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As
I
mentioned on the previous page, these photos may
not load instantly and may load in an irregular
order.
This page discusses 7. Growing Your Own a. Gardening
in
Containers
8. Local Food Productsb. Community and Workplace Gardens c. Edible Landscape d. Home Gardens (including bees and poultry) e. Apartments, etc. f. School Gardens 9. Restaurants 10. Free Food  Oregon State
University Extension Service's
Lane
County Master Gardener Association has many
community partners, including Lane
Community College. Their hotline can give answers to
gardening questions.
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 Noy is an OSU Extension- Lane County Master Food Preserver. The Oregon State University Extension Service Master Food Preserver Program offers periodic classes and Web-based resources on food preservation and food safety.  Quilt by area quilter
Diane Jeffcott
(used with permission)  Eugene has a little-known multi-million dollar international business, Commercial Dehydrator Systems Inc., that can trace its origins to 1911.  http://www.dryer.com  A place to get seeds and grafts is the Spring Propagation Fair at Lane Community College, which usually happens in mid March. Mendocino County [California] library offers seed lending, By Glenda Anderson, The Press Democrat, September 4, 2013. Seed saving and lending is an old tradition that is enjoying a resurgence that's made its way into public libraries. |
  As part World War II, the government encouraged citizens to plant "Victory Gardens" so they could provide their own fruits and vegetables. Here's some information about the local project: http://victorygardensforall.org/ The Seed Ambassadors Project, based out of Oregon, is an independent, not-for-profit seed stewardship initiative. |
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Following are photos representing several ways of growing your own food:
a. Gardening in Containers  |
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 Pam grew all of
these greens in pots on her deck in early spring.
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 The pot on the left
has nasturtiums, whose leaf adds a nice zing to
salads, then the next pot has cucumbers and the
third pot has tomatoes.
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 Cally, a student spring term 2010 built this raised bed and sent me the following photos.    |
Window Farming: A Do-It-Yourself Veggie Venture, by Jon Kalish, National Public Radio's Weekend Edition: Sunday, April 4, 2010. |
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b.
Community Gardens
including
 This photo as well as
the next few were taken at the Amazon Community Garden
near our house.
If you'd like more information about area community gardens, call Debbie at 541-682-4812. |
 Click on this image or
the next one if you'd like to see a larger
version.
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 This is the community garden plot of Lindsey (in mid April, 2008), a student at Lane who wrote: "My family and I have
a nice garden plot right down by the river [in Eugene]
off of North Polk. We acquired it this year through
entering a lottery at the parks and open spaces
department. Of course there were many more applicants
than spaces available so we ended up on the lucky side
of things. This is the first time I myself have had a
garden but my mother and grandmother always had
gardens growing up. So I intend on passing along my
knowledge to my girls and also acquiring more as I go
along. Currently I have peas, carrots, romaine
lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, garlic, and
radishes planted."
   Skinner
City Farm is a unique Community Garden near
the base of Skinner Butte in Skinner Butte Park in
Eugene. They offer agriculturally-based programs for
plot-holders and also the general community. They
have free food preservation demonstrations and will
travel with their Mobile Cannery to other area
gardens for demonstrations. I love the photo
of their Mobile Cannery on
their website.
Common Ground Unfortunately there is more demand for community garden spots than there are spaces. Our neighborhood (Friendly Area Neighbors) has found a creative solution to that by creating garden space from which anyone can harvest.  It's in west Eugene
on Van Buren Street and what would be 21st Avenue.
  The donation of
Territorial seeds from Down To Earth helped
volunteers get starts going early this spring. A
City of Eugene Neighborhood Matching Grant that was
awarded has helped pay for the tool shed (an Acosa
hut), irrigation, and tools.
 Chris is explaining
that this right-of-way hasn't been used
since about 1920.
    For more
information, check out their Facebook page.
The City of Eugene is working to increase neighborhood-level food production with this program: Urban Agriculture in Eugene and these
websites
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Another addition to our community was the Courthouse Garden but it is no longer happening. It was wonderful so I'd like to still include photos I took. Located by the Federal Courthouse in Eugene, the Courthouse Garden was a collaboration between the City of Eugene, Lane County, the State of Oregon, the Federal Government and the University of Oregon.  Federal Judge Ann Aiken and University of Oregon Professors Ann Bettman and Lorri Nelson assisted in the planning, production, and creation of the garden. Judge Aiken could be found volunteering on many Saturday mornings, as she was the day I visited in July 2010. Above she's explaining to me that the garden's 3 principle purposes were to serve as:
 The Courthouse Garden relied almost solely on volunteers and donations from the local Eugene community.   Although ground was first broken only in April 2010, by that summer it was going strong.
Many
Cooks,
Delicious Soup: Community effort turns wasteland
into garden, by Rosemary Camozzi, Oregon Quarterly,
Summer 2010.
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 FOOD for Lane County (our food bank, whose mission is to eliminate hunger in our community by creating access to food) has a community garden called GrassRoots Garden on Coburg Road in north Eugene, behind St. Thomas Episcopal Church. The other 2 gardens in their Gardens Program are the Youth Farm (mentioned on page 1) and the Churchill Community Garden. Their website says that the Gardens Program "addresses the root causes of hunger and malnutrition by promoting community and individual self-sufficiency. " |
 Here the garden coordinator, Mary Bradley, is explaining that their deep, very rich soil gives them a successful celery crop that FOOD for Lane County finds many uses for. |
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 2014 For over 10 years Huerto de la Familia has offered people the opportunity and instruction to grow their own food. The families in their programs have mentioned numerous benefits, including: spending time with family, interacting with the broader community, decreased stress, increased self-sufficiency and self-esteem, and connecting to other programs. As of May 2014 Huerto de la Familia subsidizes garden plots at three sites:
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 A local Eagle Scout, Brian Reyneke built the shelter above the cob oven for his Eagle Scout badge. |
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Community Sharing helps residents of South Lane County remain fed, housed, and safe while they work towards self-sufficiency. One of their activties is a garden located   |
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This garden is a project of Healing Harvest, whose mission is to "bring horticultural therapy into the community by providing gardening and nature-based activities as a rehabilitative and restorative method to improve the lives of various challenged populations".    Maggie Matoba coordinates this garden. That's LaDonna on the left.   |
| Workplace Gardens A worksite that has created a community garden to increase their focus on health and wellness is Pacific Source Health Plans.    |
 Sue Archbald told me
these are salmonberries and described their taste as
"bland, yet with a hint of refreshing flavor".
These are native to our area and both the berries and the young shoots were widely eaten by coastal tribes. The art is appropriate, isn't it! There is a lot of very creative yard art at this house, which is in Eugene on 21st between Madison and Jefferson streets. |
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 Rosemary makes a
fragrant shrub,
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 as does thyme.
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One Green World is a
business in Molalla (southeast of Portland) with unique
fruit and nut trees and shrubs as well as berries that
can be part of your "edible landscape". Their
catalog has all kinds of interesting trees that I was
surprised to learn grow well here, including
pomegranates. I was intigued by this columnar
apple tree: http://www.onegreenworld.com/ |
 Here's my neighbor,
Linda, working in her garden in March.
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 Linda harvests kale
from her garden (and also chard) all winter.
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 She uses an
inexpensive oven thermometer to tell when her soil
is warm enough to plant seeds.
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 My friend, Babs,
plants pea pod seeds on about Valentine's day and
harvests them for most of the spring.
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 Babs' rhubarb in the
spring
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 Here she is in
August with her granddaughter, Delaney, harvesting
green beans. That's spaghetti squash climbing
along with the beans.
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   A student named
Lisa sent this picture of her garden in the fall.
 This was one of
her artichokes a few months previously and below
her red hot chili peppers.
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Urban farmers are raising their own bees and getting honey. Our neighbor just installed a hive where a former owner kept their garbage can.   |
The bees are loving our lavender, which blooms
for weeks, and I'm anxious to find out if their honey
will be lavender-scented.   |
Lane County Beekeepers Association Urban farmers are also raising chickens. |
 A student named
Diane brought me these eggs from her chickens that
she raises at her house on the outskirts of
Eugene.
In her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I enjoyed Barbara Kingsolver's description of the eggs from her daughter, Lily's, chickens. "The products
from her different breeds of hens crossed a
palette from soft green to pink, tan and chocolate
brown. Lily arranged them so every carton
contained a rainbow...."
There's a great website that accompanies the
book: http://animalvegetablemiracle.com/ |
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  Here's Guy Plaa at
his home in Goshen in 1982. He was a chef
instructor in LCC's culinary program for many years.
 Evan, another
student, raises ducks at his home.
  Here's what two of their eggs look like. The smaller egg is the size of a chicken egg but it is actually from their smaller breed, the bantam silver Appleyard. For more information, you can visit what Evan posted with the website Local Harvest: Boondockers Farm. e. Apartments, etc. Some living
situations like apartments have space for
gardening. Ya-Po-Ah Terrace
Retirement Apartments are in downtown
Eugene at the foot of Skinner's Butte and they
have 35 gardeners.
 Off to the right
you can see an 83-year-old who has been gardening
there for over 10 years.
   Ya-Po-Ah Terrace
Retirement Apartments were completed in 1964 with
funds provided by the U. S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development
 Novella Carpenter
turned a vacant lot in downtown Oakland into a
thriving farm, raising vegetables bees and a
variety on animals, including chickens, rabbits
and pigs. Powells' Books calls Farm City "an
unforgettably charming memoir, full of hilarious
moments, fascinating farmers' tips, and a great
deal of heart. It is also a moving meditation on
urban life versus the natural world and what we
have given up to live the way we do."
Farm City: The
Education of an Urban Farmer, June 2009.
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LCC Learning Garden
an
education-based experience for students.
 The LCC Learning Garden is
located in the southwestern part of the 30th Ave. campus
behind Building 26.
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 Brendon Lynch
coordinated it the day I visited.
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 Mike Sims explains
about how food scraps from the cafeteria are
composted and then added to fertilize the soil.
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 Salad greens from
the garden are used in the LCC cafeteria.
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 Click here for more information about LCC's Learning Garden Club. |
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University of Oregon's Urban Farm  |
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 This is arugula, a
wonderful and spicy salad green.
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 The School Garden Project of Lane County is a grassroots, non-profit organization dedicated to fostering hands-on, schoolyard-based learning experiences for children by creating vibrant and sustainable school gardens and habitats.   This is the garden at our neighborhood school.    Willamette Farm and Food Coalition’s Farm to School Program received a Victory Against Hunger award from the Congressional Hunger Center, Victory Wholesale Group and National Farm to School Network for its efforts to fight hunger through promoting and creating farm-to-school programs. Students in Springfield Public School's Community Transition Program have a garden plot at the Food for Lane County Youth Farm, located on Flamingo Way, near Game Farm Road. The plan is to be able to sell vegetable starts and fresh produce at Springfield’s Farmers’ Market. Kevin Hillman,
Transition Specialist with the Youth Transition
Program emailed this to me:
"My goals are to provide realistic work experience to our special needs students as well as support services in transitioning from school to the adult world. I also have a personal goal of providing nutritious food to our school lunch programs."  This is Anthony and Danny, two of the high schoolers in the Community Transition Program, selling pea starts at the Propagation Fair held in the spring of 2008 at Lane Community College. |
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The Willamette Valley Sustainable Foods Alliance is a regional association of businesses, located in Lane County, that promotes natural food businesses through relationships, education and sustainable business practices. |
 Lochmead is one of the largest privately owned dairy farms in the Pacific Northwest. It is still owned and operated by the Gibson family, who founded it in 1941. |
 "Genesis Juice to
be revived again", by Joe Mosley, The Register-Guard,
June 21, 2007.
The Dairy Farmers of Oregon maintain a list of
other
Oregon
Dairy Processers. I've seen in
some grocery stores soft cheeses made by
Fern's
Edge Goat Dairy located above Dexter Lake.
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 Golden Temple
Bakery, founded in 1972 and now part of
Hearthside
Foods, makes granola using only
organically-grown oats as well as other
organically-grown ingredients. It is available
in many grocery stores.
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 Organically Grown Co-operative, founded in 1978, opened it's first dock in 1983 and its first warehouse in Portland in 1993. The photo of the truck above is in 2007. Organically Grown Company |
 In the center back
are Jack Gray and Mary Jo Wade (holding their first
child, Sam) in the summer of 1983 at OGC grand
opening. Jack and Mary Jo are two of the four
co-owners of
Winter
Green Farm, an early organic farm in Lane
County that is still thriving.
I was in a Birth to
Three group (now
Parenting Now!)
with Mary Jo and Sam and we had several meetings at
their farm. They introduced me to
Oregon Tilth, an
organization of organic farmers, gardeners and
consumers founded in1974. Tilth offers educational events
throughout the state of Oregon, and provides organic
certification services to organic growers,
processors, and handlers internationally.
You can click on the
above image, or the next two, for larger images.
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 Joe Gabriel (left),
manager of Organically Grown Cooperative in 1984,
along with Stephen Chase.
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 This was taken
during the Eugene Celebration parade in about 1989.
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 Toby first began
making tofu paté in the late seventies at The
Oregon Country Fair.
Toby's Family Foods |
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 Glorybee Foods started in a Eugene family's garage in 1975. Their honey is delicious. |
Sweet Creek
Foods is a relatively new company that makes
preserved organic products (including different
pickled items, fruit spreads, salsas and albacore
tuna) that are packed in glass jars.
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 We have a selection
of local bakeries. This one mills their own
flour, although it could be their grains are not
local. The
Southern
Willamette
Valley Bean & Grain Project is working to
stimulate the cultivation and marketing of flour
made from local organically-grown grains.
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 Under the above photo on the bus, it said: "To last 100
years, you knead a lot of dough."
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Other Eugene bread
bakeries:
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 This fabulous and award-winning cheese is made just a little south of here. |
9. Restaurants Sometimes
restaurants list their locally grown options, like
this menu listing beef from
Knee
Deep Cattle Company.
The booklet mentioned earlier published by the Willamette Farm and Food Coalition also has a section listing restaurants that feature locally grown selections. |
10.
"Free"
Food
and Edible Nature Neighbors often
have more fruit than they can use.
This sign says "FREE FRUIT. Take as many as you can carry. There are plenty more." |
 The owners of this
fig tree in Eugene didn't appreciate it when
people came by and took ALL of the low-lying fruit
off this tree.
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 "Alley Cruisin'" in August for breakfast. |
 What most of us know as blackberries are not native here, but were introduced in about 1850. While blackberries are at the top of Oregon's invasive weed list, they are also a very healthful berry full of nutrients, antioxidants and other phytochemicals. Some maintain that they are among the state's most promising farm crops. |
 I think these are
plums.
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 And these are
persimmons in November.
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 The Cascade Mycological Society is a group of local people who share a common interest in and appreciation of our mushrooms.  In late fall, the Cascade Mycological Society co-sponsors a Mushroom Festival at Mount Pisgah Arboretum.       The article about professionals called "The Mushroom Hunters" (by Burkhard Bilger, The New Yorker, August 20, 2007) begins: "Two hours east of
Eugene, Oregon, in the shadow of the southern
Cascades, the forests begin to thin. It’s the kind
of land that only a mushroom could love."
New Yorker slide show about hunting mushrooms in Oregon, August 20, 2007 issue.  http://wildfoodadventures.com/ |
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