By Stephen Smoot
The tough streets of Charleston’s West End neighborhood, known historically as “Charley West,” may not be the first place that Pendleton County might look to for inspiration. That said, a successful project there serves as a model of sorts for something similar emerging in Franklin.
Jared VanMeter, the new executive director of the Pendleton County Chamber of Commerce, shared that he had no specific idea in mind when he joined his Future Generations University class in touring different locations in the southern half of West Virginia. The class on “Resilience in Appalachia” took students to areas in which projects aimed at strengthening such resilience had taken root and grown.
On the West Side of Charleston, a group called “Keep Your Faith” has planted a community garden on the grounds of a local elementary school with support from West Virginia University Extension Service and other partners. It joined other neighborhood community garden efforts to help connect low income and fixed income individuals with high quality and low, or no, cost fresh foods.
As it has expanded its mission, the organization also developed a brick and mortar market. VanMeter said, “The model could also work in Pendleton County in some fashion.”
It is important for those planning or working with such organizations to know that West Virginia farmers can deduct food donations to non profits from their state taxes.
This addresses a growing need in challenging neighborhoods in urban areas nationwide. The growing cost of rising crime, increasing regulations, and social dysfunctions has taken its toll in driving basic needs, such as grocery stores, from these areas. When businesses cannot operate for profit, they cannot continue to operate at all, which creates for people who live in these areas the needs for these gardens and other projects to try and fill.
Urban areas are not the only ones pioneering this idea. Community gardens also flourish in small towns. In Harrison County, volunteers with the support of the City of Shinnston have developed a thriving community garden. There, 10 rows remain available to help satisfy general public needs while the rest of the produce gets donated to the local Lord’s Pantry Food Bank.
Such templates helped to inspire volunteers in Franklin to work for a similar aim. VanMeter discussed how creating such a market helps to revive old traditions that once sustained the region. “We’re the only county in West Virginia that had nothing to do with the coal industry. Our traditional thing is agriculture.”
West Virginia from the very beginning had two general agricultural tracks. One track saw families practicing “subsistence” agriculture. This almost never took the form of a family providing solely for its needs, but saw communities of families who bartered in some fashion. These families tended to obtain cheaper lands deep in the hollows, gaps, and other rugged areas far from towns and trade routes.
The origins of Cool Hollow Distillery’s maple production today, for example, lay in that farm’s production of maple sugar for limited local sale and trade with other farms until the appearance of cheap commercially made “white” sugar.
Others obtained lands that gave them access to trade. Enterprising farmers quickly learned to turn fast ripening corn into shelf stable whiskey, some of which went to market on carts, boats, or a combination thereof as far away as Baltimore.
VanMeter has big plans once the foundation of a garden has taken shape. “We need to produce as much food around here as we can and get it into the hands of as many people as possible,” he stated. With the emergence of the Make America Healthy Movement making strange bedfellows of entities as different as the West Virginia and California state legislatures on the issue of processed foods, more attention has been paid to the level of processing in commonly consumed foods, especially by children.
He explains that, at least until recently, Pendleton County lived the paradox of on one hand relying on food production to drive the economy, but also importing from other areas most of the food that people ate most often.
Bringing people back to the notion of eating local foods, or even producing more of their own, drives VanMeter. “We want to teach more people how to farm or to garden in their backyard” and also start “teaching our history of growing our own food.” Of course, food production, he noted, need not be limited to what is actively cultivated.
“Our mountains have ramps, ginseng, all these medicinal herbs,” he stated, going on to add that “and then there’s dandelions. How many people know that you can eat them from root to flower?” Dandelion wine is also a traditional Appalachian product.
The location of the garden near Franklin Elementary School provides an opportunity to involve schoolchildren in hands-on education. Other partners along the lines envisioned could include the Pendleton County Farmers Market, the Family Support Center for Pendleton County, the Christian Assistance Network, and many others.
He ended with “what I’d like to have eventually is a full calendar of events” for the garden, involving education, fun, fellowship, and, most importantly, of course, food.
