NORWAY — The Alan Day Community Garden (ADCG) is in its second year of partnership with the Oxford County Wellness Collaborative (OCWC) in an effort to build more connections between people by building community gardens in more places. 

At the three-acre site on Whitman Street, the Alan Day Community Garden has welcomed people to grow their own garden plots since 2010. Gardeners rent plots of various sizes, and the ADCG provides tools, compost, soil and water. A series of free workshops and events across the growing season provides knowledge and guidance for gardeners looking to improve their skills.

Executive Director Rocky Crockett has seen the benefit of growing food together as a community over the past eight years. “We know both from recent scientific studies and from our own human experiences that connections with members of our community, and not feeling alone or isolated, is equally important for our long-term health outcomes as the nutritional value and quality of the food we eat,” said Crockett. “Community gardens bring together the best of both aspects, offering connection, cooperation, support and an abundance of nutritious, affordable food. The ADCG has made a remarkably positive difference in the lives of many youth and adults in our community.”

The Oxford County Wellness Collaborative is made up of individuals and organizations from diverse backgrounds and locations across the county, working together to improve health and well being in the communities.

In 2015, the collaborative convened a county-wide conversation about what was getting in the way of good health and strong communities. The root causes that county residents identified are isolation, disconnection and not feeling valued.

Further community conversations revealed that there were also some priority health issues that needed to be addressed — namely obesity and substance use disorder. The collaborative worked with members to identify existing organizations that were already addressing the root causes and health issues, which could have greater impact with more resources and capacity.

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OCWC had received grant funding form the Maine Health Access Foundation (MEHAF) to shepherd the community conversations and work with members to build a plan to address health improvement. MEHAF approved the plan to receive implementation funding, which helps support the work of OCWC partner initiatives like the Alan Day Community Garden.

Last year, the partnership established raised bed gardens at two Head Start sites operated by Community Concepts. Children in the Head Start program helped to water the gardens and had fresh vegetables grown outside of their classrooms. Work parties to build the raised beds, fill them with soil, and plant them brought together teachers and families. The ADCG’s Youth Leadership Program was instrumental in the work too. Youth leaders, trained to garden and given skills to deepen their connections to community and their civic responsibility, helped to build and install the raised beds, and to maintain the garden at the Norway Early Learning Center on Lynn Street.

In the coming weeks, the Community Garden and Wellness Collaborative will work to establish a school garden at the Agnes Gray School in West Paris. The process of building and planting the garden will again bring people together at the garden and at the school, where families will help plan the new garden beds at a special event on Wednesday, May 23.

Grant funds will help purchase materials for raised beds, which will be built by staff and volunteers at the ADCG, with help from the Wellness Collaborative. The Agnes Gray PTO is supplying soil for the gardens, and the school has been raising seedlings to transplant into the beds. Additional seedlings and seeds will be purchased to round out the gardens, and the Wellness Collaborative will help supply materials to make the gardens engaging and interactive for students and the community. School families will help to maintain the gardens over the summer.

The staff, board members and volunteers at the garden are working to make their location in Norway an even greater resource for the community. With the key support of ADCG board member Emma DayBranch, daughter of Alan Day, for years they have been building up a replica of “The Food Project,” located in the Boston area. The Food Project trains youth to grow food for their community as part of a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share program, in which families can purchase a “share” of the annual harvest.

DayBranch visited the Food Project when she was a student at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School and has been committed to the vision for the Oxford Hills area ever since. ADCG will be able to make this vision a reality; this summer the ADCG is expanding both their Youth Leadership Program and their CSA, to create more opportunities for youth and increase access to healthy, affordable organic food for local families.

The CSA program is already full for 2018, but families can still get on the waiting list for 2019. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are accepted to purchase CSA shares, as well to purchase vegetables during CSA pickup times on Saturdays starting in late June.

Information about all these programs can be found on alandaycommunitygarden.org ?or by visiting the gardens.

Head Start families and Youth Leadership Program participants from the Community Garden are shown working together to plant raised beds at Community Concepts’ Riley Center Head Start site in Paris in 2017.


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