Chickadee Gardens Outreach Inc. seeks to empower our community to take control of their food production and ensure food security. Chickadee Gardens will cultivate a demonstration garden and produce 600 pounds of food within the first growing season. The demonstration garden also hosts our farming education classes and is built with the community during hands-on demonstrations. Our farm manager, Nick Milan, will be teaching classes on topics such as seed starting and plant care, raised bed gardening, aquaponics, backyard chicken raising, and cooking from your garden.
Our garden harvest will be available for direct access to the surrounding community. The farm is situated in a large neighborhood of single family homes and apartment complexes with heavy foot traffic on our property perimeter daily. We will install a small u-pick section along the fence-line, available for free. Produce from the rest of the garden will be available to the community through a sliding scale CSA. Through these two avenues we will provide access to naturally grown produce available right in the neighborhood. A huge improvement to food access for residents living in the largest food desert in Marion County.
In subsequent growing seasons Chickadee Farms will begin establishing additional food gardens on the Far Eastside through the PermaBlitz (Permaculture Blitz) program. A blitz is a way of overcoming one of the largest obstacles to producing your own food; the amount of work it takes to get started. Similar to a barn raising, we call in the reinforcements to design and install a functional garden at the homes of Far Eastside residents. Additionally, It provides a palpable experience of how much more we can accomplish when we work together. Once an individual has contributed to three Permablitz garden builds, they are eligible to have their garden blitzed. This program builds gardens and communities. It is a hands on way of empowering our neighbors to grow our own healthy food at a very affordable price.
Facebook: https://goo.gl/f8sVYo
Where are you at with the solution? Implementing the solution
Lead contacts: Laura Dubish and Nick Milan
Email: [email protected]