"Tour de Farms", Sept, 2007 - marilynandbob's Photos- powered by SmugMug

Marilyn belongs to a community coalition, "Healthy Lifestyles La Plata", which organized this bicycle tour for families in the area. We had 37 people and four of us were volunteer coordinators on Sat, September 21. We met at the local Farmer's Market and admired the many regional and local farms bringing produce and local food to sell. We travelled to 5 other community gardens- some of which are shown here: the Manna Soup Kitchen, Park Elementary School, Durango Early Learning Center, Turtle Lake Refuge and the Smiley Building community garden, where we also had a lunch of all local food. It feels wonderful to be part of the nation-wide Local Foods Movement!!

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marilynandbob > Here I am at one of the stops in the tour, Park Elementary School, where they have a learning garden, where they've planted that the Ancient Puebloans grew 700 years ago (squash, corn, beans...) and which helps the children learn about the climate and the people of that time.

marilynandbob > Starting out at the Farmer's Market, which is immensely popular in Durango, and which includes produce from farms in the region, organic meat produced locally, flowers and plants, jams, jellies and mustards, massages, music, homemade soaps and other gifts, etc. There's also a bicycle-driven blender where the Turtle Lake Refuge sells smoothies. As you see from this photo, we had older folk and little kids on this trip, some pulled behind in kiddie-trailers. One little boy did the whole 5 mile trip with his training wheels!

marilynandbob > Durango Early Learning Center, a unique pre-school which has a teriffic garden which the little kids maintain, harvest and consume. What a great learning situation.

marilynandbob > One of Durango's treasures, the Manna Soup Kitchen, feeds a huge number of people, 3 meals a day M-F, and some meals on weekends. They also have laundry, showers, mail service and support. This community garden has been around for a few years, and not only feeds the clients at the soup kitchen, but also provides some produce to local schools. They have a cadre of volunteers who tend the garden through the growing season. It's very impressive!

marilynandbob > The Smiley Building is a historic school building which has become a community arts and social networking site It is now almost entirely "off-the-grid" and recently added solar panels. The huge community garden is a recent addition . It is the brainchild of Tom Bartels, speaking to the Tour de Farms group in this photo. They use innovative gardening techniques with pretty much no damaging chemicals and showing very high yield for a community garden sale weekly.

Here I am at one of the stops in the tour, Park Elementary School, where they have a learning garden, where they've planted that the Ancient Puebloans grew 700 years ago (squash, corn, beans...) and which helps the children learn about the climate and the people of that time.