Community garden will bring produce, awareness to table

Today, Cape Girardeau will celebrate its newest community garden with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. One of four gardens supported by dedicated volunteer Robert Harris and the Cape Girardeau Parks and Recreation Department, the Shawnee Park Community Demonstration Garden and Urban Orchard receives its official welcome at 11 a.m.

The garden was created thanks to revenue from Isle Casino Cape Girardeau, as well as a grant, and provides educational opportunities, the "green thumb" workshop among them. These activities, in conjunction with the garden, are most beneficial because they open eyes to things most of us take for granted. How much time do we spend thinking about what goes into food preparation? Probably very little. Most of us go to the grocery store, roam the aisles, and make our food selections. When we pick up that head of lettuce, do we contemplate the work it took to grow it? Not likely. The community garden, however, awakens an awareness -- and appreciation -- for the process of feeding our families.

Emily Scifers and her husband own Laughing Stalk Farmstead, and she is Cape Girardeau's community garden coordinator and a founder of the Cape Riverfront Market. She obviously knows a thing or two about the gardening process and is already anticipating building on this year's efforts with more activities next year. As for what's still in store this summer, Emily told the Southeast Missourian recently that "a series of free cooking classes at the Shawnee Park Center that focus on cooking food from the garden or farmers market will begin Aug. 18." That's the natural next step in the process. Hey, if people are going to participate in the growing of food, they might as well learn how to prepare it afterward.

The community garden project has several benefits, chief among them being that it changes the way we look at the food we sit down to eat on a daily basis.

An added benefit would be if participants could learn the business aspect of food production by finishing the process at the farmers market, where they would sell it. Now, that's truly enjoying the fruit of one's labor.

Show your support for our community garden by attending today's ribbon-cutting ceremony.