Garden City Harvest Benefit at PEAS Farm by Diane

August 16, 2007

Thursday evening we attended the Summermoon Farm Party, a benefit for Garden City Harvest (GCH), an amazing organization that works to alleviate hunger in Missoula, Montana, by producing food for the community. The BBQ was held on PEAS Farm, GCH’s largest farm, where they grow tomatoes, corn, broccoli, kale and other vegetables, an admirable feat for a part of the country that has a limited growing season. In addition, GCH has youth education and other programs to teach people about sustainability and farming.

I was taken on a tour of the farm by Tim, Community Garden Director of PEAS Farm. We walked down rows of kale, chard, broccoli, squash and pumpkins. They even have a hot house for tomatoes (the plants are grown in the ground and the sides can be raised to let in air and sun). Farmers in places like Montana need to be creative with how they grow food because the growing season is so short. And these tomatoes looked to tasty – they’re nothing like the carboard mush you can get as hothouse tomatoes in conventional stores.

Hundreds of people showed up for the event, of all ages and backgrounds, and shared salads and sides made with food grown on the farm, as well as local Montana beef burgers and grilled squash. A band entertained the crowd while Missoulans and transplants wandered the farm and celebrated all the wonderful work of Garden City Harvest.

A couple things struck me in particular. First, most of the Missoulans I met there are East Coast transplants – many from New York! It was rather surreal to be standing on a farm in Montana, surrounded by forest fires on all sides (besides the thick smokey haze all over the area, we could even see flames on the hillside from one of them!) and turn around and hear someone talk about Coney Island as another person carried a bag from The Strand bookstore (a popular bookstore in New York City).

The nicest thing I noticed about the residents of Missoula was their kindness toward each other (and any visitors who happen to be around). I relieved Erin at our materials table, and as soon as I was alone, a local came up to speak with me. He stayed chatting until the next person came up, and that person spoke with me until another person appeared, and so on. I was never alone while there. That made me start to look around, and I saw people going out of their way to include people who might be standing on their own. Erin mentioned that the same thing happened to her also – people came to keep her company so she wouldn’t have to be alone. And the best part of this is that I’m sure no one was even conscious of what they were doing. There was such a sense of community in town that people didn’t think twice about including everyone around them in their conversation.

My other impression (as I’ve basically found with everyone we met) is how connected food people are with each other and the community. That connection is part of the definition of sustainability – as someone mentioned to me today, it’s not about us; it’s about who we can help. That seems to be appearing as the new face of what I want my food to be.

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