The Lowdown

Westmore Organic Gardens is a real place, or will be. It's in the planning stages right now, but we hope to be growing real, live veggies soon! And not too long after that, we'll be enjoying fresh, organic, as-local-as-can-be produce. And for dirt-cheap, too. But perhaps I should backtrack a bit.

My name is Kristina, and I'm a student at Colorado State University, in Fort Collins, Colorado. My major is Horticultural Food Crops Production with a focus on Organic Agriculture. I am going to be a senior next fall (yay!) and I am in the University Honors Program (whoop-de-doo) - combined, those two things mean that I have to create and carry out an honors thesis. Well, Westmore Organic Gardens - WOG from here on out - is my honors thesis.

I will give full credit to my friend Anne Marie, an instructor in the Honors Dept, for coming up with the idea for WOG. Last fall, we were discussing ideas for my thesis, and the idea for an NSA just popped out of her brain. An NSA is very similar to a CSA, except that it stands for Neighborhood Supported Agriculture instead of Community Supported Agriculture. Anne Marie offered me the use of her yard and funds, which was just incredible, because I am a poor college student who lives in an apartment building in downtown Fort Collins.

We won't be doing a full-blown NSA, though, because the process of growing the veggies is far more important to us and to this project than is the idea of revenue. However, we do want to make sure that community has a place in the project, so we'll do our best to involve Anne Marie's neighbors, be that through begging for their volunteered assistance with weeding or through selling some veggies to them.

One important thing to note is that WOG is going to be a permanent establishment, at least in the foreseeable future. Although I'll be graduating next spring (yay!), I might stick around town for a while before heading back home to the East Coast, and in that case I'll surely be helping with WOG, Round Two. Even if I go directly back East, without passing Go or collecting $200, I have heard it directly from Anne Marie that she wants to continue with WOG. Good thing too, because I doubt anyone is going to want to put all that sod back on her yard.

Well, thanks for reading! More to come soon.

WOG out.