Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 14, 1991                   TAG: 9103140291
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: DONNA WHITMARSH/ SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: CHECK                                LENGTH: Medium

FOOD EMPOWERMENT/ A NEW KIND OF GARDEN NEAR CHECK LETS PEOPLE TAKE CHARGE OF

Polly Heiser, 37, one of three master gardeners who run the place, says it's an opportunity for people who don't have the time or space to plant a big garden to provide high-quality organic food for themselves.

"This is community-supported agriculture," she said. "Sharers support the garden and the gardeners and reap the harvest."

The half-acre garden sits on a gentle south-facing slope to catch the sun, against the shelter of a dense woods. Piles of topsoil, manure and compost await the season.

A half-built greenhouse is just down the hill. A tractor waits just inside the barn door pointing outward, like a horse listening for the signal to race.

In community-supported agriculture, Heiser explained, sharers pay for their future harvest at the beginning of the season to help cover high start-up costs. They pick up their food once or twice a week throughout the season. They also work in the garden.

"We are asking sharers to work two days a year in the garden," said fellow gardener Mark Schonbeck, 40. "Of course, if they are unable to work, they may pay an extra fee. Likewise, some people may be able to work more and pay less."

Schonbeck and Heiser and Ron Juftes, 32, form the core group of gardeners on this 111-acre farm in Check, 35 minutes from Blacksburg and Roanoke. Juftes, less talkative than the others, is out working the road with the backhoe.

This summer they will provide vegetables, herbs and flowers from May to October for about 25 sharers. A share provides enough food to feed two people and includes everything from salad vegetables to watermelon and winter squash, basil for pesto and a bouquet of flowers to grace the table.

The master gardeners' experience is extensive. Heiser and Juftes each have 15 years of professional gardening and landscaping, nursery work, tree surgery and agricultural education - "always using organic methods," Heiser emphasized.

Schonbeck comes to organic gardening by way of academia. He has a doctorate in botany and worked for several years for Shell Oil.

"We were experimenting with drugging plants [using chemicals] into production," he said. "But it doesn't work. You can increase yields to a certain point, but then you get a plateau or a decrease."

So he moved on to the New Alchemy Institute in Massachusetts, where he experimented with feeding soils by cover cropping.

"Organic farming is sustainable," Schonbeck said. "That means you give to the land more than you take away. You can farm this way indefinitely without depleting the soil, our most precious natural resource."

"Farming in this country is in real trouble," Heiser added, "because of long-distance shipping and the cost of farming unfarmable land."

Schonbeck agreed.

"Nobody puts a cost on the ecological damage done by modern agriculture. What is the full ecological cost of a truck moving food across the country? Think about the exhaust, the use of fuel," he said.

"And the ecological cost of the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. The soils are depleted. Water tables are dangerously low in the Great Plains and in California, the two largest agricultural areas in the country."

"Farmers are at the mercy of this system," Heiser said. "It is impossible for them to compete with large-scale conventional methods in a way that is sustainable and non-destructive."

She believes their shared system provides a way around these problems.

"Community-supported agriculture is a way for people to support the farmer for the benefit of good, clean food," she said. "It's a way for them to take charge of their food supply."

"Responsibility and empowerment go together," Schonbeck added. "There are some responsibilities we must take or lose in the long run."

Today, there is the greenhouse to be built and the road to be improved. Like all farmers, their work is never done.

Heiser, Juftes and Schonbeck are planting for 50 people and several shares are still available. For information call 703-651-3228 evenings.