July has been an excellent month for our Pine Mountain Settlement School gardens. The heat has arrived, and with it has been lots of rain. Our gardens have been in full swing, providing produce for a CSA with Harlan ARH through the Growing a Healthy Appalachia Project. This project has let us partner with some of our participants and put dollars back in their pockets. So far, we have purchased cabbage, blueberries, cherry tomatoes, and slicing tomatoes from our program participants.

 

We enjoyed spending the day with two wonderful ladies from Grow Appalachia, Steph and Candace, during our recent site visit. We not only showed them our gardens here on campus, but they also accompanied us on a couple of garden visits. Our Grow App participants had beautiful, lush, abundant gardens. One of our participants had recently canned 58 pints of carrots from the plants and seeds we were able to provide, and had the most amazing edible yard. The other had a root cellar that caused us all a little bit of envy. We are looking forward to seeing what the rest of the growing season brings us and our participants.