Most of the residents in Buena Vista are familiar with the Turner Farm on West Main Street. On this Farm there is a fenced plot of land that serves as a community garden. This garden (unlike most other cooperative community gardens which generally provide food only for those participants who work the plots) has served a well deserving segment of the community in that it has provided fresh vegetables for the clients of the Arkansas Valley Christian Mission for eight years and the Senior Free Store for five years.

The garden was established in 1999 by one of Buena Vista’s unsung heroes, Deanna Butts. The idea for the garden came to her through a letter from a cousin in Austin, Texas. This cousin gave her the contact number for the “Keep America Beautiful” organization. This organization would furnish the seeds for endeavors that were to be used to help out people in a community. The initial seeds came from them. The garden could not have survived without all the work, expertise, and enthusiasm that Deanna put into the planning and the organizing to start it and then to continue it.

Through help from Build a Generation Organization in Buena Vista, Deanna was able to contact Care and Share from Colorado Springs. They have continued to help finance the garden operation. Money to keep it running was also given by an anonymous donor in Buena Vista.

With financing and planning in hand, Deanna arranged for the first “breaking the sod” so to speak. She contracted with the prison to put up the 7 foot fence to keep the deer out. She arranged for the purchase a drip irrigation system and got advice from Pleasant Avenue Nursery on the “how to” of installation. She recruited a number of able-bodied volunteers, including some students from Chaffee County High School to help with the project. She contacted the other schools and organizations about letting children in the community know that they too could come to help and learn. Next, there was the constant weeding and the harvesting and packaging of the harvest. With the aid of all the children and adults, planting was complete by June 10 of 1999 and by the first week in July, lettuce and spinach were being delivered to the venues. Deanna also started a flower garden on the east side to enhance the appearance of the Turner Farm for the many events held there during the summer.

Deanna, who passed on earlier this year, planned that there would be a vast array of vegetables and herbs over the years. There has been lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, peas, beans, beets, carrots, potatoes, corn. broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, tomatoes, strawberries, rhubarb and many varieties of herbs. She was ever the teacher and there is no doubt that the youth working there learned a thing or two from her.

A few tips she has passed on to the youth and to the adult volunteers:

“Plant things that will do well together. Corn and cucumbers do well together because the corn shades the cool weather cucumbers from the heat: do not plant together things that don’t do well growing side by side. Potatoes do not do well if planted close to onions.

When planting rhubarb, put a tablespoon of Epson Salts in with each plant of rhubarb. Rhubarb needs extra acid in an alkaline soil and the Epson Salts furnish this.

Locally, don’t plant things too early. Usually when the snow is gone from Buffalo Peaks, it is safe to plant, although that doesn’t always hold true. One summer on the night of June 14th, the volunteers were out and about between 10 and 12 p.m. covering the seedlings as the temperature inched down to 20 degrees!”

As September is drawing to a close we can look back on yet another fruitful season at the Buena Vista Community Garden. Many thanks to our very efficient and wonderful crew: Les Messamer, Carter Butts, Dori McQuire, Gail Moffet as regulars and Betsy and Hugh Neas and Joyce and Bob Reneaux who help whenever they can.

For those interested in volunteering next Spring, contact Sue Snively at 395-0605. Care and Share, a non profit that concentrates on feeding the hungry in Southern Colorado, provides funding for most of the costs of the Buena Vista Community Garden.  Donations can be sent to:  Care and Share Food Bank,  2520 Aviation Way, Colorado Springs CO 80910;  Telphone:  719-528-1247.


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