Several years ago, Big Timber residents participated in the Northwest Area Foundation’s Horizons Program, a program to help communities identify areas of poverty. Poverty is not always just financial need but those human needs missing in the community that are essential to a sustainable way of life.
After eighteen months, and some three hundred plus people meeting in discussion groups with different themes, several needs bubbled to the top. One was the need for a sustainable food system in our community. A food group, now known as Sweet Grass Food, sought answers to questions concerning equal access for all to nutritious food, availability of local food to the community, and how to manage a sustainable food system in Big Timber and Sweet Grass County.
Big Timber has a Farmers’ Market so the group decided the next step toward a food system in Big Timber would be a Community Garden. The City of Big Timber leased a piece of abandoned property to the Group, and in the spring of 2008, the Big Timber Community Garden was born. Thousands of dollars from Horizons grants and community donations helped rid the garden of rocks, fence it, deliver water to it, and then nineteen intrepid gardeners came forth to plant it.
The gardeners had varied knowledge about growing a garden. They shared plants, exchanged seeds, took turns watering for one another, and a few spent many hours on the internet looking for secret ways to grow the biggest pumpkin. Weeding was not popular, but they all worked hard to make the garden a beautiful place to visit. At season end, a bountiful harvest was realized and celebrated with a Harvest Feast in the garden. Some of the produce that year was donated to the Senior Center and to the Big Timber Food Bank.
Year two, thirty-one gardeners came to work the soil in the garden and then the summer of 2009 threw everything at them from late and early frost, hail (twice), and lots of high, dry wind, and yet the gardeners prevailed again. Good local food went home by the basket full, was shared and traded with other gardeners, sent to the Senior Center, the Food Bank, and sold at the Farmers’ Market. The gardeners look forward to the upcoming growing season of 2010. I can hear the pages of seed catalogs turning even now!
Sweet Grass Food intends to start a mostly local food co-op in the coming year as a next step toward a sustainable food system. Sweet Grass Food has completed and is now updating a second printing of a local producers’ food guide and continues to meet with community organizations to spread the word about the importance of eating nutritious local food and of supporting local food producers. For more information or to share ideas, contact Diana Taylor, Montana Food Systems Council member at: Dilota@yahoo.com.