CHICO — Pamm Larry, a member of the board of directors at the Butte County Local Food Network, said 2023 was a banner year for the organization.
The group’s purpose is to make more food available, economically, to more people; planting gardens is one of the best ways to accomplish this. The organization promotes the “1,000 Acres More” project, which if accomplished, the group’s website said, “can feed every person in Butte County healthy fruits and vegetables each year.”
With food prices rising, network officials said the idea of growing more on available property is an effective way to provide citizens with fresh foods with very low transportation costs, if any.
“We don’t have to wait for the government. We don’t have to try to convince farmers who are already busy to switch,” the group’s website said. “We can do this in our back yards, our community, school, church and organization gardens. In fact, we probably have a lot more garden land in production than we can imagine.”
Then, for people who live in remote areas and don’t have easy access to fresh produce, the Farmers Marketmobile takes freshly and locally grown fruits and vegetables to those communities such as Yankee Hill, 2 to 4 p.m. Saturdays, and at 10 a.m. Sundays in Magalia until most of the food is gone.
The network received a grant in 2020 from the Butte Non Profit Business Stabilization Program office to establish the Farmers Marketmobile. Customers can pay with cash, credit cards or debit cards.
Finally, there are several educational series scheduled for 2024, starting with the “Treelicious Info-mational Series” in January. It will offer presentations on trees with topics such as pruning, care, what grows best here, and recipes using tree pieces and parts, to name just a few.
February brings the annual “Let’s Grow” event series, with the 14th annual Seed and Scion Swap leading the list. All events focus on growing-related subjects.
The fourth annual Garden Blitz is set to take place in the spring, with Chico and Gridley locations taking place in early April; Oroville and Paradise will host events in late April.
To join the Garden Blitz, interested individuals can purchase garden packages; each contains a wood box, soil, plants, hardware cloth and mulch. “Scholarship”-type awards of packages are available as well. Then, community volunteers come to the home sites and install the gardens, and the garden owner then gets to grow fresh food.
Visit www.bclocalfood.org for summaries of all the initiatives and events the network offers.
