2019 - Westlake

In the Fall of 2018, John and I went to the Tecumseh School Board and asked if we could lease the site of the old Westlake Elementary School. They agreed to lease it to us for $1 a year.

This site is 9.4 acres! 409464 square feet!!!! Now part of that is paved parking lot - a guess would be 2000 square feet of parking lot. The population of New Carlisle was estimated at  5,586 (2017). That means a bit more than 72 square feet per person in New Carlisle. Since John has an estimate that 16 square feet can provide enough vegetables for 1 person,  that means we have enough space there alone to feed more than 89,000 people! Free! (well, realistically we can probably not provide THAT much seed and plants!. I do get a thrill out of thinking about the entire city working together to feed themselves though!),
​
With all of that land to maintain we really couldn't mow it with hand mowers. John was able to secure a grant from the National Church of the Brethren's Going to the Garden program (  http://www.brethren.org/peacebuilding/going-to-the-garden.html ) to purchase a tractor so that we could be good neighbors with a nice "yard."

Read More