Growing More than Vegetables
Durango, Colorado · By Charles E. Jones and Rose Houk
When Bob Kauer purchased thirty-six acres of an historic farm east 
of Durango, Colorado, in 2001, he wanted to live a dream. He would have Gaited Morgan horses frolicking in pastures (which he got), and he would raise a bountiful organic garden beside the Florida River. Even more, he desired a place where the community could tend and harvest copious amounts of produce, with enough left over to give away to charities. Thus, Bob provided an acre of land and the water for a garden where “we share the work and we share the produce.”
Community gardens aren’t a new concept, but in the Shared Harvest Community Garden the word “community” definitely deserves a capital C. Member households work the soil, plant the seeds, pull the weeds, train the beans, and perform other necessary tasks. An old dairy in Bob’s barn has been converted to an office, and two managers visit once a week, keeping a work log of tasks that need doing. A small steering committee of garden members makes the seasonal decisions about what to plant and what techniques to try. “We’re completely open to somebody who wants to try something,” Bob says.
Each household labors in the garden, takes home as much organic produce as it needs, and shares modest expenses. After only two years of operation, with some forty households already participating, the steering committee determined that the single acre of ground could support nearly sixty households. It’s first-come, first-served as far as who gets to participate, and Bob happily reports that so far no one has come to harvest without sharing in the work.
Even with that many households carting away bushels of vegetables, the word “community” holds a broader meaning here. “Our goal,” Bob explains, “is to always produce more than we need so that we have enough to give away to the soup kitchen, the women’s safe house, and the homeless shelter. As long as we have excess to give away, that makes people feel good. People are drawn to the garden for that charitable purpose.” To Bob’s surprise, the garden has yielded enough food not only to feed many households, but also to deliver large quantities to worthwhile organizations. The one thing they do not do, as a policy, is sell the produce.
What motivated Bob Kauer to organize this garden? A Nebraskan by birth, he says he has always been interested in gardening and always had a small organic garden. Still, he wanted a big garden, but never wanted to do all the work and really didn’t need the money. “This is a way that I can have that same thing: a great big garden and a bunch of people to get it accomplished, and I get to look at it every day, to live with it, and of course eat out of it too.” Besides, he adds, “this kind of people are wonderful people to be around.”
Upon arrival, everyone is greeted by Satchel, Bob’s brown-and-white, fetch-obsessed Springer spaniel. The fence that encloses the acre surrounds many different textures and vibrant colors. Freshly weeded paths stripe the garden, while the other rows, 250 feet long, will be weeded before the end of the week. Green seedlings poke though holes in black plastic mulch that reduces evaporation and keeps down weeds.
Each year, several thousand seedlings are raised in a professional greenhouse by one garden member. Bob ticks off a litany of some of the crops that have been grown: seventeen different kinds of winter squash, six kinds of summer squash; six eggplant, seven pepper, and eight tomato varieties; many types of greens, “a lot of garlic,” and even watermelon and cantaloupes – a real coup at an elevation of 6,500 feet in southwest Colorado.
In addition to using plant starts, the garden members installed an efficient drip irrigation system fed by Bob’s well. Planting begins as soon as the ground can be worked, usually in April, with cold-weather greens such as kale, spinach, chard, and snow peas. The thin plastic mulch helps hasten ripening of warm-season crops like corn, squash, peppers, and eggplants. The garden continues to produce into October, and after a big harvest celebration it is “put to bed” in November.
A large old apple tree, enduring the years, occupies the center of the garden. Children’s toys sit underneath, waiting for the next youngster who’ll play while mom or dad works. Some children may help pull weeds, or explore the old hay barn, look for wildlife along the river, or relish the mysteries of the surrounding forest. Gardeners frequently gather for work parties or potlucks, talking, sharing food, and playing. They are a diverse group, from teenagers to people in their seventies. “We have people with all different levels of skills in the garden,” Bob observes. “We have people that know very little about gardening, and then we have people with PhDs who teach horticulture at the college and others who are master gardeners.”
Even the compost pile is a joint endeavor. Each household brings biodegradable wastes to build soil. Garden members collected several hundred bags of leaves from town to add to the compost. Local businesses have also provided materials. The garden is on former pasture land and so the soil was good to begin with. “We were very fortunate with our plot of ground,” Bob explains, “because it had very few rocks in it. It is sandy loam with just a little bit of clay in it. It needed no amendments and had a pH of 7. But it had every weed seed that had been around here in a hundred years. It seemed that every weed seed germinated the first year when we started adding water, and we were almost overtaken by weeds.”
Still, he was lucky, Bob says. The acre was already fenced, the soil was perfect, and there was a producing well right next to it. Bob put up the capital for the irrigation system, to be paid back slowly. Such an up-front infusion of money would likely be necessary if someone wanted to start a similar garden elsewhere, he observes – as well as “somebody who’s really interested in seeing it happen.”
Bob Kauer had the land, the water, the vision, and a philosophy of sharing. But after his initiation, the garden members from Durango households took over and made it happen. They’ve also created an even more seamless experience for local groups and school classes. “The young kids have come out to harvest and take the food to the homeless shelter, where they cooked it for the homeless,” Bob adds.
Bob Kauer’s ambitious, generous vision of building a beautiful community garden has quickly been accomplished. And it can serve as model for others who really want to put the word “community” into their own gardens.
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This is one of many stories from the Four Corners region that were printed in A New Plateau: Sustaining the Lands and Peoples of Canyon Country, edited by Peter Friederici and Rose Houk. This book was a project of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University and Renewing the Countryside, with assistance from the Museum of Northern Arizona. A New Plateau can be purchased at the Renewing the Countryside online bookstore or the Northern Arizona University bookstore, or request it at your local bookstore.