For Michelle Della Corte, there is poetry in the urban gardens where she spends her days: in the chard and kale that are now harvested weekly, in tomatoes and corn, aubergines and heat: all this.
Della Corte is the lawn coordinator for Sun Youth’s two urban lawns, which supply biological products for the network organization’s emergency food basket program. She works 3 days a week on the largest lawn, at Youth in the Sun’s St-Laurent warehouse, and two days on her new lawn, a hidden and green position at the old Outremont railway station, just along the road. youth-to-the-sun administrative media. on Park Avenue, near Beaubien Street
The unused component of the grounds of the new Campus of the University of Montreal, where a clinical complex is being built, is known as ephemeral projects; it is home to more than a dozen urban agriculture projects whose same educational activities and meetings were brought online this season through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last year, a total of approximately 2,000 pounds of products collected from the two Juvenile Gardens in the sun; it’s a bit, but it’s not enough to supply all the products in your emergency food baskets, which go to about 130 families a day. This figure rose from one hundred before losses of tasks related to the pandemic, lack of monetary confidence and other disorders that are particularly demanding.
Most of the new products in these baskets, in Jeunesse au Soleil and other network organizations with programs, come from Moisson Montréal and wholesalers.
“But everything that is grown ends up in an emergency food basket,” Eric Kingsley, Director of Emergency Services at Sun Youth, said in an interview.
Starting the gardens was “wanting to take our food donations,” he said. “We made a decision we seek to grow our own vegetables. We seek to make guests laugh, with vegetables such as peppers, kale, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplant, not just turnips and potatoes.”
He said consumers were ordering more new vegetables and fewer canned foods. “People need to eat genuine foods, and it’s a way to guarantee smart products.”
Plants are delivered and products are harvested throughout the season, Della Corte said, starting with radibas in June and until autumn: kale harvested even after frost. Tomatoes and aubergines love the heat, and this summer’s warm climate has stimulated growth, he said the other day while on the Ephemeral Projects site, which has about 30 rows of products. A steak covers the kale and Brussels sprouts to protect them from groundhogs, “that brassicas love,” he said, referring to the type of plants.
Della Corte, whose first assignment at Youth in the Sun was as a day camp counselor, has been running on the lawn for 4 summers now. She said she would look at agriculture after graduating with a college degree in classical civilizations because “I was already passionate about law and culture. He has one semester left before graduating from McGill University with a degree in agriculture and anthropology.
The pandemic has kept the maximum volunteers helping in the gardens, but not Georgia Jerkovic. She grew up on the plateau and frequented Sun Youth. Sometimes his circle of relatives has benefited from emergency food baskets.
“They were there for me and I sought to pay for it,” he said.
As member engagement co-ordinator for Foresters Financial, one of her jobs is to create volunteer opportunities for policyholders. She contacted Sun Youth about helping out — and learned they were thinking of starting a food bank garden. That was seven years ago.
Jerkovic and his fellow volunteers made paintings to clean an area covered in open-air undergrowth, at the Youth Warehouse at Sun St-Laurent in Rise of Liesse and, in their first year, built 25 flower beds and planted vegetables. The following year, they expanded the lawn and installed an irrigation system. Today, the lawn has about 40 beds.
Foresters materials plants, materials and equipment to maintain the lawn for both a year; In non-COVID time, volunteers help the season. Normally, Jerkovic’s involvement in a task ends after 3 years, but “because it’s so close to my heart,” Foresters continued his involvement. And she’s on the lawn one and both weeks.
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