What is a Community Garden?
Many people think a ‘Community’ is a particular thing, which it is and it also isn’t. A community can be a group whose members come together for social activities, such as chess playing or cake baking, it can be a group of families creating childcare support, a group of singers holding hands around a campfire or a religious or political group with a shared intention.
A community garden also comes in many guises; a social get together for meeting and chatting, a plant/herb medicine gathering, the intensive growing of food for selling or sharing, a learning and information space where people bring their experience and share it with others, or it can be all of these.
In a biodynamic sense, we have biodynamic communities who support each other in Biodynamic farming, living and growing, but the farm itself is also a community.
A biodynamic farm is a living breathing ‘organism’ made up of many elements; plants, animals, soils, water, air, the cosmos, planets, the sun and moon, micro organisms, wildlife, energy etc. When we add a human element, that brings a set of intentions, it becomes a ‘community’, a group of differing individual elements working together to attain a shared outcome; to create and support a space to re-find it’s natural self, fulfill its potential, build a life-force full of living vitality, we work in symbiosis to create balance always working for the good of the whole.
Enjoying the sunshine while shading beneath the oak trees we stirred a biodynamic prep, little voices sang while bigger voices chattered, we spread the precious potion of vitality onto all of the land to enliven, enrich and fill the soil with life-force. The micro organisms in our soil are of utmost importance to us as they are the foundation of all life that springs from it.
How to make Compost
Compost is the fuel of all living things, as well as helping the micro organisms intensely build fertility by layering all our garden waste and animal manure, we add Biodynamic Compost preps which are specially formulated mixtures using animal parts and herbs, buried in the ground to decay in the dark or hung up in the sunlight to absorb the sun beams. Once put into the compost and activated with valerian tea they enliven and speed up the process creating dark, rich life filled elixir for putting onto our beds.
At Roots to the Moon we grow Organically and Biodynamically, we consider the effects of the whole organism on the micro and the micro organism on the whole. We are piloting a community garden, we are trying it out and growing ideas. If you would like to join us, please sign up, for this season it is free as we have some FiPL funding to help us start out. The future is unknown but it is in our control and we want to do it in community, with you.
