Community Food Initiatives in Athens County, Ohio is very excited and grateful to be working with Grow Appalachia to provide healthy fresh produce for our local community through community gardening support.
My name is Kevin Fletcher, and I am the new Regional Garden Specialist at Community Food Initiatives. I will be working with our local communities to assist gardeners to our 6+ community gardens in Athens and surrounding areas, leading workshops and offering assistance on topics such as small-scale intensive garden production, season extension, organic pest control methods, and produce preparation and presentation.
As a part of our gardening programs, I will be working with a few of our community gardeners to construct several low-cost “low-tunnel” unheated greenhouse systems for their gardens to enhance their production capacity and the length of the growing season through microclimate modification.
This week has been full of activity as we gear up and head into the planting and growing season. We’ve been busy surveying the gardens and preparing them for spring planting, identifying improvement projects, setting up community gardener recruitment events, and getting me acquainted with the multitude of wonderful projects that Community Food Initiatives is working with in our local community. I am very much looking forward to these coming months, as spring and summer are right around the corner!
Welcome to the Grow Appalachia family, Kevin and CFI!! I am SO EXCITED for this new partnership; I was born and raised in Athens, and my parents still live in the area! I was very fortunate to have met Mary at our annual gathering a month ago. Glad to see you all on the blogosphere 🙂
Thanks, Holly! We’re pumped for the first day of Spring!