Photo By Roland Balik | A water spigot stands ready to use at the new 60-foot by 120-foot organic community...... read more read more
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DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. – Team Dover gardeners will not see the fruits of their labor or better said, vegetables of their labor, until early spring 2016 in an organic community garden stemming from an Air Force Community Partnership (AFCP) Program P4 initiative coming to life Oct. 29, 2015, here, at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware.
In general, the AFCP allows military installations to share resources and capabilities with local and state communities, and with commercial entities and vice versa, that will reciprocate benefits and values to all by entering a public-public or public-private (P4) partnership.
From the four AFCP brainstorming team planning areas of “Live, Work, Play and Learn,” the community garden initiative manifested out of the “Live” work group although a couple of groups had the same interest.
“The main goal of this initiative is to reach out to the community, the military families here at Dover AFB housing and to get a sense of community by growing organic vegetables,” said Sophia Reeves, Hunt Companies, Inc., Military Housing Communities, Dover AFB community director. “We are going to use our logo ‘Caring and Sharing’ for the sense of community and also the initiative of bringing the community together.”
The original community garden located to the west of the Dover AFB housing maintenance building had become neglected over the years and was subdivided into 24 individual plots within a 20-foot-wide by 100-foot-long field.
According to Reeves, this community garden is in the same location but will be 60-feet-wide by 120-feet-long with no individual plots allowed, strictly organic, no chemical pesticides or fertilizers will be used, hence the meaning “organic community garden.”
“[Hunt] entered this partnership because the prior community garden went to the wayside, there wasn’t that much involvement or [gardening] education, so we reached out during one of the partnership brainstorming sessions and were able to think outside the box, partner up together and see how each person could bring something to the table,” said Reeves.
Reeves stated that 15 out of 31 Hunt military housing communities have some type of community garden, naming Moody Air Force Base, Georgia and Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, as some examples.
The main stakeholders in the community garden initiative with the support of Dover Air Force Base leadership are Hunt Companies, Inc., the Kent County Levy Court Economic Partnership Office, the Kent County Community Garden Collaborative, the Delaware State University College of Agriculture and Related Sciences, the Delaware Division of Public Health, the Delaware Health and Social Services, the City of Dover Department of Public Works and the personnel of Team Dover.
“The main goal of this initiative is to provide healthy, nutritious locally grown food to the base families that live in Eagle Heights housing,” said James Waddington, Kent County Levy Court, Dover, Delaware, Kent Economic Partnership director. “We’ve been working on a food innovation district as an economic development tool, so community gardens are an integral part of that.”
Local area gardening experts and educators will be volunteering their time to educate those interested in participating in the community garden initiative to ensure its success.
“In order for DSU and DHSS to be involved, there has to be an educational component,” said Waddington. “We’re looking to work with the local elementary school here to try to have a curriculum component to bring children out here and learn how to work in the garden.”
The City of Dover Department of Public Works donated by delivering three dump truck-loads of leaf mulch that was tilled into the new garden’s soil by DSU’s small farms equipment prior to seeding it with a winter cover crop of wheat rye. The wheat rye will be tilled into the soil sometime in February 2016 and will be used as fertilizer for the first of three plantings.
“Gardens are a really good way to introduce healthy eating and physical activity,” said Andrea Keen, Delaware Division of Public Health, Kent County Health Unit, Dover, Delaware, clinic manager. “We try to introduce different types of vegetables to families to make sure they have a healthier option and just the nutritional value by having something fresh rather than something from a can.”
For more information on the community garden, contact Sophia Reeves at 321-634-2016 or at sophia.reeves@huntcompanies.com.
| Date Taken: | 11.03.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 11.03.2015 16:13 |
| Story ID: | 180782 |
| Location: | DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, DE, US |
| Web Views: | 97 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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