BY LARA BECKER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Picking beans at the Greenacres Farm are Beth Dieter, Andy DeLay and Bobbi Strangfeld.
(AP photo)
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Between Indian Hill's canopied slopes, a group of volunteer green thumbs is using the age-old technique of organic gardening to solve a continuing problem: Hunger.
So far, a half-acre prototype patch at Greenacres Foundation, a non-profit educational farm, has produced 50 pounds of sun-ripened fruits and vegetables, all donated to the FreeStore - FoodBank of Greater Cincinnati.
A dozen gardeners -- members of a trio of sister organizations -- operate from a simple theory:
"Small is good. Success is best," said Bobbi Strangfeld, 51, coordinator for the Master Gardener program at the Ohio State University Extension Service.
Whatever they're doing, it's working.
The garden boasts leafy plants heavy with fruit along eight rows of raised beds. A spice-store aroma floats nose-level. There are birds, bees.
At various spots, on their knees, a few men and women pull weeds and lay mulch. Some wear overalls and straw hats.
"I grew up on a farm," said Mary Jo Peairs, 51, who teaches kindergarten. "It's a way to keep my hands in the soil."
"It's very sustaining to me," said Cindy Witherspoon, 44, a costume designer and a member of the Master Gardener program. "Therapeutic."
Ms. Witherspoon wants to offer proof positive that tomatoes do not grow in a grocery store.
"So many people are unaware about where food comes from," she said.
And when fruits and vegetables are raised in a garden like this one, she said, they don't need chemicals to thrive.
"We live in an interconnected system," Ms. Witherspoon said. "When we introduce chemicals into the system, we don't know what we're destroying."
In place of chemical products, the gardeners use grass clippings as mulch. They plant marigolds, chives and basil to deter bugs that prefer tastier delicacies: zucchini, peppers, green beans.
"It's more labor-intensive, but no more expensive than using chemicals," said Laura Busby, 37, educational director at Greenacres. "And the food goes right from the garden to your plate. It doesn't have to travel 11,000 miles."
Muggy heat and the Japanese beetle are the gardeners' only real foes. They cope by working as the sun sets or soon after it rises. The gnawed-on leaves, though, are a loss.
The work is intense. So is the payoff.
Each harvest -- four so far -- means fresh food for Cincinnati's needy, just a few of the 30 million people reportedly starving in the United States, according to FreeStore - FoodBank statistics.
"It's sort of just a dent in the need for fresh veggies," Ms. Peairs says. "At least it's a start."
