The first green beans, onions, radishes, herbs lettuce, beets, corn and chard at Operation Feed’s new community garden in San Juan Cosalá have been devoured with gusto. Garbanzo beans and squash will be ready very soon.
In the perfect climate of Lake Chapala, the program’s new gardeners can grow and harvest vegetables continuously. As soon as one crop is harvested, another is planted.
A grassroots, non-profit program, Operation Feed has been helping families in San Juan Cosalá for 25 years by distributing basic food packages (despensas) each week to about 100 area families identified to be in serious need.
Hoping to create ways that the able-bodied Operation Feed recipients could become more self-sufficient, volunteers began brainstorming ideas. From those meetings came the concept of a community garden where the 200 men, women and children in the Operation Feed families could learn to plant and maintain a garden to produce food for the program, as well as learn skills so to grow additional vegetables at home.
Jocotepec Mayor Juan Francisco O’Shea Cuevas pledged his full support to the project and San Juan Cosalá community leader and long-time Operation Feed supporter Agustín Vazquez, the owner of Restaurant Viva Mexico, loaned the group a large unused tract of land.
The Ajijic Garden Club and the Culinary Arts Society of Ajijic (CASA) also jumped on the bandwagon, donating money to plow the tract of land, and buy hand tools, two water tanks, nutrients to balance the soil and the all-important seeds.
Hoping to create ways that the able-bodied Operation Feed recipients could become more self-sufficient, volunteers began brainstorming ideas.
Work began in the garden in May 2014. The vegetables are all grown organically – no pesticides or commercial fertilizers are used. About 15 to 20 people come every Saturday to plant, maintain and harvest.
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