After many years of trying to kickstart a N’Quatqua community garden, Teresa Sampson is basking in the bounty of a successful season.
“It needed to be refurbished,” she said of the soil and the space. “It needed lots of nutrition to be put into the ground. When I first started, it was really sad. A lot of weeds were coming out. But this year was so awesome. It produced so much.”
The nine-by-21-metre garden, located in the Anderson Lake-adjacent community near the Health Station, produced sunflowers, corn, tomatoes, beets, two different types of beans, potatoes, carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, spaghetti squash, and kale—to name a few vegetables—this summer.
“What did best? This year was my first year growing pumpkins,” she added. “I’ve been trying to grow pumpkins for my kids here. They’ve always turned out small, but this year, they got so huge.”
Sampson wound up making eight deliveries to elders, single moms, and bachelors in the N’Quatqua Nation over the summer.
“A lot of people were quite amazed when I was pulling stuff out to deliver it to them,” she said.
Whatever was left over from that week’s harvest would go to the grocery store for community members to take.
Not only did the garden provide fresh food for the community, it also inspired many people—along with the COVID-19 pandemic—to try their hand at gardening.
“[The pandemic] was an eye-opener for a lot of the members,” Sampson said. “They tried putting gardens in this year. They’ve had some success … I’ve been trying to get people’s minds going; what they can receive from planting seeds. With COVID happening, they’ve started to realize they don’t have to go to town to get veggies they need.”
For her part, Samspon logged plenty of hours in the community garden this summer—sometimes with help from her husband, sons, 84-year-old mother, and even her five-year-old granddaughter—with community members also dropping in to help.
There was something special about spending one-on-one time with people working in the dirt, she said.
“Every time they’d come out there, they’d see me and join me. It was like their little alone-time chat with me to ask me questions about the garden,” she said.
While it took five or six years of work to finally get a garden that was successfully producing, Sampson expects that with the land ready, next year will be a little easier.
“My hubby goes over there and rototills for me with the tractor then my boys go over and help fix the fence; my family does a lot of volunteer work there when I need stuff done,” she added. “My family does put a lot of work into the community garden because we really want to inspire the community with what they can receive from it.”
But, the work isn’t over for the season just yet.
“I picked the last bit of the carrots in the first snowfall that came,” Sampson said. “I still don’t have a break yet. I still have to put in the garlic. The ground is still really nice, so I’ll be getting over there.”
