad of challenges alone, it's only through collective efforts that we move forward. "We tend to grow" is something we say often, and it means that the way we grow and the way that we eat is so very important to our overall health. We focus on building local community, local food, and local economy. We do tend to grow in so many ways.
Finally, what's next for us? We continue to source as much abundant and sustainable resources of materials that we can to keep our gardens healthy (i.e., coffee grounds, burlap bags, leaves, goat manure). We hope to continue to save seeds from our locally adapted plants. In fact, we're growing our own garlic for seed to share with other growers. We're exploring new technologies to cope with current drought conditions more effectively. CSU developed water sensors will be placed at a few of our sites to help us conserve water. We seek more opportunities to share seeds and seedlings with those that would like to grow. We're looking forward to welcoming new interns.
~ To volunteer go to our website in April and you'll find available opportunities for the summer.
Love from the garden,
Barbara and Linda
Co-directors
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