Growing Food Where People Live
Every Story Must Have a Beginning
“Ours began with our son.”
Born in 1999, he was diagnosed with several food allergies that led Melanie and Rob to reading labels on the food they purchased (eek), which led to more from scratch in home cooking. As their awareness around food nutrition increased, they began making plans to purchase a large piece of land to start an organic farm.
As the years passed, Rob and Melanie decided to explore (on a small scale) the practices they hoped to one day carry to a larger farm. Their dreams expanded and, after being trained and Certified in Permaculture, the focus shifted to include aspects of an intentional community in their plans.
They refined techniques in their own yard and hoped to start a community garden on a couple of unused lots in their neighborhood, but the owner of the property suddenly put the lots up for sale. Finding themselves unable to work the unused property, one of their neighbors asked Rob and Melanie if they would like to put a food garden in their yard and the two jumped at the chance. This was the start of Trefoil Gardens.
As they grew, they realized that they might not need to leave their neighborhood to live out their dream. That it might be better to stay where they were and grow food where people live.
In the gardens, they can see the beauty of the food they consume. Neighbors get out and interact with one another more. They are able to teach and encourage families like ours that they too can grow food. Since 2016, they've grown to include 8 additional neighborhood family yards and 2 additional yards outside of the neighborhood. They currently have 15,000 sq. ft under cultivation and several workshare members, primarily potential farmers that want to learn and steward their land in a similar fashion. They serve a 43 member CSA. Melanie and Rob are proud to be part of the local food community and serve the public in this way. They are moving forward in the installation of what we hope will be a visiting garden and community workspace.
Goals
We are proud to be part of the local food community and serve the public in so many ways. Here are some projects we are currently developing:
01.
–COMMUNITY CENTER
We are moving forward in the installation of what we hope will be a visiting garden and community workspace. The front garden should be opening in Summer 2020, and the community workspace should follow shortly afterwards. Help us achieve these goals.
03.
– GROWTH
Our expectation is to manage a portfolio of 20,000 square ft market crop production, along with another 10,000 sf of micro-orchard and perennial space in our neighborhood. Properly managed, this should provide a reasonable standard of living for 3 individuals and produce more than enough food to serve our entire neighborhood needs for these items.
02.
–INCUBATOR
As the #kingsridgecoop grows, we hope to see students and/or workshare members taking on “remote” gardens and starting CoOp communities in those neighborhoods, using our experience as a template, and further strengthening the local food community.
04.
–INFRASTRUCTURE
Always striving to improve efficiency and our carbon footprint, Trefoil Gardens’ latest project is to upgrade our yardshare members’ watering systems to include rainwater catchment and drip irrigation. We hope to add this, plus a neighborhood composting service.
the #kingsridgecoop
The Kingsridge CoOp is a collaborative effort established by Trefoil Gardens and the Kingsridge Community in Cherokee County, just outside the City Limits of Woodstock, GA. Most of the gardens are on our street, in our neighbors’ front yards. This confronts the unsustainable aesthetic of the “American Lawn” and allows residents and visitors to actually see and experience the act of growing food, creating a more thoughtful consumption culture. Our mushroom laying yard contains several hundred locally-harvested natural logs, which were inoculated with 5 different strains of passively-fruited shiitake mushroom, and our wild forage range rarely extends beyond the greater Woodstock area. All these components together make our offering the freshest, most local, and sustainable option for the amazing people whom we serve.
Soil is the basis of all our cropping techniques, and turfgrass is the #1 monocrop in the country: it accounts for a tremendous amount of the water waste and fertilizer runoff that contributes to climate change. Deep, on-contour garden beds which are rich in organic content are better able to hold on to moisture and nutrients and swales help to slow water runoff and allow it to seep into the garden soil, reducing our need for supplemental water and buffering against periods of drought. Our main annual input is hundreds of cubic yards of shredded leaves and ramial wood chips, which are spread to help to maintain the walking lanes and aisles through summer, and are turned over onto the growing beds as compost the following fall. We only rototill to incorporate our initial soil amendments (pure rock minerals, organic matter, and biochar), then focus on gentler soil handling practices once the gardens are established. Our crops rely on soil microbes to provide most of their nutrients; and crop rotation, intercropping, and lots of flower habitat to help manage pests and diseases, with zero petrochemical inputs, ever.
