The Garden
The community was able to acquire a grant through the assistance of Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Iniative in Okmulgee, Oklahoma for a greenhouse and hoophouse. The USDA grant is called, "Creating Healthy Communities."
Pictured right (Back to front) - Yahv Williams, Riley Floyd, Storie Snow, Mehenwa Williams and little sister Tihen plant cabbage.
We are a rural pilot project who are receiving garden, greenhouse, and hoophouse training through extension services of the Lane and Kerr Center.
We have also received training in:
- Horticulture, organic methods of gardening, no-till gardening, soil conservation, and plasti-culture training;
- Raising berries, strawberries, and fruit trees; and
- Networking with other farmers who have diversified their farms with other projects as poultry, beef and pork.
This year on the last week of March, we put our grandchildren and their friends to work planting cabbage in the garden.
Involving Youth
Everybody works in the garden prior to harvest, we are in the greenhouse seeding starting in February, when plants are ready to go into the ground we are all in the garden. This year we will have the young ones helping, our goal is to teach them how to work, how to take care of it, harvest, and eat fresh grown vegetables and fruits.
We educate ourselves on climate change as well as the environment. In addition, we have networked with the Wilson School and its Ag program to assist in putting our greenhouse up. We network within the community to strengthen our vegetable production by learning from one another.
Greenhouse Picture, from left to right. Sac and Fox tribal citizens, Francis Grant Jr., Channa Tiger, USDA program with Sac and Fox Nation and Muscogee (Creek) citizen and Wilson Indian Community Chair, Barton Williams.
Channa Tiger and Francis Grant, Jr., from the Sac and Fox Nation, visited the Wilson Indian Community Garden last week and met with Rita and Barton Williams. Tiger and Grant are gearing up to create their own tribal community garden. They visited the greenhouse, hoop house, and garden, and then we toured another gardeners’ place. Robyn Withrow, who lives in the community, had just had her plasti-culture put down.
The visiting Sac and Fox citizens are looking to help their tribe become food sustainable and they are networking with other tribes who are doing the same work in their communities as well. One of the main reasons we both agreed upon for growing our gardens is because of the health diseases among our people, young and old, that are quickly taking our people.
Pictured right - Barton Williams on tractor working last years garden to prepare for this year.
Out of our visit came the idea to start networking with tribes across the state of Oklahoma who are interested in developing their own food systems. The idea is to share our knowledge with each other about today’s agricultural practices and share knowledge of how our native people used to produce their foods. Realizing our lands and climate may vary across the Oklahoma plains, we could be a resource to one another and also to those who would want to raise animals and grow pasture crops.