Bulletin E-Edition:
more photosMickie Laird, 51, works in the garden at Nativity Lutheran Church in Bend on Tuesday afternoon. Laird, who lives in a dilapidated trailer, weeds and waters the plants and helps harvest the produce. Most of the vegetables go to the church's food bank or get donated to people in need.
Photos by Andy Tullis / The Bulletin
GIVING BACK, NOT GIVING UP
When Mickie Laird needed help, she turned to Nativity Lutheran Church. There, she started working at a community garden, which has provided stability in her life — and given her a chance to help others in need.
By Kate Ramsayer / The Bulletin
Published: October 01. 2009 4:00AM PSTThe cornstalks are dried out and the sunflowers withered, but Mickie Laird was still hard at work tending Nativity Lutheran Church's community garden this week, picking beans and finding hidden vegetables.
“Oh, there's a zucchini. I knew there had to be at least one,” she said before discovering three small, green pumpkins in a nearby row.
But a tour of the garden in southeast Bend includes more than just a list of veggies in season — Laird can rattle off who the cabbage and kohlrabi helps.
“This is the NeighborImpact section,” Laird said. “We've got some green beans, and we did have beets but we gave them to the food bank in La Pine.”
Much of the salad greens and fresh vegetables grown in the garden has been donated to those in need. And Laird, who spent hours each day this summer tending the garden, is one of the people the garden serves. She became homeless more than three years ago. Most of her food comes from her plots in the garden she tends and the church's food bank.
And the garden has brought stability to her life, she said.
“It's been giving me a lot of peace. ... I'm really enjoying this,” said Laird, 51. “It's a good feeling to be able to help somebody, kind of like the church helped me.”
Laird had been living in a homeless camp off of China Hat Road in a leaky trailer. She works part time as a baker but had run out of money to pay rent. She made some bad choices and had some run-ins with the law as well because of people living with her, she said.
“It's all a lesson. Watch who you hang out with,” Laird said.
Living in the homeless camp could get scary at times, she said, and although most of her neighbors there were nice, a couple people came in and caused trouble. After a cold winter at the camp, gunfire behind her trailer and, ultimately, the closure of the homeless camp, she got in touch with Nativity Lutheran.
“I ran into a spot and had nowhere to go,” she said. “I was crying. Richard (Berg, a member of Nativity Lutheran Church) said, ‘Come out here, and we'll see what we can do.'”
The church had been working with people camped at the China Hat site, said Berg, who is also on the board of Habitat for Humanity.
At one point during the winter of 2007, two dozen people were sleeping in the church to get out of the cold, he said. And congregation members have also helped send one of the former China Hat residents to Illinois, where he had family and friends.
“We're trying to empower people,” Berg said. “We're a small blip on a big radar screen.”
Then, about a year ago, Bend developer Jan Ward donated $10,000 to Nativity Lutheran to build a community garden, Berg said.
And this spring, the congregation pitched in to build planting beds, offer advice on how to mix soils to help things grow in east Bend's powdery ground, and plant seeds.
“Once we said we wanted a community garden, people said yes and came out of the woodwork,” he said.
And Laird put her green thumb to work.
She's always been a gardener, learning from her mom and grandmother, whose family homesteaded in the Sisters area. Even when she was living at the China Hat Road camp, she built raised beds and packed in water for her zucchinis and tomatoes, Laird said.
“Ever since I was a little kid, I've loved growing things,” she said.
This summer, she woke up every morning around 5 a.m. to water the garden before her part-time job, then spent afternoons watering, weeding and tending not only to her plants and the ones dedicated to food banks, but the plots of other community members as well.
She picked lettuce so a family with two children could have salad, and gave vegetables from her own plot to others who needed the fresh produce.
“It was awesome, seeing all these plants here, turning it to green,” Laird said.
The garden is chemical-free, and Laird laughed as a half-dozen chipmunks scampered into the 2,000-square-foot garden, one sitting on its haunches nibbling on a green leaf.
“All the critters around here are eating well,” she said.
On Tuesday, she was looking forward to a visit from a youth program, during which she would teach the kids how to clean up the garden, and collect seeds and save them for planting next year.
Laird and Nativity Lutheran members have big plans for next season's garden.
The ground is cleared to double the garden's size, and new fencing and posts are ready to be raised.
One church member has volunteered to build little plastic greenhouses over the vegetable beds, Berg said, hopefully helping to stave off the frost and extend the growing season.
“The bigger garden will be great,” Laird said.
And when Berg mentions they're going to have to figure out a way to preserve some of the produce, she jumps in to offer her canning skills.
“I used to do 1,000 jars a year,” she said.
Nativity Lutheran also has plans for an orchard between the church and Knott Road — more than 30 semi-dwarf apple, pear, plum and peach trees will be planted on the site this spring, Berg said.
The expansions will allow the church to help more people through its food bank, he said.
“We've got 700 different people that come to the food bank,” he said. “A lot more of them will be walking out with fresh produce.”
This year, most of the produce went to the church's food bank, he said, but boxes also went to La Pine, where Christina Pillado set up a booth at the Saturday market and handed out the vegetables to people who needed them.
“We just had a table filled with produce, and had the brochures about the community garden,” Pillado said. “I think maybe about 15 different people came by and were so grateful for the produce and thought it was such a great idea.”
She's hoping to maybe have a plot in the new, expanded garden next year.
And Laird is already thinking about how to lay out the beds. In the meantime, she's still only working 12 hours a week as a baker, and Berg and others are trying to help find her a replacement for her leaky trailer.
A lifelong cook, Laird said she eventually wants to open her own catering wagon.
“I'm not looking to get rich, just to make it, maybe help a few others along the way,” she said. “A lot of people need a hand up.”
Kate Ramsayer can be reached at 541-617-7811 or at kramsayer@bendbulletin.com.
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