These past few weeks at Community Food Initiatives have been quite busy!Thanks to a generous donation of everbearing raspberry bushes from the Athens County Commissioners, we were able to add good-sized berry patches to our community gardens in the Athens Eastside and Southside, Glouster, and Chauncey, Ohio. Next week we’ll be getting even more raspberry plants to add at the Nelsonville, Ohio community gardens!

Our Regional Garden Specialist, Kevin, gets ready to do some serious raspberry transplanting.

Our Regional Garden Specialist Kevin Fletcher gets ready to do some serious raspberry transplanting.

Additionally, our school gardens coordinator Keith Wilde has helped to install large patches of these same raspberries at school gardens in Vinton, Federal Hocking, and Logan-Hocking school districts. Hopefully our students will be able to look forward to a delicious crop of large, sweet, dark red raspberries when they return to school in the fall!

Ohio University senior intern Steven has been very helpful this season. Here he is pruning last year's growth on the berry bushes to help ensure a great harvest this year.

Ohio University senior intern Steven Lapikis has been very helpful this season. Here he is pruning last year’s growth on the berry bushes to help ensure a great harvest this year.

We’re ready and excited to welcome new gardeners to our community gardens at all five sites, so spread the word far and wide to anyone in or near the Athens County area: COMMUNITY GARDENERS WANTED! We will be hosting an open house and free vegetable seed giveaway at each garden during the week of April 20th through 24th, so stay tuned for specific dates and times at each location.

In other news, our annual seed potato giveaway last week was a huge success. Over the course of one day, we gave away 30,250 pounds of seed potatoes (to plant in gardens) to 140 people, reaching over 635 families in Athens, Fairfield, Gallia, Hocking, Meigs, Morgan, Perry, Ross, Vinton and Washington Counties!
CFI Executive Director Mary Nally, handing out 50-lb bags of seed potatoes like a boss!

CFI Executive Director Mary Nally, handing out 50-lb bags of seed potatoes like a boss!