By Lisa Carolin
(Publisher’s note: All photos were taken by Lucy Silverio.)
For Chelsea resident Dan Kaminsky, participating in the Chelsea Community Garden provides two main sources of enjoyment: food and friendship.
He has been a member of the community garden since it began five years ago.
“It’s been a very productive place for me,” said Kaminsky. “I’ve been able to grow broccoli that I can eat into March and to can tomatoes that I can have year round. It’s nice to go into the basement and pull fresh food out of the cellar or freezer in the winter.”
Participants join the community garden for a variety of reasons; not enough space in their yards for a garden, or in Kaminsky’s case, too much shade in his yard.
He says the most pleasant surprise of joining the community garden has been the socializing.
“It’s one of the nicest groups I’ve ever been with,” said Kaminsky. “We had a harvest pot luck a month ago. We enjoy our gardening and talking to each other. I didn’t expect that.”
There’s a lot of sharing among the gardeners as well as with Faith in Action, which has two plots of its own.
Mully Todd and Deb Harrington have been members of the Chelsea Community Garden since the beginning. Todd helps coordinate the waiting list and says there are currently a few half plots available.
The half plots measure 10 x 20 feet while full plots are 20 x 20 feet. The cost is $20 per plot and an additional $20 to commit to a minimum 8-hour requirement of work at the garden.
“It’s a wonderful social network,” said Harrington. “We have grown a lot of our food supply. A lot of us freeze and can what we grow, and that takes us through the winter.”
Harrington says that they added an asparagus patch this year to share with all the gardeners, and added blueberry bushes last year.
“We added a visitors’ garden this year for people to come and pick what they want,” she said.
Locks will be put on the community garden’s gates next year to prevent what Harrington describes as “an increasing amount of theft,” because other than the visitors’ garden, the rest is not open to the public.
The Chelsea Community Garden has 49 plots and 32 gardeners. It is located in the fields just south of Timber Town off Sibley Road.
For more information, call Todd at 734-719-0035.
