I have experienced mixed results with community projects. One food Co-op I helped start is still going strong. Another failed after many years. Some collectives of people living near each other dissolved over time. Others have gone on for multiple generations. Some community gardens flourish while others peter out. So, I was particularly interested to see how a project on San Juan Island was holding up while I visited the island for a family reunion in July.
Overmarsh Farm Commons is part of a host of activities taken on by the San Juan Grange, the largest Grange in Washington State. Other activities include a weekly Coffee Hour Wednesday mornings, agricultural training sessions and a booth at the farmers market. The official mission of the Grange is to “support a resilient community”. No doubt that vision is brought into sharper focus by living on an island. Leaving the island or taking a ferry to it generally needs to be arranged in advance. Disruptions can occur because of weather, economics or even mechanical failures or personnel shortages on the ferries.
Agriculture is evolving quickly. Eco agriculture is opening the use of sap analysis, biostimulants, (substances or microorganisms that, when applied to plants, enhance nutrient uptake, improve stress tolerance, and boost crop quality and yield, without directly providing nutrients), cover cropping, foliar sprays and other techniques that increase yield, build soil and cost much less than chemical additives. All this means that education needs to be continual for farmers. The Overmarsh model provides a mechanism for person-to-person agricultural education.
In his monthly letter to members of the San Juan Grange, President Roger Ellison states that “We recognize that combining efforts with others creates synergies, where the result is bigger and better than the sum of the parts. More importantly, though, we derive personal benefits to our mental health from being part of a community. Working with others gets more done and makes you feel good while doing it.” (Full disclosure: Roger Ellison is my brother-in-law.)
One of the benefits of having people with a variety of skills involved in the Grange efforts is that the organization has been able to leverage its legal status and history to garner major support. The land for the commons was secured through a 20-year lease by the San Juan County Conservation Land Bank. Additional funds for fencing, construction and solar-powered irrigation to every plot comes from the Land Bank and from community donations during the San Juan Island Community Foundation SJC Cares campaign at the county fair last summer. Tools to use at the garden have been donated by individuals and are stored on site in a building built with community funds and labor using discarded shipping pallets for framing.
At the farm, I was impressed by the variety of growing techniques in use on the individual plots. One group with animals had their own supply of manure which made for abundant growth. Unique trellises for beans; companion flowers; a separate area for corn so it would not shade row crops… the list goes on and on. The bottom line is that by seeing how each other’s techniques and tricks function side by side in the same soil, the best methods arise naturally. This combination of competition and cooperation is bound to stimulate annual advances in the best methods for crops on that site.
It will doubtlessly also highlight the best seeds for that soil and climate. Since the grange intends to save seeds and distribute them, the whole community will benefit. That part of the project acts just like nature itself does selecting the best combination of plants that creates the most mutual support and growth at any specific location. The diverse set of skills in farming, organizing, grant writing and construction that make up the grange environment which fosters the farm, mimics the diverse range of organisms with different strengths and needs that form a healthy biome. Overmarsh Farm Commons is just getting started. Having been there, I cannot prove that it will last for generations. But I did see the elements that make it stand out from any of the many other collective efforts I have been involved in over my lifetime. It was not an idea that was started and searched for a community. Instead, it was the product of an existing community with a vision for its own future. It was not a singular idea but a part of an interactive web of community activities created to make the community more resilient and also a lot more fun. It will be a worthwhile endeavor to keep an eye on. Northeast Washington shares a kind of rural isolation with San Juan Island. In these challenging times we could all stand to be a little more resilient.