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by Tony Traback
This last Thursday the community garden got a lot bigger. We dug a 15-20 foot plot for a pumpkin patch and another 10-15 foot patch for a River small group. We will harvest and hand out the pumpkins in the Washington neighborhood in October. Fun fun…But to accomplish this huge task, we needed some serious labor. As part of their week-long urban plunge, 25 UCSC students dedicated four hours to the garden and dug. They removed tons (maybe even literally) of hard rocky clay soil and mixed in nice black smelly soil with chicken poop in it. Some parts were so rocky that we needed to use a crow-bar to break it up!!! Now, the pumpkins are sown and, in a few months, will decorate neighborhood porches with jack-o-lanterns.
You should have seen the students taking their shoes off to wade in the muddy mess. To soften the soil we needed to really soak the plots and to mix the good soil with the rocky-clay-soil. It reminded me of crushing grapes to make wine. In this case, though, it was mixing soil to make pumpkins. Or, telling a different story, the UCSC mud dive was an offering, a demonstration of a people relishing the life given to us. It is a witness to a God that enjoys childlike followers…
As the garden expands, meeting the needs of community members, it is fun to watch as people walk by and wonder why a farm is springing up in their neighborhood. Eggs (from the chickens coop) and veggies (from the plots) flow freely in and out of the “farm.” It is no wonder that people stare. In a neighborhood decorated with dilapidation and hardly sprinkled with trees, is it really a wonder that plots are going like hot cakes?
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