When Anne Partna was growing up in Estonia, her grandfather had a horse to plow his garden and used hand tools for the rest of the garden chores. She’s trying to follow his example in the new entrepreneurial garden growing at the back of the STARWorks complex.
Partna came to the United States in 1998 in a student exchange program between the Estonia Academy for the Arts and East Carolina University. She returned to Estonia to complete her undergraduate work, then came back to earn a master’s degree in ceramics at ECU.
After meeting Nancy Gottovi, executive director of Central Park NC, when Gottovi and potter David Stuempfle were in Estonia building a kiln, Partna stayed in touch, visiting Gottovi in Star. Last winter, Gottovi offered Partna and Adam Landman a job at STARCeramics.
“When we moved here, I kept asking Nancy about ways to grow our own vegetables,” Partna explained. “They had talked about an agriculture project at STARWorks but didn’t have any funds. But we did have a parking lot space growing weeds and getting plenty of sunlight.” There were also plenty of concrete parking barriers that make good solid sides for building raised garden beds.
In February, when the team built the first raised bed, they used some mechanical equipment, a bobcat to scrape down some of the crushed rock and a tiller to mix up the topsoil and compost hauled in to the site. That first bed grew winter greens and lettuces and they started selling the produce to a few local people, mainly those working at STARWorks. “I also got a lot of good tips from Roger Galloway,” Partna said of the local ag agent at N.C. Cooperative Extension in Troy.
They made enough to cover the cost of the soil and compost. Working weekends, Partna, Landman, Santiago Alvarez, operations manager at STARWorks, with a little help from Gottovi and the crew at Wet Dog Glass, built four more beds and got their own compost pile going. In early August, bees, dragonflies and ladybugs swooped around the beds filled with tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant and herbs. “I’m used to a totally different climate,” Partna said, explaining about all the problems caused by squash bugs. “I’d never heard of squash bugs, they’re terrible,” she said.
But she hasn’t used any pesticides or herbicides, which would kill the flourishing beneficial insects. The other plants are large and healthy, doing just fine without chemical fertilizer, on a diet of water and compost from the bin started with the help of Melanie Lamonds’ third grade class from Star-Biscoe Elementary School in June.
Partna, whose son and daughter attend Star-Biscoe, had gone on a field trip with the class where they learned about composting for a unit on soils and invited Lamonds to bring them to help start the compost pile at the garden.
This summer, Partna’s community garden is selling produce to just a few regular customers who get a weekly e-mail list of produce available and a price list, and then e-mail in their order.
“We haven’t really advertised it yet because of the small amounts of produce, but we’ve got some things producing more than we can sell,” she said, pointing to the heavily laden green pepper plants.
By spring, they hope to have enough growing to become a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) garden. Growing in popularity with farmers and consumers around the country, the CSA concept works by customers purchasing a subscription, a flat fee which helps provide regular income for farmers and cuts down on their costs of transporting goods to markets.
In exchange, customers get a weekly box of whatever produce is available throughout the growing season. Consumers like it because they know they’re getting fresh produce, grown locally without chemicals and heavy equipment.
“I’m really glad to see the idea of locally grown food becoming more available and finally catching on,” said Partna, adding that the concept has been popular in Europe and more urban areas of the United States for a while now. Come spring, Partna said they hope to expand the program to serve an estimated 10 families.
Partna said in addition to expanding the produce line, she’d like to add cutting flowers and native plants to the items grown.
Central Park NC recently received a $7,500 grant from the Resourceful Communities’ Creating New Economies Fund (CNEF), which will allow them to buy a greenhouse and develop more educational programs for children about sustainable agriculture concepts such as composting and beneficial insects.
Lamonds, from Star-Biscoe, and Partna share an interest in recycling and getting youngsters involved in sustainable gardening. They plan to attend a composting workshop in Pittsboro in September and are in early stages of discussions about possibly working with the elementary school to include food and paper waste in a composting project.
“I definitely want to get the kids more involved, getting their hands dirty, so 10 or 15 years from now they’ll appreciate the work that goes into it, how to handle the plants and where the food comes from,” she said.
