Hello everyone, this is David Cornette with Hindman Settlement School Grow Appalachia. It’s been an exciting month for us and even more so for our participants!

We have held two meetings since our last blog update, and we’ve given out a ton of free stuff to our families. First, we gave everyone a couple different varieties of pepper and tomato plants, which were grown by students in FFA at Knott County Central High school. At that same meeting, we also gave everyone their own scuffle hoe from Rogue tools, as well as a pesticide sprayer and a bottle of Spinosad.

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At the next meeting, which featured a lesson on pest management from Chad Conway, our county agricultural extension agent, we had even more plants to give out to our participants. This was made possible by a very generous donation by the Berea College Greenhouse, who provided us with nearly a thousand dollars worth of plants. We gave out dozens of varieties of plants, from hot peppers, sweet peppers, kale, Swiss chard, tomatoes, and even raspberry plants! We were excited to be able to provide such an assortment of plants and remain very thankful to have received such an awesome donation from Janet Meyer, who manages the Berea College Greenhouse.

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In addition to giving out a ton of free stuff to our program participants, we have also been successful in our efforts with our own garden spots here at the Hindman Settlement School. We are on schedule to provide several bushels of produce for our Appalachian Writer’s Workshop event this July, and were able to provide nearly two bushels of peas for our Family Folk Week event, which is happening this week. We also attended a Farmer’s Market Committee meeting to help schedule the dates and locations of our market for the year, and we were pleased to find out that the market has continued to grow, due in part to the participation of our Grow Appalachia families.