Farmer's Market Challenge, Ariadne Garden Portland Oregon
My second post in response to 
I have the good fortune of living around the corner from a community garden run by soil specialists who work year round tending this once abandoned lot now garden-market. In the late 1990s a group of about 6 people decided to clean up a junk filled empty lot in a pretty shady neighborhood. It took weeks to remove all of the junk, debris, glass, pieces of broken brick, and tires. They built raised garden beds in a labyrinth and began the process of slowly transforming the contaminated soil into some of the most fertile and rich soil around.
They have a tiny little stand that opens on Wednesdays and Saturdays for 3 hours and I usually stop by for a mid-week restocking of greens, herbs and often a free handful of flowers. They are always so generous and inevitably as I walk away someone always hands me this and that to try and taste. They also sell starts in the spring and seeds in the autumn.
Although it's quiet here today and on most Wednesdays, on Saturdays there is line out onto the sidewalk and far more produce picked in preparation for this relative crowd. Neighbors have been coming here for years in appreciation of this healthy and incredibly affordable produce. Not sure there is a way to buy food with less of a carbon footprint!
Kim and Terence McDodge who spearheaded the project were forward thinking and created a land trust to preserve this garden regardless of what future development in the neighborhood might bring. Sure enough, in the last 5 years this area has become very chic and this lot would certainly have been developed had it not been for the clever steps taken 20 years ago. I must say that this open stretch of space as well as the fact that it's a garden, greatly improve the quality of life for those of us living in the vicinity.
As usual, I have my co-pilot Lucy with me:
Today, anyone can volunteer to tend the garden in exchange for produce, or people like me walk over to buy what grows there which is also important since they need a consistent flow of cash to keep this endeavor alive.
While Ariadne Garden doesn’t really qualify as a farmer’s market, I’m including it in my series of farmer’s market posts because it’s one of the staple sources of my spring, summer and fall vegetables and flowers which are all completely organic and herbicide, pesticide and gmo free. In fact they've created the perfect ecosystem of insects, worms, plants to create very fertile soil that keep healthy bacteria vibrant so that pesticides are never needed. Nature is brilliant if we mimic it!
On Wednesday I fully cleaned out their supply of sugar snap peas and ate the entire bag that day. They are like crack to me, I can never keep my hands off them!
If you’re interested, my last farmer’s market post was more of a true market as will be my next one on Saturday.
