38.7 % of all Metcalfe Co. families with children aged up to 17, live below the poverty level.  For female headed households with children in the same age range with no father present, that number jumps to 85.5%.  Other grim numbers tell us that 70% of our adults present as overweight & only 23% of adults consume the recommended servings of fruits & vegetables daily. The goals of this project are to increase the consumption of fresh, locally grown produce among Metcalfe Co. limited resource families with children aged 12 & under & to develop, greater local foods awareness & support within our community.

To outreach to these underserved families, the Metcalfe County Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Agent and ANR Extension Agent, installed basic garden infrastructure this fall & planted berry canes to begin our children’s snack community garden.  Flex E Grant funds will allow us to further develop the children’s garden area, community garden volunteer base & provide considerable outreach activities around the garden & at the Health Department, to families with limited resources, with young children.  The FCS Extension agent then applied for further grant funding in the winter of 2017, through the ARC Flex E Grant mini-grant program.  $8550.00 in funding was received, of which, $3360.00 was allocated to pay a qualified project consultant/coordinator to assist in development of volunteers and infrastructure for the project.  

There were 33 different volunteers, who logged a total of 542.3 hours in volunteer time during scheduled workdays for this project. The value of that volunteer time at $10.00 per hour, equates to $5423.00.

There were 53 volunteers if including the Exploring Community Day Camp youth participants, who volunteered 1 afternoon to make the garden/vegetable marker signs, though they were not documented on the CG work day tracking sheets as their time spent was not on one of the official workdays, this represents 40 youth volunteer hours that were not on a scheduled work day and are not included in the total volunteer hour and corresponding cash value $ numbers listed above.  

Fourteen of the volunteers from the 22 scheduled workdays, were youth ranging in age from 3 to 12 years.  One volunteer who was present on every scheduled work day, Cheyenne Richardson is a young adult, college student.  The remaining volunteers were adults.  

Seven of the volunteer families with children that participated, have limited resources.  By participating in the project, these families were able to learn basic organic gardening skills, seed saving and storing techniques, recipes that are simple to prepare with low cost ingredients, using the seasonally fresh vegetables and herbs harvested from the Community Garden.  These families bonded in healthy outdoor physical activity through participation in the project and will have access to some of the saved seeds this spring if they want a container or standard garden at their homes.One participant lost 25 pounds due to the additional physical activity and dietary improvement of incorporating fresh vegetables and fruits into her diet that lacked those items prior to her growing them herself.  Several of the youth participants reported that they tried fresh raw vegetables like tomatoes and peppers from the garden that they would not eat fresh before participating.  

Volunteer families, shared in the majority of the produce, but a few items were also donated. We gave several items went to Extension FCS and NEP, including herbs, pumpkins and peppers for demonstrations (at the homeless shelter, the farmer’s market, Sumitomo work site wellness and Bowling Park food commodities distribution day) and we donated several items to the local homeless shelter, and the local migrant education program.  Altogether approximately 4 bushels of tomatoes, 3 bushels of peppers, 2 bushels of cucumbers, six watermelons, 1/2 a bushel of beans, three cantaloupes and 14 pumpkins were harvested.

In addition to the leftover seeds from the first planting, the seed bank/library that was started has been filled with extra seeds by the process of seed saving. Seeds were saved from sakata melons donated by Lynn Blankenship, from pickling cucumbers, black valentine beans, scarlet runner beans, Charleston gray watermelon, sugarbaby cantaloupes, sweet bell peppers, New England pie pumpkins, and Jubilee and the mortgage lifter tomatoes”.

Another commenity aspect that this project resulted in is the Community Garden Lending Library Box, which is a weather proof library box with a plexi-glass door.  It was placed at the front corner of the community garden, closest to the roadway and next to the Community Garden sign, for great visibility.  It currently contains Extension publications on vegetable gardening in Kentucky, how to take a soil sample and common garden pests,  20 copies each of four different Plate – It – Up KY Proud fall commodity vegetable recipe cards and three books donated by Jennifer Walker, related to organic gardening practices.