BIRTH OF A GARDEN! READ POSTS FROM THE BEGINNING, AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE (GO TO "OLDER POSTS") TO SEE HOW IT STARTED

GARDEN IN SUMMER - SUNFLOWERS, POTATOES, SQUASH, PEAS, ZINNIAS AND
MARIGOLDS

 (Photos: Linda Degnan Cobos) 

Photos above are of sod removal, tilling, planting, irrigating, weeding, harvesting by Land & Sea Slow Food chapter volunteers, community members, and students. 
 

The Land & Sea Slow Food Garden was started and is run by Friday Harbor's Land & Sea Slow Food Chapter, a chapter of Slow Food USA. 
We are a non-profit, operating independently of the SJI school district or other schools. 
In providing this garden, we enthusiastically welcome participation by students of all the island's schools for Slow Food Land & Sea sponsored workshops and activities. 

We donate produce we grow to Friday Harbor schools and the community at large, and work to plant things schools need for their lunch program. We provide learning opportunities of all kinds to benefit students of all ages, including mentoring.
 Our mission for this wonderful garden is community participation and education and also supplying needed produce to benefit the school lunch and other community programs. 

We also have arranged for guest speakers at the schools, including an intern from Ecuador, representing the indigenous cooperative Kallari Chocolate, and documentary filmmakers from Moving Images. (More on the Kallari visit here). We've sponsored community movies at the school, Palace Theater ("Food, Inc" - thanks Aaron!) Village at the Harbour, the FH Library, the Drs. Office, and the Friday Harbor House. We've successfully placed high school age interns with a local farmer, and  sponsored cob-oven building workshops with local youth and families with Ryan Browne. Land & Sea has co-sponsored farmer parties in exchange for our helping out with work and other benefits to farms, and we have hosted many large fisherman dinners with salmon, labor, and space donated by the Marinkovich family, to welcome visitors and link people to people. We try our hardest to get messages out from farmers to our community when we're asked, and to support our local sustainable agricultural services.
Our main web page exists to educate and link people together, and make opportunities for learning and farm work known.

Because of the generosity of a local working family and another kind benefactor, we have been able to send students and other local young people each year to a one week summer full-immersion workshop at the Quillasascut teaching farm each summer for the last 2 years, and plan to do this again this summer!

One of our most wonderful achievements last fall was supplying a community benefit dinner with heritage Ozette potatoes. These delicious potatoes were developed by the native people of our region and are recognized by Slow Food USA/ International on the Ark of Taste. The seed potatoes we used to grow them were gathered on Sucia, San Juan and other local islands and donated by biologist Madrona Murphy. The potato crop was dug up - harvested - by a cooking class from the high school, which was really exciting. 
We also do our best to link people to people, and work with other organizations to benefit our local kids and community.

Our garden's irrigation material was provided by generous donations from the Masonic Lodge, and Browne Building Supply. Other generous donors at the start included Harbor Rental, Soroptimists, and Tim Nicol-McGee, in addition to M. Melville, the Degnan-Cobos family and the Marinkovich family. Uprising Seeds and High Mowing Seed companies have also made generous donations, in addition to other kind and much-appreciated community-minded contributors listed on the following posts.
Declan designed and made us the lovely cedar information podiums around the garden with local materials he gathered from Bill Maas and  Dave Hall. 


Last fall our chapter also supplied the school with greens, beans, squash and garlic gleaned from local farms at the end of their seasons by Land & Sea volunteers. We've also grown and supplied snap peas, beans, and squash in our garden on Blair and Second, and now have garlic, peas, and beans planted. In addition to salad greens and a number of other starts now getting taller by the minute at our greenhouse on the west side of the island.

If you'd like to read more about the Land & Sea Slow Food  Garden, scroll down the page to find our earliest post, then read your way back up the page. It's really great to have you visit! To take part, or get on our Land & Sea mailing list, contact slowfoodlandandsea@gmail.com, call 317-5890. or stop by the garden when you see volunteers out there working. Everyone is welcome. 
Great things come out of this little place!

Look at upcoming posts, and at the informational podiums at the garden for info on things like: What does 'nitrogen fixing' mean? How do we keep away deer? And which weeds, pests, and beneficial insects we are encountering in the garden? We will do our best to keep the podiums updated - we are also happy to have volunteers who'd like to do artwork, writing, or photographing for these informational stands. If you have an idea, let us know, we'll do our best to help you make it happen.

Please look at information in earlier posts, directly below, which also can be seen on the informational podiums at our garden. These cedar podiums also contain info on what is planted now, and other tidbits about gardening and what's going on in the garden.
We will try to keep this page updated. Posts are upcoming on the tree pruning workshop we had last month, and on possible new beds, and other simple additions to the garden.

To find out more, visit our main page and "About' page, or contact Linda, Maureen, and Marion at slowfoodlandandsea@gmail.com. or call 360-317-5890

And visit the Land & Sea garden on Blair Ave and Second St. in Friday Harbor, across from the High School and Middle School on Blair, and from the Courthouse on Second St. It's everyone's garden!