OUR GORGE : HOME + GARDEN
More than Just a Garden Healthy food and leadership skills grow at Raíces Cooperative Farm STORY BY JANET COOK • PHOTOS BY PALOMA AYALA
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lanting a garden in the Gorge is a bit of a no-brainer. The soil is rich, the sun is warm and the season is long. Throw some seeds and starts in the ground in the spring, add water and enjoy fresh produce all summer and fall. It’s a no-brainer, at least, if you have space for a garden. Not everyone does. That’s what a group of local Latinos concluded after taking a leadership course in 2009 through The Next Door, a Hood River social services agency serving the MidColumbia region. At the end of the course, the nine participants had to come up with a group project that they felt would improve their community. “They decided they wanted to start a community greenhouse,” said Jody O’Connor, economic development program manager at The Next Door. The organization couldn’t find a permanent location to build a greenhouse, so it ended up renting one. It was located in Pine Grove and served as a place where Latino families could grow starts in the early spring. They called it Raíces (roots) Community Greenhouse. But it didn’t solve the problem of gardening space. “It showed them that what they really needed
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was land,” said O’Connor. In 2012, a property owner on Barker Road south of Hood River donated the use of a one-acre plot to the agency for a community garden. In addition, The Next Door received funding to build a greenhouse at the site. “That’s really when the program began to come into its own,” said O’Connor, who has been the director of Raíces since its inception. The one-acre plot allowed several families to begin growing food at the site. At first, it was mostly members of the original leadership class. But as people began to see vegetables growing at the site, more would-be gardeners with no space of their own became interested.
FALL 2017 : THE GORGE MAGAZINE
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