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Community garden put to use

“One of the few places people could go and get some fresh food”
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Laura Markila (centre), her daughter Violet Stock and Mikel Brogan working on the community garden. Markila’s son Jeremiah Stock also helped build the garden, says Brogan. Submitted photo.

By Amy Baechmann

During the evacuation of 100 Mile House and the surrounding area, many people went to the community garden, built earlier in the year, at the Forest Grove Elementary School for fresh vegetables, says Mikel Brogan, the principal of Forest Grove Elementary School.

“The community garden was one of the few places people could go and get some fresh food.”

Many people didn’t believe that the plants would make it through the summer, due to the dry conditions and evacuations, but when the vegetable garden was one of the main sources of fresh food for people in Forest Grove, it was tended to by people of the community and is now flourishing, he says.

The community garden was built outside the school for the students to plant produce which they will tend to over the course of the year and then harvest in the fall, says Brogan.

The six boxes were constructed with donated lumber from Timber Mart and donated seeds and soil from community members, he says, adding that Laura Markila was a big help with constructing the boxes, having already built numerous community gardens around the world in impoverished countries. She and many people in the community donated their time to build the planting boxes, according to Brogan.

The garden will be part of the food program at the school which is very exciting for the students, he says.

“It teaches the kids first hand about healthy eating and living healthy.”

“Each class will get one of those boxes,” Brogan said,”and our idea is we are going to harvest in the fall.”

Many people in the community came together to build this for the students, says Brogan.

“Everyone came together one way or another to do it.”

The gardens will be a new part of the curriculum, says Brogan.

“It’s gone over really well.”