Community garden sprouts up nicely

Lidio Rainaldi Jr. and Linda Ionta go through baskets of fresh produce at the community garden on Saturday morning. The Community Supported Agriculture project allows members to get fresh locally grown produce every week. [photo by Brian Leddy / Independent]

By Kevin Killough
Staff writer

GALLUP — Gallup has its own community garden, and apparently the crops are coming up nicely. The garden is a community-supported agriculture project of Work in Beauty.

Steve Heil, who heads the project, describes it as a fledgling community supported agriculture project. It’s entirely supported by volunteers. Be Sargent allows the community supported agriculture project to use her back yard for the garden, which is 3,000 square feet and irrigated with ground water and rain water. According to Heil, the city actually offers more ideal growing conditions than open space areas.
“We like growing in town because the growing season is a bit longer,” Heil says.

One of the aims of the programs is to reduce the distance between consumer and production of food.

“It’s a way to connect the eaters to the growing of the food,” Heil says.

The garden is also part of the beautification of the downtown area.

“We feel the garden is an important part of making downtown more livable,” Heil says.

The project has five growers and 10 members who share the harvest. Right now, each members share amounts to about two to three vegetarian-based dishes a week for their household. Heil says that while it doesn’t completely suit all the food needs of each family, it doesn’t provide a significant supplement to the family’s meals.

The crops grown in the garden include basil, onions, leeks, garlic, cabbage, kale, chard, chicory, lettuce, carrots, and broccoli.

The CSA is hoping to get more land and increase the families served by the effort to 30 to 50 families.

“We think there’s a demand for that,” says Heil.