Your Story Matters
Mary K, Commissioner since April 2020, co-Founder of Treasure Valley Community Gardens Cooperative, residing on Shoshone-Paiute Lands in Boise, Idaho.
Are you a Seed Hub?
I have been, for the past two years, and I feel it has given me a way to do something tangible and meaningful to help others. That has provided me and others with a sense of resonant purpose in a highly stressful time. I will share my experience here, and ask you to consider doing the same.
The first year I received a massive amount of seeds! My friend Ben and I started a local chapter of Coop Gardens, the Treasure Valley Community Gardens Cooperative (TVCGCoop). The story I am sharing here is carefully shared. We are usually pretty quiet about our broader outreach. In a humble way, we are trying to do this work in good relationship-building ways. Through our local friend network, we were connected with a woman in an extremely rural part of Idaho, a community impacted by this history of colonization in big ways. As part of our trust-building efforts, we said we would never publicize that distribution. I am sharing the core of this story as an example of the work we did with CGC’s help, to get seeds and starts to the most impacted communities. They are located hours away from the main resources of our area. She was a great teacher for us, carefully but consistently and quickly coordinating within her community to distribute the seeds and starts we were able to assemble and bring. Her community has experienced incredible hardships before COVID, and all throughout the pandemic. We were careful, and camped on the perimeter of the community, communicating our intentions well in advance, and worked to source the specific seed varieties and plants she asked us for. We were also willing to get tested for COVID, but there were none available at that time. We passed a temperature check at the community center though and then maintained a safe distance. With increasing case numbers in the Boise area last winter, we didn’t attempt to go out again. Their community continued experiencing tragedies and our connection was also impacted. So we worked to develop relationships with partner organizations that are led by Black, Indigenous, or People of Color who have been engaged in work representing their communities for years.
This year we started hundreds of plants with our hub seeds, and had a series of small gatherings out on our porch all through the spring, to bundle hundreds of packets of small garden starting kits. In our first year, TVCGCoop joined the Idaho Organization of Resource Councils which is part of the Idaho Immigrant Resource Alliance. The first round of these went to impacted communities with the help of the Indigenous Idaho Alliance (IIA). Through these organizational partnerships, we distributed 4 rounds of starts and seeds, with as many culturally relevant seeds for Latine peoples as possible.
We have learned from IIA that Tribes of Idaho historically hunted, fished, gathered, stored, and processed food in balanced ways that lasted for millennia. All those ways have been impacted since the beginning of the territorial establishment of the United States. Putting together foods that are relevant, nutritious, and meaningful in this time is an ongoing conversation and effort, and a commitment in our predominantly white community of Boise, Idaho to take time to study and discuss the history here, what happened and continues to happen to communities of Color.
TVCGCoop is networked with 40+ community gardens and finding ways to gather safely to continue networking in our off-season. Many of our area community gardens donate thousands of pounds of nutrient-dense foods to local food banks. Some are working on broadening our network to efficiently combine efforts with organizations that have complementary goals and resources, such as the means to deliver food locally to our elder population and to store food in refrigerated spaces. Some are working to increase education and school programs in our area, giving kids a break from Zoom classes, or the school space which has been stressful and difficult to communicate in with masks, or confusing spaces to be in where mask mandates are being adamantly opposed.
There are many reasons to continue with the work Coop Gardens began in 2020, and many ways it continues to grow into new partnerships.
It’s our stories that help to inspire others, to let our collective network know that we are all working together, connected in this time. We are blessed with the ability to share our stories across thousands of miles. We are also humbly passing the hat around our shared digital space, and asking for your support to continue with the distribution of free seeds year 3! If you can support the collective work of the Cooperative Gardens Commission in any way, please give what you can.
If you will share your story with us all, it helps!
Please email: CooperativeGardens@gmail.com and answer the following questions. Please send up to 10 photos of your work!
Intro: Who you are and where you’re at, Name of your project - please include Indigenous Land you’re on.
Please share a bit about your work, who you serve, and an estimate of how many folx you distributed seed to and/or about organizations you have worked with.
What are some challenges you faced or addressed?
Where would you like to see CoopGardens go?
Please share this post, and share what you can to help us do a 3rd year!