A few years back, 2009 to be exact, in a fit of boredom, I started an on-line application to hopefully free myself from life behind a desk. I wanted to get back into doing what I most love: helping people grow their own food and enhance their food security. It all starts with a kitchen garden and expands and grows as families realize the connection between eating well and food sovereignty, between food security and increased incomes, as I witnessed in Cuba this past May.
Around about July, I decided to complete that time-consuming questionnaire and get on with the search for an opportunity to share, learn and grow myself. On July 28th, my application to Americorps VISTA was in the hands of whoever and after more than a month of various interviews and submissions to a plethora of organizations (some of whom appeared not to want me, can you imagine?) I connected with the SOAR Initiative (Shaping Our Appalachian Region) in Kentucky. And I was the lucky person who landed in Campton, Kentucky, in November to work with the chair of the Agriculture component for eastern Kentucky. The initiative is a bi-partisan endeavor of Democratic Governor Steve Bashear and United States Congressman Harold "Hal" Rogers, a Republican. It's quite an honor to be part of this and to know that VISTA was considered a key component to move this initiative forward. Once the goals are approved by the executive board, we'll be taking all that back to the communities and creating the structures to implement them. The next meeting is February, 2015.
Here in Wolfe County where I'm based, we've got great things going on: focusing attention toward a real jewel of a program, the Jackson County Regional Food Center, as well as bringing in the Grow Appalachia program to the community, encouraging new opportunities for growers, creating mentoring connections and offering all sorts of training for growers from seed starting to rain barrels to seed saving and food preservation.
And neither rain nor snow nor cold temps is keeping a valiant crew of volunteers from putting up a hoop house/high tunnel/greenhouse behind the Extension Office where I'm working! This will be our home for growing transplants, experimenting with season extension and classes of various kinds. I'm looking forward to using this as my "second office" some days.
For me, it's always a stimulating challenge to move to a new area, create a new network of friends and just learn your way around. Driving to our SOAR meeting recently in Manchester, Kentucky, my supervisor shared with me the land that is near and dear to his heart as we passed through it. For all the difficulties that often brand this area of Appalachia, I have yet to speak to someone who hates living here. They may wish for an improvement in their financial circumstances or living conditions, but they don't want to move. They just want those better opportunities to come here.
It's only been about six weeks, but so far I've learned: that a fully-stocked grocery store or lumberyard may be 20 miles away; that fast food franchises substitute for local restaurants, and often Family Dollar stores substitute for shopping centers. Yoga classes and a dentist are 90 miles round trip. The librarian as well as everyone else in town knows everyone's geneology...back four generations!
I've also learned that no 5-mile stretch of eastern Kentucky landscape is the same: serpentine 2-lane roads, death defying right or left turns that spring up out of nowhere, meandering creeks or rivers and the impressive stratified rock precipitously overhanging the waterways and roads looking like they stepped out of "The Phantom Tollbooth." Instead of tokens, these tollbooths require us simply to slow down and admire the scenery which is pretty dang easy in eastern and southern Kentucky. And in this land of "no guardrails" I'm quite happy to slow down and take in the natural beauty of this region, like the Red River Gorge and Natural Bridge State Park. The impressive views seem more abundant than organic vegetables but I'll see if I can help change that. Stay tuned!
