Hancock Community Garden Harvest for Hunger
The Maine Harvest for Hunger project at the Hancock Community Garden sends weekly deliveries of produce to several agencies in Ellsworth for their use and distribution; those agencies include the two soup kitchens, the food pantry, and the homeless shelter. We are discussing also distributing food by way of a cooler at the Hancock Town Hall.
Volunteers who work with us prepare the soil for planting following recommendations from soil tests, plant seeds and seedlings, tend and harvest the crops, and sort/bag up the food for delivery. In general, delivery to Ellsworth is done by volunteers from the Hancock community. On occasion MGV’s deliver the produce; it is informative to see those agencies in action.
Volunteers learn effective, organic methods of growing produce from start to finish. Experience is offered in various gardening strategies, such as using row covers as insect barriers and to provide warmth, trellising tomatoes and cucumbers, and using plastic mulch for warm-loving crops like tomatoes. Helping with the installation of a drip irrigation system or the construction of a small hoop house for tomatoes are two other possible volunteer projects.
Our hope is that volunteers will work once a week as often as possible. We start in April and finish up in October. Depending on whatever Covid protocols will be in place and the preference of the participants, the work sessions will be with individual team members at a time convenient to both or with a larger group at Sunday morning workdays. New volunteers will have no difficulty fulfilling the 40-hour first-year requirement. If our Covid protocol permits, we will resume our social/snack times traditional at our Sunday workdays: both the food and conversation is of high quality!