Welcome Folks, from Gary & Lori Gearheart, your new Grow Appalachia managers for the Floyd County/St. Vincent’s Mission! We are excited to dig in deep with our garden program & help people grow & sustain their food chain & link to their land!

I (Lori) had the pleasure of joining Erin Bottomlee to visit the campus of Berea College to learn more about the Grow Appalachia program, meet David Cooke, Candace Mullins, & Holly Korb; as well as to enjoy some inspiring speakers during a 2 day visit. I got the Crash Course on all things Grow Appalachia & hope that I can make this a fulfilling season for everyone involved. Please bear with us as we jump in with both feet & take off running!

Our first weeks were spent tilling multiple gardens, distributing organic fertilizer, & learning about Disease & Pest Control in our gardens with Keith Hackworth from the Floyd County Extension Office. Keith was gracious enough to educate us & gift everyone with some fun kitchen tools to use during the upcoming processing season.
I was able to order some worm vermicose/castings to be given away in our upcoming June 8th meeting. It is a truly organic fetiliizer that we’ve used in the past with amazing results!! Our next purchase will be the bean fencing from a little Amish farm store in West Liberty, KY! Our beans here grow to over 7 feet tall, so we want to keep them up off the ground! We’ve got strawberries ripening in our community garden that we’ve been able to process & freeze for future jam making projects that we’ll sell at our local Farmer’s Market & to our visitors of St. Vincent’s Mission. Nothing tastes better than fresh, ripe strawberries & a self-sufficient effort to support the mission!

Our Community garden has been getting planted with a variety of different beans, tomatoes, Swiss Chard, & herbs. The next week’s temperatures are even more favorable for planting, weeding & fertilizing! These are exciting times after all the rains we’ve been getting!

Again, we are very excited for the upcoming gardening season & this opportunity to bring support to our community gardeners!

Joyfully,
Gary & Lori Gearheart