Incredible Edible Milbridge signs – look for them in town!
The mission of Incredible Edible Milbridge (IEM) is to improve the health of our community, enliven our kid’s education, create greater food independence, and bolster the local economy through creating vegetable and herb gardens throughout town.
Year Number Two of Incredible Edible Milbridge is well underway. We started the year early by offering four free hands-on gardening workshops in March, April, and May. Workshops covered topics like growing baby greens, starting your own seeds, vertical gardening and compost building. We had a great community response.
This year we are also setting up free vegetable garden tours. The first tour is Saturday June 7 at 9:00 at the Bears Den in Addison. Veteran gardeners, Geri Valentine (also, yoga teacher extraordinaire) and Donna Kausen will take visitors on a walk about their land, and talk gardening, offering practical wisdom from their decades of experience digging in the dirt. They will host a couple more tours throughout the season so participants can see the progress of the garden through the growing season.
But, the official launch of our 2014 season began on May 12 with our first community meeting at WHRL. Almost 20 people came, including novice and experienced gardeners, and we began making plans for continuing with the gardens we started last year, and adding some new ones.
Monday, June 2 was our second meeting of the season, and was another well-attended, enthusiastic, productive meeting. One of our big goals this year is to increase our visibility in town by planting more gardens.
With that in mind, attendees at the meeting volunteered to install and tend new gardens. So when you’re in town, notice the new gardens that are emerging—44 North already has two 8 foot raised beds alongside the restaurant, next to the back door. Seedlings will be going in soon. A long narrow, vertical garden was installed at one of our workshops alongside the apartment building on Rt 1A across the road from the Bar Harbor Bank and Trust. Lettuce is ready for the picking in that bed, so help yourself! A raised bed is planted in front of Luna Midwifery and Sol on Main St.
Plans are underway for a raised bed just outside the post office and in front of the nursing home. You’ll see container gardens emerging in front of Camden National Bank, Bar Harbor Bank and Trust, the pharmacy. The Fisherman’s Wife Café will again have vegetables planted in the boat in their front yard.
Soon you’ll see our Incredible Edible Milbridge signs posted in these gardens. So take a walk around town in a couple weeks and see if you can find all the gardens!
If you want to find out more about what’s going on with IEM, come to our next community meeting on Monday June 16 from 6 –7:00 at the Women’s Health Resource Library.
Remember, if you eat, you’re in!