It is time for our annual seed swap! We are doing this one remotely.

Our last gathering before the lock down of the pandemic was our annual seed swap. I enjoyed growing some of those seeds last year. I always enjoy shared seeds and plants. They have a story and I smile when I tend to the plants and remember the soul who shared them. We have beautiful Cardinal flowers and Green and Golds given to us by friends and they warm my heart every time I see them. It is like they are in our garden, beautifying it. Noel of our Eating Consciously team, sent me some seeds out of the blue last year and we have been enjoying the Arugula and Collards since. It was so nice to receive a surprise in the mail with a handwritten loving note. Noel and I were recently discussing seed swapping and we both were thinking of how to do it during a pandemic and she suggested using the US Mail. I loved it! I think hand-written letters sent in the mail are a [...]

By |2021-02-15T09:10:19-05:00February 15th, 2021|Categories: Eating Consciously, Food, Food preservation, Growing food, Help a Neighbor, Noel Thurner|

Spring reads – as usual, it’s all about SOIL!

  A wonderful resource for home gardeners and farmers of all size:, just in time for spring garden dreams: The Hidden Half of Nature, The Microbial Roots of Life and Health by David R. Montgomery, Anne Bikle In The Hidden Half of Nature, Montgomery and Bikle start a garden in their poor soil back yard. That led directly to the need for organic compost, via giving us the history to understand microbial life in a decent soil, why their initial soil had it’s particular components, and other wonderful revelations. The next part of their journey was to review and change their diet, to support their immune systems and, in this case, prevent cancer. This includes how human bodies work and, very timely, how infection gets to humans from other animals. They talk about domestic animals and the development of targeted vaccination… covid and wild animal access to humans, for example. The next chapters move back to food, a study comparing an animal based diet (meat & cheese) and [...]

By |2021-02-15T09:13:02-05:00February 3rd, 2021|Categories: Composting, Connecting with nature, Eating Consciously, Growing food|

Poetry Contest to honor Black History Month

In honor of Black History Month, we wanted to share this announcement that was shared with us.  What a wonderful community building event! Background: The Mary C Jenkins Community Center (MCJCC) Board is sponsoring a community-wide poetry contest to honor Black History Month and recognize progress re-establishing the MCJCC. Poetry is IT right now. Amanda Gorman, our first National Youth Poet Laureate, 22 years old, moved us deeply with her inauguration poem, The Hill We Climb.    Also in January, Kwame Alexander (poet who visited the Transylvania County library in April 2019!), crowdsourced a poem to offer people a way to “write our way out of the unprecedented events of the past year and into a space of possibility.” Kwame and National Public Radio received 2,500 entries from people of all ages for the crowdsourced poem. Less than 50 were crafted into the final poem, This is Our Dream, which includes a submission by teacher Jeanne DeJong, from 5th graders at Brevard Elementary School! https://www.npr.org/2021/01/28/960688815/this-is-our-dream-a-crowdsourced-poem-to-inspire-hope That Brevard is represented in this poem, [...]

By |2021-02-01T12:05:57-05:00February 1st, 2021|Categories: Help a Neighbor, The Gift of Time|
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