Gardening for community

SANDPOINT – A small patch of ground wedged between a downtown Sandpoint motel, a carwash and a home is producing food this summer for local soup kitchens.

The community garden is the brainchild of a group of people who want to build upon it in the coming years to grow more food in Sandpoint at gardens scattered around town.

Across the street is the first garden in the new Sandpoint-based Gardens Not Graveyards project, designed to promote peace by caring for the earth.

And for those wanting to partake in Sandpoint-area foodstuffs, a fresh Web site will direct them to local growers and eventually serve as a one-stop shopping site for such goods.

All are part of a community effort to get more people to eat locally grown and raised produce, eggs and meat.

“We’re in this stage when everything’s moving along,” said Jeff Burns, who manages the organic community garden.

Seeds, compost and labor have all been donated to the garden planted with tomatoes, chard, squash, peppers, raspberries, herbs, lettuce and more.

“The idea is to get awareness up of local food supplies,” Burns said.

Excitement for community gardening is growing.

“We have one person who wants to donate five acres for a community farm,” Burns said.

The time is right, say those involved in the effort.

Rising gas prices mean increasing food prices because of the cost to transport it.

More people are looking closer to home to fill their pantries, said Meadow Summers, who is heading up the Six Rivers Community Market Web site.

The idea behind the site is to build a place where people can eventually order locally grown and raised food online from a variety of growers and then pick it all up at a specified location once a week. A group of volunteer or paid workers would coordinate putting each person’s box together from the farmers’ drop-offs.

“When the customer comes they just pick up one box with everything they’ve ordered,” Summers said.

Summers said it makes the food available to more people because they could place an order and send someone else to retrieve it. More growers can participate as well because there aren’t booth space limitations.

For Heritage Farms owner Luana Hiebert the Web site would fill the gap for her egg and meat sales during the winter months.

“We’re pretty successful just selling at farmers’ markets,” said Hiebert of the summer months.

But Hiebert added that the online market could also facilitate selling cuts of beef rather than whole sides which many people don’t have room to store.

“It will be a big service to people in the community who want to eat locally,” she said.

Meadows said the Six Rivers Community Market group hopes to launch a trial run in the fall and then have its Web site fully operational by next spring.