Greenhouse on the Move

Marty Ahart, Black Family Enterprises and volunteers prepare to move the greenhouse to its new home – Louise Dustrude photo

>Editor’s note: Additional information added after this article was first published. Click the Read More link below.

The greenhouse that was started out as a high school student’s community project several years ago has found a new home with The Community Gardens out off of San Juan Valley Road. On Monday it was moved there from its original location across Blair St. from the high school.

Marty Ahart of the Community Gardens in red, and inside, bracing a wall support, Bequin Lapwing, who started the community garden in the first place – SJ Update photo

According to Marty Ahart of the Community Gardens, when the high school could not use it to grow produce for school lunches, the local Slow Food: Land & Sea organization reluctantly took over ownership of it so the students could do their senior projects with it. When the projects were completed, Land and Sea folks grew food for the Food Bank.

When the organizer of that group ended up unable to continue, it fell into disuse for a while and now it’s having new life breathed into it by Marty and the community garden.

In the future, students may do projects in it and food will be grown for members of the greater community in need by The Community Gardens.

Rolling through town on the way to a new home – SJ Update photo

And it is at its new home – Louise Dustrude photo

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Linda Degnan Cobos, Co-director of San Juan Island Land & Sea Slow Food has sent over some additional information on the history of the Greenhouse…

Hi all-

Again, beautiful work!

Just a quick – but very important [distinction]. The greenhouse is not the high school’s, it belongs to and has been the sole responsibility of Land & Sea (which is why we’ve been paying all the bills, insurance and doing all the upkeep all these years).

Three of our members – Scott Fitzstephens, me, and most of all, Marion Melville – mentored the 3 young students’ Community Service project (to obtain a grant for the kit & put it up), & Land & Sea had to agree to be the owner and be responsible for the continual costs and upkeep of greenhouse for the grant to be issued for it, and for it to be ok’d on our site.

We were asked to take on ownership & site it on our garden site, after the school, county and others turned down ownership and siting. We had hoped some one else would take on ownership and responsibility, but no one would. Marion Melville in particular deserves much credit for her enormous devotion in seeing the project through, first with guiding the boys through the permitting process, and then recruiting committed adult volunteers making sure the greenhouse kit, once arrived, went up and was completed.

The three high school seniors who took on getting the grant as their Community Service project had initially thought to start a greens growing business as a part of their project in addition to getting the greenhouse grant, but shortened the project after realizing it was a bigger job than they first anticipated. The boys did well, and were glad to finish up. In addition, two other boys in the Community Service class built the trail going through the garden with help from a number of Land & Sea members and mentoring by Scott and by me.

Since it’s been put up, our members and partners Jamie, Christina and Chris Grifo of Full Belly Farm not only grew well over 500 lbs of tomatoes in it that were donated to the Food Bank and Senior Center, but also grew the many many pounds of beautiful tomatoes donated to and used by the Friday Harbor school lunch program in their first win in the big Chili Cook Off a year or so ago. Their Full Belly Farm non profit also took on the monthly cost of the insurance (which has been paid by Marion Melville, Matt & Maureen Marinkovich, and by me at different times in the past couple years), and Marion has continued to pay the electric bills to keep the fans running and power at the site month after month. The trenching for the power was done by me, and Friday Harbor Electric generously donated much time and electrical material, Harbor Rental so kindly donated much use of equipment, Mike Carlson donated a beautiful truckload of compost and soil, Declan Place generously donated labor and materials, as did many other generous friends.

Jenny Wilson of the high school Community Service class and her husband Chris also donated much time putting the greenhouse up. We have had no other assistance, or mentoring in the project by the school, although Fred Wood has always been encouraging, and appreciative of our efforts to include students in our projects.

Land & Sea has offered projects in the garden for members of Ruthie Paull’s cooking classes and for Cindy William’s middle school Quest classes to take part in, including apple cider pressing, and planting and harvesting native ozette potatoes, garlic, and carrots.

We are proud of our work in the garden and greenhouse, and although we’ve worked hard to include as many young students in our activities as we can, and make available not only the garlic, beans, squash, tomatoes and other vegetables we’ve grown in the garden to the school, in addition to vegetables such as greens, apples and tomatoes gathered by our members from local farms, we are not affiliated with the school district, and agreed to take on the sole responsibility for the greenhouse after it was turned down by the schools, and all other requested sites and possible owners.

It’s been a labor of love, but it has still been labor, one we are proud of, so I hope it is understandable why we’d like to make this clear.

There have been many people who’ve worked on it besides who I already mentioned, like Tim McGee, Bruce Robinson, the Soroptimists gave us a check for a month of insurance, Helen Venada worked with kids at our cider pressing, our garlic plantings, and any time we did anything, she was there.

Our agreement to site and own the greenhouse also included us understanding and agreeing that the county would eventually need to use the land it was sited on, and we would have to eventually relocate, and instead of us having to scramble at the last minute when that eventuality came to be, we were all thrilled when this fantastic opportunity came up with Marty at that site. What an amazing lady she is! And in a wonderful coincidence, the garden site at Douglas and San Juan Valley road was actually a spot the greenhouse Community Service project had as plan B.

It is lovely to see the greenhouse will continue to serve the community, & that Marty has planned so well and set aside a portion for students to use if they wish, and that part of what’s grown will go to food programs!

Congratulations again, and warm regards,
Linda

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