LEWISBURG – The Lewisburg Community Garden spring season begins this Saturday. Kyle Bray is assistant director of service learning at the office of civic engagement at Bucknell University and oversees the community garden, “It’s about a half an acre property located in downtown Lewisburg near the Street of Shops complex. The borough of Lewisburg allows us to use the land free of charge, which is fantastic.”
Bray explained, “We divide the garden in half. About half of the space is allocated for community members who lack growing space at their homes to come in and rent a plot with us and grow for the season. We also cultivate the other half of the garden and everything that we grow there; we donate to local hot meal and food bank programs.”
Bray talked about the food they are able to provide for those in need, “Most of it goes to a program that we run every Monday in Milton called Community Harvest, which is a free hot meal program. But last year again, the garden was so bountiful that we were actually able to donate produce to eleven different food access programs in the area.”
Bray says they have applied for a grant to help support the garden, “So, the garden is entering its sixth season and because of that, obviously there has been a lot of wear and tear and the garden has been heavily used. We have some infrastructure repairs we need to accomplish and there are also some long term goals we would like to achieve to continue to further our mission.”
He says they really need the public’s help to obtain the grant from Seeds of Change, a company that focuses on organic and heirloom seeds. They are in the running for a $10,000 or $25,000 grant, “Typically when you apply for a grant, we write a proposal and it goes to some people we never see and they make the decision. This time, the first round is public judging. So, this is an opportunity for folks to step up and actually vote for the Lewisburg Community Garden. The fifty gardens, out of the ones that applied, with the most number of votes, will go on to the second round, which is a more traditional panel judging round.”
Bray explained how to vote, “You can go to www.seedsofchangegrant.com. That’s going to be the voting portal. Up at the top, you will see a link to the voting gallery. You can click on that link and go to the voting gallery and type in Lewisburg into the search bar. There will be a picture of our garden and you click on that and click the green vote button and you are good to go.”
Bray says you can only vote once a day from each machine. You can hear more from Bray from WKOK Sunrise online at WKOK.com. (Ali Stevens)
