Amy L.
Yelp
Great place! I went with a friend and met Maria the person who started this non-profit organization. Such an amazing person! She told us her story of how she started back in 2010 with just two raised garden beds, and has now multiple locations across Southern California, with the goal of creating local communities of self-sustaining citizens who grow their own food. She does this by reaching and teaching people, particularly low-income families, how to garden and grow their own organic food. This is definitely something I can throw my support behind and participate in!
The community garden is sectioned off into four quadrants, of which many plots of 10 x 20 beds are available. When I checked them out, most looked occupied to me, and a decent number of them were not tended to and full of weeds. So here are the rules:
- Membership costs $30/year via personal or cashier's check made payable to "Huerta del Valle"
- You must sign a short contract agreeing a number of very reasonable and simple things
- You must be a resident of Ontario for this particular location; there are six total locations across Southern California. Check out huertadelvalle.org for more information. Show your proof of residency (your photo ID works)
- Each family is allowed one 10 x 20 bed; you can't have more than one bed, unless you pay an additional $30/year at other locations (i.e. Jurupa Valley location, etc)
- If you don't maintain your assigned garden bed for longer than three weeks, then you forfeit your membership with no notice or warning and the bed is then assigned to another family
- There's an internal farmer's market where Maria and her employed gardeners sell the fruits and vegetables that they harvest from their "intense gardening" sectioned area of the garden. The price is $3/pound for most of the produce. Mondays and Wednesdays are half price since they're slower days.
- You agree not to sell the product that you grow, as it's meant for your family. However you can trade produce with other families!
- You are to volunteer at the community garden a total of 4 hours per month either assisting Andres the head gardener with gardening (weeding, harvesting early in the morning, etc.) or assisting Autumn the volunteer coordinator with running the market (setting out produce for market opening, moving things around, washing used produce bins, cleaning up after market is closed, etc.)
I'm looking forward to spending a decent amount of time here with my family and seeing what kinds of gardening know-how I can glean from my time here. Thanks Maria for your beautiful brainchild!