Unhealthy foods are everywhere. We're bombarded with unhealthy food messaging
every single day.
The community garden allows for residents to be able to access healthy
whole foods that are nutrient dense that can help prevent diabetes and heart
disease and other chronic illnesses. The garden came to be by providing a
vision of how a community can increase access to healthy foods as a way to
support community health. With the administration of Lake Region Health
Care and the administration quickly jumped on board as a champion by helping
acquire the donated land that you see behind me that is now known as the Lake
Region Takes Root Community Garden. SHIP has been involved in the community
garden by allowing us to participate in the planning process since the inception
of the community garden. They helped provide us connections to key resources
and relationships in the region, such as University of Minnesota, who allows us to
come and be a part of the garden to help us look at ways to be more efficient so
we can grow more food and more efficient ways to better serve other people. It
makes me feel really good just because there's a lot of people in my community
that you don't - look around you don't think there's people that need it in this
small community, but there are -- there's a lot of people that still need good
healthy food and it makes me feel -- it makes me feel good because
I'm
a small part of that. Personally, being involved in the garden is one of my
favorite parts of my job. It's one of those things that I can work on you know
doing what I'm supposed to do as an employee, but can also feel really good
about it personally.
The garden produce goes directly to families in need. It goes to the Women,
Infants and Children program all throughout Otter Tail County. It also
goes to three area food shelves in Fergus Falls, Battle Lake and Pelican
Rapids. The people who received the food tell us it is making a difference, that
they they do have food insecurity, that they know that improving their health
needs to involve eating more fruits and vegetables but that's an expensive thing
to do and not always really that feasible for them and this does make a
difference.
The community has been extremely supportive of this garden, from
individuals to service groups to grants. It's been amazing to see how the
contributions have come in both locally and even regionally. What's growing in
the garden? It is everything between A and Z. It can be beans and peas you know
zucchini, carrots, radishes, beets, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, squash -- you name it, it's
all growing there. Where we see this community garden in the next five years
is much bigger than I would have said even a year ago because of the progress
that's happened just in the first two years. I think that we'll see it
thriving, growing, hopefully utilizing every square inch of this space that we
have and hopefully touching even more people. I honestly believe that the
community garden will be a model for other communities to follow. We are
putting a lot of resources into
studying and evaluating how we're doing things in this community garden and the
eyes are upon for Fergus Falls, watching how this garden is being built and
managed and that we will be able to share lessons learned with other
communities so that they can too experience the same success that we've had.