There’s no better time to be outside, eat good food, and enjoy the company of neighbors and friends than on a summer evening.
If you rub your hand through the basil in Katie Whelan’s little raised garden bed the smell seems to float up, thick in the warm air.
“I originally really wanted to have okra. So I started with the okra,” Whelan describes. “Moved to the tomatoes. Then we’ve got cucumbers.”
Whelan has a couple plots here, in the McDonough Community Garden on Richmond’s southside.
She’s here tonight -- along with about two dozen other people -- for what organizer Duron Chavis calls a “Feast de Resistance.”
“We’re resisting food inequity, we’re resisting food injustice. We’re resisting corporate control over the food system,” Chavis says.
He started this particular garden seven years ago. Now, through his job at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, he creates spaces like this throughout the city.
“The most important thing to me is just community cohesion and community agency, and building relationships across all types of divides,” says Chavis. “Everybody has to eat.”
Tonight this group eats together, sitting under a brand new pergola at tables decorated with local flowers, tiki torches keeping the bugs at bay.
Chef Shayola the Artisan prepares the vegan meal, pouring cumin and coriander into a big bowl of quinoa and fresh parsley.
After dinner Duron Chavis leads the group on a tour of the small space. A triangle of lush green at the intersection of three streets. While people have their own plots, it’s also understood that the produce is a bit of a free for all.
“The essence of this is that it was designed to be a way of increasing access to healthy food,” Chavis says. “If we don’t say anything about the squirrels and the birds, how do we get mad at the people you know coming by the garden and picking stuff?”
Nikiya Ellis, Chavis’s partner, has managed the garden for the past three years. She runs programs for kids in the space. And while she loves the communal aspect, there’s something about solitude that’s powerful as well.
She loves to come here on her own, put her headphones in, and just get to work pulling weeds.
“It’s just like meditation,” Ellis says. “It’s something to be proud of… You start a seed, you watch it grow, you get to eat it, give it to your neighbors.”
Connection. That’s what Shayola the artisan appreciates about the space.
“It’s nice to walk down the block… and say ‘Hi’ and mean it. A lot of people we walk, we don’t even look at each other,” says Shayola. “But to have a meal with someone, to sit next to someone and converse. For me it’s everything.”
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
