Gardening Class Held At Anowarakowa Arena

On the Friday before Memorial Day, a beginning gardening class was held in the Turtle Room in the Anowarakowa Arena. Nola Benedict, from Economic Development, as well as Peggy Pyke-Thompson, from the Department of Environment, and Sweets Jacobs, from Community Health, organized the event.

The first presenter was Mark Leahy from the Indian Agricultural Program of Ontario. Leahy interfaces with natives in Ontario in agricultural matters. During the class, Leahy gave a presentation about basic topics in gardening such as the information conveyed on the seed packages, types of seeds available, organic gardening, composting, and best practices.

In all it looked like 15 people attended the class where refreshments were served, and they participated in the discussion; with some even cracking a joke or two. In fact, the topic of genetically modified seeds caused a bit of a stir and a lot of discussion. There was also a presentation from Community Health, given by Candi Thomas, regarding sun safety. Thomas said the Friday before Memorial Day was Fry-Day and meant to bring awareness to sun safety for the people present; as they will be out in their gardens and should be sure to take proper precautions.

Benedict has very lofty aspirations for these events. She hopes that looking forward they get bigger and better, and build more awareness. There is also a contest beginning June 7th that the families can participate in, and the winner pool is pretty big, up to 20 families. Benedict said, “we didn’t want the contest to be competitive, like who has the biggest tomato, it’s really just to encourage people to start gardening.” Benedict continued, “The bigger picture down the road is to have families able to do more for themselves, because a lot of people are growing up and they are eating processed foods, and people are not cooking. Young girls don’t know how to cook!”

Looking even more forward and in a positive direction, Benedict said, “What if we eventually get to where we are providing for ourselves and then we could go commercial as well. Then, we are also providing economic wisdom. We can do some of our traditional foods, our own corn, and things like that.”

In all, I was impressed with the offerings, and hope to see many more events like this.