B. Sias
Step by Step, Logan County

For the past three or four years, a group of seniors who reside in the Chapmanville Towers in Chapmanville WV participate in the Logan Grow Appalachia program. For the last two years, one lady whom I’ll call Carole has been really interested and active in our program. She very seldom misses a workshop, attends the canning classes, and asks a lot of questions. Carole, like most, is on a fixed income. She is also not a person who just sits around and does nothing.

Last year her garden was fair. This year she went in full force to have a good return for her hard work. She not only had her bed to plant in, but she also had a couple of five-gallon buckets that she planted beans in. These buckets were on her balcony at the Senior Home. She took care of that bucket of dirt and bean seeds like a good mother would a baby.

Well, Carole, canned 26 pints of beans from those buckets. Not only beans but also approximately 21 pints of tomatoes plus several bags of other vegetables that she put in the freezer. She also sowed some greens in her raised beds.

Another gardener, who is a first-time gardener with Grow Appalachia, had just a small yard to raise a garden. This lady has canned or frozen everything she could can from corn jelly to new potatoes. She has an enormous amount of canned food.

The reason n she cans so much is that several years ago she purchased a lot of groceries. That same week it rained hard and flooded. The electricity went off and stayed off for several days, and she lost all of the food in the freezer. She said, “Not anymore, I will can” and so she did.

I am thankful for Grow Appalachia for thinking of people and their
needs. The gardeners that we have are also thankful and they tell you it helps quite a lot. They use these things we give them to help themselves. I hear all the time from gardeners how much they appreciate Grow Appalachia. The seeds, plants, fertilizer, and other thing are so high in the price they cannot afford to buy them.