I wrote this summary for the Gallup Journey:
Work in Beauty, Inc., the non-profit organization spearheading the solar power plant for Gallup, has a second big vision for our town: a sustainable local food supply from our own high desert soil and sun.
Eating fresh, safe, local, and in-season goes against the flow in our global industrial food system. But, trendiness notwithstanding, knowing the growers as neighbors and friends and treating the soil as your own really is nice. It’s nice for the growers, nice for the soil, nice for the eaters, and more. Connecting all these participants face to face formally is called Community Supported Agriculture, and it’s a very popular model nation-wide for reforming our food system from the bottom up: eaters purchase a share in a farm’s vegetable harvest for a season, then each week they eat what the farm grows. The farm does its best to provide the greatest variety possible given the season, and the grower supports the farm by paying up front for a subscription to safe, fresh, local, in-season food.
With no vegetable farms or substantial market gardens anywhere near Gallup, newcomers may be surprised to know they can subscribe to a CSA here. The farm that provides for it is not, however, one tranquil country property. It is a coordinated network of backyard gardens each ranging in size from a few hundred square feet to fractions of an acre.
2008 was the Work in Beauty CSA’s first year, with 15 subscribers sharing a harvest for 12 weeks from July through September. Steve Heil, an elementary art teacher who also takes growing food very seriously, led a group of five growers through the planning, planting, cultivating and harvesting record amounts of vegetables from a few thousand square feet of soil using water conserving techniques and rainwater catchment. The success of the first season has encouraged members to plan for a second season CSA, improving and expanding the harvest. Fourteen of the 15 first year’s subscribers have signed up for next year already, but there will be room for more, as new backyard gardens are conscripted for use by the CSA and new partnerships are formed throughout the city.
Where will Work in Beauty stop with this plan for Gallup increasing nutrition, decreasing transportation, building the natural capital of soil tilth locally, and creating sustainable, environmentally friendly livelihoods for people? As long as there’s another person who want to join us, the project will continue to grow.
Check out our CSA blog at www.gallupgrowers.com. Contact Steve Heil (505-722-6842) and other growers, and get a membership form so you can get a share in the coming harvest.
Air view from the forest,
