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Let the growing begin

U.N.I.T.Y. Garden begins 10th year with overview of program starting Wednesday

A LONG-TERM HARVEST — Isaac Wiegmann, left, a local organic farmer and volunteer, and U.N.I.T.Y. Garden co-founders Sister Mary O’Connor and Justice Slappy are looking forward to the start of the 10th year for the gardening program that aims to create authentic experiences with nature that educate, inform and inspire healthiness in mind, body and soul. The garden is located on Dock Street, Steubenville, between Fifth and Sixth streets, and will be the site Wednesday of an overview of the program, beginning at 5:30 p.m. Anyone is welcome to attend. -- Janice Kiaski

STEUBENVILLE — When it comes to U.N.I.T.Y. Garden launching its 10th year this week, Justice Slappy mentions a slogan.

“Team work makes the dream work,” says the co-founder of what is an acronym for Understanding the Need In Today’s Youth.

And that’s because the potential, he and co-founder/project manager Sister Mary O’Connor advocate, goes far beyond seeds planted, a garden tended and fruits and vegetables grown in one spot.

The harvest, they say, can be a long-term one that produces boundless benefits as more participants unite and come on board to nurture its success.

An overview of the U.N.I.T.Y. Garden program will be offered Wednesday beginning at 5:30 p.m. at the garden site itself located on Dock Street between Fifth and Sixth streets on about a fourth of an acre. It is where the weekly sessions will continue at 5:30 p.m. each Wednesday through the fall.

That’s when Slappy and O’Connor will explain specifics about the program, its mission identified as “to create authentic experiences with nature that educate, inform and inspire healthiness in mind, body and soul” and its vision “to create an environment for today’s youth, assisting them to reach their full healthy potential.”

“On June 7 we will begin our weekly classes,” Slappy said. “On this day we will do an intro to urban gardening and how it can benefit the community as a whole. No registration is required — just come down and meet the team and take a tour of the garden,” he said, referring to Team U.N.I.T.Y. volunteers.

A promotional flyer notes the program’s objective as developing “an alternative for today’s youth, veering them from the negative influences in our communities. We will focus on the development of positive role models, work ethics, life skills and open the world of seed and harvest to prospective students.”

But families and anyone with an interest “to build community one seed at a time” are welcome to attend and be involved at the garden, an oasis for growing, learning, being creative, praying and just having fun.

The U.N.I.T.Y Garden program aims to improve the nutrition and health of its program participants and help develop a lifelong interest in food production and healthy eating habits, as it stimulates social interaction, beautifies neighborhoods and teaches youth entrepreneurial skills by selling produce, for instance, at local farmers’ markets.

It is a joint effort where friends and neighbors — a movement to put the neighbor back in the neighborhood — share responsibilities and the rewards of their harvest, according to Slappy.

The U.N.I.T.Y. Garden was borne a decade ago out of the now-defunct group B.A.S.I.C. Circle, an acronym for Brothers and Sisters Intelligencia Crew. It was an organization, Slappy said, that promoted events to uplift the community and bring people together.

“We were in B.A.S.I.C. Circle, and we used to do work on different projects in helping out in the community, and that’s how I came to be involved in this,” O’Connor said, suggesting gardening as a project, something that related to and gave back to nature.

Slappy was looking for a project to honor his uncle, the late Leroy Slappy III, who planted in him, he said, the desire to bring people together.

Though Slappy was skeptical at first of a gardening project, it took off the first year and took root, too.

“The garden is growing — it gets bigger every year,” said Slappy during a recent interview that included O’Connor and Isaac Wiegmann, an organic farmer and garden consultant who came on board to offer his expertise.

Featuring everything from tomatoes, peppers, kale, lettuce and herbs to pumpkins, flowers, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries, the garden provides an outdoor classroom for youth to connect with nature and learn responsibility in caring for plants, according to Slappy.

In its history, the program also has done Flower of Success school assemblies that teach children “that they have to be gardeners or stewards” of themselves as well, of their grades, for example, and “basically using the garden formula in their life,” Slapppy explained.

“We’ve done juice bars where we went in and juiced fruits and vegetables we grew and had healthy events where we danced, played music, and the kids drank the juices from the juice bar,” Slappy said, noting children exposed to healthy eating early in life are more inclined to have a healthy lifestyle as an adult.

Another project has involved taking children to the Farmers’ Market where they sold goods from the garden and were exposed to the business aspect that included marketing and booth permits, for example.

And children have started seeds in classrooms, too, that have been transplanted at the garden in an exercise that helps teach them where food comes from, that French fries, for example, come from potatoes, not McDonald’s, Slappy chuckles.

In explaining “Team Work Makes the Dream Work,” Slappy said, “Without the people there will be no dream. The dream is put together by the people, people put the energy in it,” he said, noting so many people have come together to help the project, from neighbors keeping a watchful eye on it to the fire department providing water to Wiegmann offering expertise and donations from his greenhouse.

Wiegmann grew up in the greenhouse business and has been an organic farmer full time for better than 10 years.

“Making the connection to nature and seeing how nature works has really done wonders for me in my own life and being able to facilitate that for others in the sense of urban gardening is good,” Wiegmann said.

The area “has so much beautiful agriculture land here. Our soil is great, our climate is great, we’re water rich compared to most places producing agricultural for the country, but there’s few farmers who are growing food and then there’s even fewer who are making it available to the local community,” Wiegmann observed.

“We’re a society of consumers, and we need to be a society of producers, and we live in a great place for it,” Wiegmann said.

Slappy said the U.N.I.T.Y. Garden can be the springboard for other gardens to take root as has been the case in recent years, for example, near First Westminster Presbyterian Church.

The garden is a place for serenity and thankfulness, too, according to Slappy.

“There are positive sayings all around the garden,” he noted, pointing out “gratitude rocks that represent being grateful for things you have.”

Slappy said the program appreciates donations of soil, compost soil, seeds, flowers, gloves, outdoor paint, paint supplies, picnic tables and benches, help and interest to use the garden as a place for outdoor classroom activity such as painting or yoga.

“We invite other organizations to come out and share their knowledge. This is a learning process, the best part, we learn so much, you might have a gift to do something so come out and help out,” Slappy said.

It welcomes more family involvement, too.

“If you have a family and want to learn more about growing your fruits and vegetables at your house or eating healthier and learning about plants and their medicinal uses, different things of that nature, come out on that Wednesday,” Slappy encouraged.

The garden is “a place where we want to build community, we want to help enhance the overall quality of the citizens here in the community,” he said.

The fruits of the garden are free for the taking, according to Slappy. “All we ask is the people who do come and pick them, if they just water plants or pull weeds, keep it thriving, that’s all we ask.”

O’Connor said she thinks it’s “crucial at this time especially” to get people more involved in and caring for the environment.

“Some might want to deny that, but global warming is real. We need to get the children educated so they can get back to nature, and all the junk they’re putting in our food, you don’t know if it’s real anymore so I think this generation coming up, they need to know, they need to really get into the Earth, really get into nature and start to be sustainable,” O’Connor said.

“Caring for the Earth and caring for yourself is caring for your community, so it’s cultivating success and healthiness,” Wiegmann said.

Being in the garden brings Slappy joy.

“If I am stressed, I can always go to the garden. It makes me feel good inside,” he said.

“It’s like God is speaking to you and showing you so many different beautiful messages. We just have to have the mind to be able to see it,” he said.

Children need to learn to respect the land now, according to Slappy.

“If we don’t talk to them about respecting the land now, these are the people who are going to be making the laws later on so it’s important that we help them understand nature,” he said.

Slappy expressed gratitude to Valassis Giving Committee of Pittsburgh, Urban Mission Ministries and to all Team U.N.I.T.Y. volunteers for their help in beginning the garden’s 10th season.

For information, call (740) 424-2269; e-mail to teamunity740@gmail.com; or write U.N.I.T.Y. garden at P.O. Box 371, Steubenville OH 43952.

(Kiaski can be contacted at jkiaski@heraldstaronline.com.)

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