Year-End Push Re-Seeds Equity and Learning Garden
Last fall, we relocated our Equity and Learning Garden to its new home on Arbol Farm, just outside of Paonia on Lamborn Mesa. And we’ve got big plans for this space in 2024 and beyond, and already planning for our spring workshops and other activities.
We also are engaged with creating the space that will welcome the community to participate in events and experience our new garden as it grows. This started with relocating our timberframe classroom to host future events. We are grateful for the assistance we received in doing so. We have now moved on to different garden and site design, integrating a variety of concepts and ideas.
Late last fall, the Colorado Farm & Food Alliance kicked off reimaging this space with a “reseeding” campaign to raise money toward installation of demonstration gardens, irrigation and finishing landscaping so we can offer a full slate of workshops and other events and projects this upcoming season. As 2023 drew to a close, generous donors contributed over $5600 toward this project through two online campaigns via Colorado Gives Day and SeedMoney.org.
The SeedMoney.org campaign was a challenge grant, with matching funds offered to the community garden and other local food campaigns that raised the most money for their projects. We were thrilled to come in 45th out of 635 organizations, which earned us additional matching funds.
We also earned a “Strong Finish” bonus by coming in 17th for funds raised in the final week of the campaign, which was a visible sign of support from our community! For our first year raising funds through Colorado Gives Day and its portal, we also exceeded our expectations. We are so grateful for the support from our community and beyond for this project and to both these great organizations for helping us amplify and boost this effort.
As part of our upcoming garden development, we will also be installing a garden path with pavers, made locally by Delta Brick and Climate Company, our greatly valued supporters and partners. These pavers will commemorate initial donors to this garden and we are pleased to be able to finally give them a home in our new location.
We are enthused to add Colorado Farm & Food Alliance’s offerings to Arbol Farm’s legacy of community events, which have included the Valley’s Arbol Farmers Market (now at Paonia Town Park), biodynamic trainings with Viva la Vida Foundation, and hands-on workshops with natural builders in the valley.
