Common Ground Garden seeks volunteers at March 15 meeting

As the planting season gets underway, the Common Ground Garden in Peconic is seeking volunteers to care for the beds throughout the summer and fall. The kickoff meeting is Saturday, March 15, at 10:30 a.m. at the Southold Town Recreation Center (970 Peconic Lane, Peconic). 

“It’s all volunteer work. So we raise crops. One hundred percent of the vegetables in that 100-by-50 garden go to the Center for Advocacy, Support and Transformation,” said Peter Treiber Sr., owner of Treiber Farms, which donated the use of the land for the garden. “We pick three days a week, and whatever we grow, we distribute to them. They love it. Everything gets used, whether it’s the herbs or flowers or everything in between, but mostly fruits and vegetables.”

The garden is celebrating its seventh year of providing fresh vegetables to local families with improvements and projects to help grow even more produce. They plan to dedicate more beds to specific crops and build new compost areas for wood chips, refuse and leftover vegetables. The Rotary Club of Greenport is also underwriting a wash station so volunteers can clean the produce on site. There will be a new, expanded well to connect to the sprinkler system, according to Mr. Treiber. 

Vegetables from the garden go to a number of CAST’s programs, including the on-site food pantry, the mobile pantry, the satellite location on Shelter Island and their “recipe bags,” which contain all the ingredients needed for a particular recipe.

“They’re a vital partner in our efforts to meet the growing need in our community, because there’s such a consistent, sustained donation of such nutritious food,” said Sarina Harley, food relief program director at CAST. “Offering food is not the same as offering nutritious food. It makes a world of difference. We have a lot of children who come through here; we have a lot of elderly people who come through here; and being able to offer things that have a lot of nutrition and are good for people makes the community better.”

In addition to their generous donations, Common Ground also confers with CAST prior to the growing season. “They’ve done it for multiple years in a row about what is best for them to grow for our clients,” said Ms. Harley. So it’s not just about nutrition, it’s also about what ingredients are culturally appropriate, and that’s amazing, because then we’re offering things that people want and use and also is good for their
families.”

As previously reported, the garden began as a church project spearheaded by the Rev. Roger Joslin of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Greenport and Church of the Redeemer in Mattituck. Rev. Joslin was motivated by a desire to provide those who helped to grow the food with access to those same fresh vegetables.

This community garden is there to remind North Forkers that we are all one, Rev. Joslin said in an interview with Suffolk Times in 2022.

“We have so much in abundance here, we are blessed to live in this place,” he said. “We depend a lot on the immigrant community, and people who have less than we do, and everything that we can do beyond providing food, housing is a big issue, to support them because they’re very much a part of the community. They may be new here, but they’re vital to our own wellbeing, we all need to find ways of recognizing that we are all one on this little North Fork.”