Community Gardening

Monday, 25 August 2008
In Lehi, food, love and diamonds are harvested on church land Print E-mail
Caleb Warnock - DAILY HERALD

In Lehi, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are beating rising food prices with fresh vegetables grown on borrowed land, and even finding forgiveness, and diamonds, in the dirt.

For the past four or five years, the Lehi South Stake has been allowing members to grow gardens on blank land next to two churches. The Church provides water and fertilizer at no charge and members provide the labor and reap the bounty.
The land is divided by ward and then by family, and some wards have community patches of corn and some vegetables that may be harvested by anyone who has volunteered to water and weed during the summer.



On Friday, Brett Scoresby brought his two sons, Porter, 5, and Nick, 3, to the garden to take home a plastic grocery sack bulging with tomatoes, and another with corn and squash. The family is a member of the Lehi 16th Ward, which has a community salsa plot and corn plot, and the Scoresbys also have their own individual garden area.

"We like melons and try to plant as many as we have room for," he said. "We like producing our own food. It tastes better and we don't have to buy it."

The family also has space for a small garden plot at home, and grows vine plants like squash and melons at the church site because they require more space, he said. The family has grown food at the church site for the past three years.

"I don't think I've killed anything yet this year," he said.

For Mary and Ron Smalley, the garden represents freedom from rising grocery prices, and a visual reminder of their love. She is divorced and he is divorced and widowed.

Three years ago, they began dating by working together on Mary's garden plot on the church land. One day, Ron brought her a handful of dirt.

"Isn't this beautiful?" Mary recalled Ron saying. She agreed, but he asked her to look closer, and then asked her to stir the dirt with her finger. Inside was a diamond ring.

"I was so shocked I couldn't speak," she said.

In the excitement, Ron didn't realize he had actually forgotten to pop the question. After a few moments he asked her for her answer and she said with a laugh that he hadn't asked her anything.

Mary has been gardening here since the church opened the garden site four or five years ago.

"I love fresh produce," she said. "It's better than store-bought and I don't have to spend all that money. We live off the garden most of the summer."

She and Ron don't have the space for a garden at their home, she said, and the church land has been an opportunity to take care of their family.

"I hope they never stop" providing it, she said. "It's wonderful. Most people today don't have big yards."

"We eat better than we would if we went to the store," Ron Smalley said.

To make the garden even more economical, Mary even saves her own open-pollinated corn, squash, and bean seeds to use to grow the next year's crop. While the garden is pastoral, especially in August, it is not always idyllic. A couple of years ago Mary had planted an enormous and successful patch of watermelons, and between 30 and 50 melons were just ripening when one of the wards that shares the garden apparently announced that members could help themselves to the community garden.

Problem was, most did not know which sections were community and which were private. When Mary returned a couple of days later, "they had picked all but two," she said. "I was sick. That is where forgiveness comes in."

Karl and Betty Pearson also grow a large plot. Happy to have extra space and produce, they have actually spread out into areas abandoned by other families.

The garden has been especially important to the family's bottom line this year because Karl is unemployed.

"We need the food," he said. "We are not really wealthy. We are able to have at least one meal a day from the garden with the squash and the corn."

The family has grown a garden on the church land for the past four years, and this year they tried some new things. Since the couple have a handful of chickens at home, they grew huge sunflowers so they would have food to feed the chickens this winter ?? something especially important this year because of the rising price of chicken feed.

They also planted dent corn to grind and use to make their own cornbread and tortillas, and grew beets for the first time this year.

"I canned two quarts of pickled beets," Betty Pearson said. "I was so proud of myself."

Their beet patch is still thriving and the couple will pickle more, looking forward to eating a jar at Thanksgiving, a jar at Christmas, and a jar on her birthday, she said.

The couple has had a garden every year of their 31 years of marriage, they said.

"I love fresh garden food," Betty Pearson said. Then, in reference to this summer's national salmonella scare, she added, "I can eat it and not worry about a tomato poisoning me."