Community Farm growing into its own; Good Counsel garden fate uncertain

Aug. 29—Two community gardens in Mankato are at the peak of the fall bounty, with a variety of vegetables and fruits being harvested.

The Community Farm, near Mount Kato, is blossoming into a more fertile, productive space in its second year at its current location.

Meanwhile the decades-old Living Earth Center gardens on the grounds of Good Counsel Hill is producing food for about 100 families, but its future is still uncertain as negotiations continue on the sale of the School Sisters of Notre Dame property.

Laura Peterson, Living Earth's executive director, said they haven't yet heard if the sprawling gardens next to the red barn at Good Counsel will be able to remain after a developer purchases the campus. Most of the 125 elderly sisters are in the process of moving to Benedictine Living Community, a large apartment complex for seniors on the edge of Shakopee.

Living Earth Center is a separate nonprofit entity and Peterson said the group will continue to serve the community and grow its offerings and programs, whether or not they are able to continue to use the garden space at on the Hill.

The prospective buyer of the campus hasn't yet been identified and is presumably in final negotiations for the property.

"It's sad. There's a lot of grieving going on," Peterson said of the sale and the move by the sisters. "We're grieving for the sisters, and I think the community is going to suffer a huge loss as they leave. But as we talk with the sister there's also this discussion of growth and change (for the center)."

She said wherever its gardens end up, the group is committed to provide a "community growing space" somewhere in Mankato.

And Peterson said that if the gardens need to move, she views it as an opportunity. "If we have to reimagine a space, a community growing space, we can imagine it as something the community needs today and the future.

"It would be an opportunity to bring all our partners together and bring in new partners and say, 'If we have an opportunity to start from the ground up, what would we want it to be?' "

Community Farm

Peterson and the Living Earth Center also manage Blue Earth County's one-acre Community Farm, which has been relocated twice in the past few years as County Road 1 was reconstructed. Originally near its current location, the farm was for a couple of years moved to Red Jacket Park and two years ago to its current home next to County Road 1 across the road from the Red Jacket Trail gazebo.

On a recent day, Farm Manager Abbey Dickhudt and longtime volunteer Jim Ackil, who helps run the farm, were picking green beans and other produce, all of which is donated to ECHO Food Shelf, the BackPack Food Program and the CADA shelter.

Most of the vegetable plants were started in the basement of Ackil's North Mankato home.

So far this year they've donated well over 600 pounds of produce.

"Last year we didn't have a very good year, but we've built up the soil and added compost and it's much better this year," Ackil said.

He said the heavy clay soil they started with wasn't conducive to gardening. "There weren't any worms in the soil, there were hardly any weeds even growing. We didn't even have rabbits. Now we're seeing some rabbits that sneak in."

Dickhudt said Blue Earth County Extension has been doing an insect study at the farm. "They come out and identify the beneficial insects we have and the bad ones."

Ackil and Dickhudt were dealing with some of the bad ones — Japanese beetles that have plagued most gardens in the area in recent years, voraciously eating the leaves of a variety of plants.

Because the farm is 100% organic, pesticides aren't used. Kickhudt and Ackil spend time picking the beetles off the leaves and dropping them in a bucket of water and Ackil was going down the long row of green beans spraying the beetles with a soap-water mixture.

Dickhudt said a variety of church, youth groups and others help out at the farm and a lot of people simply stop by to look around and ask questions about the operation.

While much of the garden is used for vegetables to be donated, the farm also has started adding plots for individual families to raise produce for themselves.

That's been the core concept at the Good Counsel gardens for decades. "We have about 100 families up there raising food," Ackil said. "It's very diverse. They're from about every nation you can imagine. They're people who can't afford their own land or who live in apartments."

Ackil, who serves on the center's board, said that whatever happens to the Good Counsel gardens, the mission to allow community gardening will continue and expand locally.

"If we lose the LEC gardens, we're determined to find another space," he said.