Homegrown gardens yield better nutrition, boost self-esteem

BRISTOL, Va. – All summer and into the fall, they can be found along walls and back porches, in flower beds and plastic pots, anywhere space allows.
They’re the food crops grown by people learning to supplement food stamp dollars with a measure of self-sufficiency.

“It’s getting hard,” said Sharon Shaffer, who started growing an annual garden about eight years ago – when the Washington County Extension Office started the Expanded Food Nutrition Education Program. “A loaf of bread is almost $4, milk is $4. You have kids, they have to eat.”

Shaffer is among dozens now participating and learning to garden through the program, which aims to reduce Medicaid costs by improving nutrition among low-income families.

Program Assistant Dottie O’Quinn said with the economy down, supplies of donated food are spreading thinner and thinner to meet a growing need – so teaching people to grow and preserve their own food is a another way to put a dent in hunger.

“My goal is to teach Mom to eat right in hopes the children will eat right and then we will save Medicaid dollars if we’re healthy,” O’Quinn said.

Working mostly with single-parent families in Bristol and Washington County, Va., O’Quinn said many of her clients are trapped on public assistance by
their circumstances.

“If you have four children you can’t go out and get a job at McDonald’s because you can’t afford to because you’ll lose your food stamps and your Medicaid and your four children will suffer,” O’Quinn said. “There has to be a way we can help the ones who want to help themselves.”

She said many of her clients have never learned to grow a garden or can food – and when they learn they benefit not only in saving money and eating better, but in an improving self-esteem sparked by learning new skills.

The vegetable patches in the program are at public housing complexes, apartment buildings and single-family homes around the area – even tomatoes raised in flower pots when no other space is available.

“If they had not grown it they couldn’t have afforded the tomato because they don’t have the funds,” O’Quinn said. “For a lot of them it’s just the fact that they did it, that they learned to can. These are things they’ve never been able to do in their life, and now they’ve learned to do it, which in turn makes them want to do it again.”

Shaffer, who spends most of her time caring for her handicapped daughter and earns a paltry income cleaning houses when she can, has grown a variety of foods to feed her two daughters – potatoes, green beans, corn, peppers, cabbage – and has shared her knowledge with dozens of others who want to do more for themselves.

“It feels good to help somebody else,” she said. “I like to help other people; I’ve always been like that.”

She said she’s glad for the opportunity to pass along some of the knowledge that helps her stretch her family budget. Others in the program say the same thing.

“It can save me money,” said a 17-year-old girl at a group home in Bristol, where O’Quinn taught gardening and food preservation for the first time this year.

“I can grow it myself and keep it,” the teenager said.

O’Quinn said some of the home’s residents – girls ages 12-21 who come from tough backgrounds – might someday grow gardens of their own.

The 17-year-old, whose name is kept confidential because of her age and situation, said they grew tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, corn, squash,
cucumbers, zucchini and peppers at the home. She said she grew up with a garden and, after being reminded how, she’ll probably grow one in the future.

“I won’t eat green beans from the grocery store; they’re much better out of the garden,” she said.

Plus, “If you don’t have any money and lose your job, you’re still going to have saved stuff from last year to eat.”

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