An ancient Chinese proverb states, “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime,” but Dewart Lake Community Friends Church and Quaker Haven Camp in Syracuse have ventured into new territory with their community garden concept, “A Place to Grow.”

“It’s not just a handout, it’s something they’re doing themselves,” Brandon Dennis, director at Quaker Haven, explained.

The community garden project, which will open May 17 this year, is based on the model Steve Woolley observed during his time in Germany, where a single piece of land was operated by multiple gardeners usually creating less work for the individual, but more and better crop for everyone involved.

The garden at Quaker Haven is designed to be a place for families who struggle to buy groceries with the high costs of healthy food to learn to grow their own vegetables, fruits and herbs. The goal is to give them a location to grow, a mentor to instruct and education so that they can feed and support their family.

This year the garden’s aim is to get five sets of families growing. Each group of families will grow on one-tenth of the acre of land the camp has set aside for the experimental community project. Each one-tenth plot of land would have two families that would grow together, one as a client family, who may have trouble sustaining themselves but is willing to learn how to grow their own food, and one as a mentor family, who will teach them to grow food and to follow Christ. There will also be master gardeners, food preservation experts and preparation experts participating in the program to help client families as well.

“We feel like there’s people out there that would jump on the chance to have a garden if they could,” Dennis stated.

The land is almost ready to plant, with people donating time for excavation and tilling and donating tools to put into the garden shed. The team at Quaker Haven is putting down tractor tires as an eco-friendly and budget-friendly way to make plant beds. It will also ensure that gardeners with back problems don’t have to bend down as far to get to their crop.

“We’re trying to put all the resources in one place,” Dennis explained of the project.
That doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy for either party. Dennis believes that the gardens will require work from each family every few days, with a couple of hours on weekends and even more time once harvest begins. After that, gardeners may also want to learn about canning and food preservation.

The hope is that families who grow in the gardens will have a major surplus of food. While they should learn to can and preserve much of it, there ought to be plenty left over to donate to the Syracuse Food Pantry, Harvest with a Heart and other local nonprofits to help other families who haven’t yet learned how to sustain their own food supply.

“We’re also hoping that as we get this up and running, it could spread to other locations in the area,” Dennis said in regards to future projects.

“A Place to Grow” community garden project will be set at Quaker Haven Camp, 111 Ems D16C Ln., Syracuse.

The gardens are still searching for more volunteers who want to learn and teach; there is no deadline to join the project.

For more information, contact Steve Woolley at (574) 607-1571 or visit www.dewartlakefriends.org to apply.