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Greenhouse will help feed families
By LINDA N. WELLER
The Telegraph
GODFREY-- A new greenhouse rose up this week in Godfrey that will help a community garden feed area families for years to come.
Volunteers with the Alton-Godfrey Rotary Club erected the metal frame and wooden ends of a 30-foot-by-96-foot greenhouse at the Oblate Novitiate, next to La Vista Park off Levis Lane in Godfrey.
"Families get fed from this land, the small family farmer stays in business, and the land is treated with care and respect," said the Rev. Maurice Lange of the Oblate Novitiate, who oversees the project
called Community Supported Garden at La Vista.
"We don't know where our food comes from -- where it is grown and who grows it," he said. "With this, we know where this food comes from -- where
it's growing and who is growing it."
Lange said the Godfrey project "all stems from the priority of the Oblates (order) worldwide, called the Integrity of Creation," Lange said. "It is not
enough for us to say how beautiful God's creation is, we need to take care of it and live harmoniously with it."
He also is involved in a children's community garden that will sprout nearby.
The
Oblate greenhouse and garden will be organic, using manure for fertilizer and avoiding use of artificial pesticides. He said he does not know how much food the project will produce for area families the first year.
The Rotary Club agreed to purchase and construct a greenhouse costing $10,000 or less for the project. A condition of the donation was that the garden would "repay" Rotary's expenses back to the
community by providing project "shares" for families to purchase at low cost so they can obtain fresh produce. The organization also wanted some food grown on the land to be donated to pantries or
charities. Crisis Food Center and the Salvation Army, both in Alton, will be recipients.
On Tuesday, after they had completed construction work, the Rotarians covered the building with two, 48-foot-by
100-foot sheets of protective polyethylene. A fan blows in between the layers to create an air pocket that makes the covering energy-efficient, said project chairman Jim White.
"There should be close to
a year-round productivity," said White, who owns White's Greenhouses Inc. of Godfrey and is a Rotary member.
The greenhouse, which will have a heater, will have a "first-class, controlled
environment," White said.
In raised growing beds, half the interior of the greenhouse will be devoted to starting seedlings for transplant, such as tomatoes. The other half of the space inside the
greenhouse will be used for growing lettuce, greens, cucumbers and other vegetables, Lange said.
Gardener Amy Cloud will begin planting the seeds in January, he said. The maximum of 50 families already has
purchased project shares for 2003, and there is a waiting list, Lange said. He said he hopes the number of families can increase to 80 in 2004. For more information, call Lange at 466-5004.
Also this week, in
adjacent La Vista Park -- which is not yet open to the public -- a not-for-profit organization is working with children from 14 classes in public and private schools to set up 10 organic garden beds on one acre of
land to create a community garden.
This week, the pupils are plowing up the land and planting cover crops, such as vetch and rye, which they will replace with food crops and also plant tulip bulbs next year.
Lange co-founded the group, called the Community Cultivators, which will work with school classes, Scout groups, day care facilities and home-school families. The youngsters will use the junior master
gardeners program as its curriculum, with the assistance of University of Illinois Extension master gardeners.
"The Community Cultivators believe it is important to re-connect the children and their
source of food," co-founder Christine Favilla said. "It is also important to expose children to a differing lifestyle, namely agrarian. There is not another project that is similar in focus in the
area."
The project is free for participants; Community Cultivators will depend on grants, donations and periodic fund-raisers to support the garden. A portion of the harvest will be donated to community
food pantries.
For more information about Community Cultivators, call Favilla at 465-1725.
lnweller@hotmail.com
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