Community garden in Alberton to collaborate with schools
THE ALBERTON Railroad Days Community Garden started last year with a long-term goal of collaborating with Alberton Schools for a Farm to School program. (Maggie Dresser photos/Mineral Independent)
GARDEN ORGANIZER Ang MacDonald looks at the temporary pallet fence built for blocking wind. She hopes to build a permanent chain link fence once the garden receives enough funds.
ANG MacDONALD plants a tree which will act as a wind barrier once it grows taller. Wind destroyed many plants on the garden plot last summer.
Last year, Ang MacDonald started a community garden filled with fruit trees, tomatoes and other vegetables in Alberton after two previous failed attempts. The Alberton Railroad Days Community Garden is a nonprofit that MacDonald runs and she’s responsible for most of the work. Her long-term goal is to start a Farm to School program with Alberton, where schools feature locally produced food on their school menus.
But MacDonald can’t find enough volunteers to care for the half-acre garden space, which caused the previous community garden failures. “It’s hard to get a base core of volunteers for manual tasks that are done in the heat of summer,” MacDonald said. Her main goal is to build the garden and grow things before she can begin collaboration for the Farm to School program, but she needs help. She says as soon as there are enough volunteers, they can install a greenhouse which she currently has on her own property.
While MacDonald is busy with the garden, she is also occupied with fundraising and the legalities attached to the Farm to School program. The garden received a grants from Montana Rail Link and the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation, a philanthropy organization based in Missoula.
The grants will allow the high school to renovate the Home Economics room and build a commercial kitchen so the vegetables from the garden can be used for the cafeteria. A kitchen is one of the specs they need in order to apply for a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant, which MacDonald is hoping to start this fall.
“We applied for the grant last year and they were very interested in it, but we didn’t have a long enough time with the garden,” MacDonald said. Other qualifications they need for the grant include student taste testing and recipes. “Getting the commercial kitchen and access is a huge step toward getting qualified,” she said.
THEY ALSO plan to have a small coffee shop intertwined with the garden, which will create part time jobs. “Once it gets up and going, there will be enough coming out of that space to do that,” MacDonald said. She says students will eventually be very involved with the program during the school year.
Aside from MacDonald’s long-term garden goals, she says the most pressing project right now is building a fence as a wind break to protect the plants. She currently has a temporary pallet fence and she recently planted trees for wind barriers, but she hopes to eventually have a chain link fence. “I don’t think we got a single tomato last year because the wind was too bad,” she said.
But the garden needs volunteers to install the fence and to plant and maintain it down the road. “We’re trying to get to the Farm to School stage,” MacDonald says. “But until we have more of a force to maintain things, we’re not quite there yet.”
For more information about volunteering for the Alberton Railroad Days Community Garden, contact Ang MacDonald at arrdfmt@gmail.com.