This week, people with mental health challenges or substance use disorder often end up in jail. But crisis response teams offer another way. Also, one year after the Mountain Valley Pipeline went into service, people who live directly in the pipeline’s path have received compensation. But not everyone. And, the Sacred Harp songbook gets an update for the first time since the early 1990s.
How Vacant Lots in Charleston Are Transforming Into a School for Farmer-Entrepreneurs
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On a sultry summer evening, three women are killing harlequin beetles in an effort to save the greens at the SAGE micro-farm on Rebecca Street that they landscaped themselves.
Last year, Kathy Moore, Jenny Totten and Meg Reishman completed 18 agriculture and business classes through SAGE, which stands for Sustainable Agricultural Entrepreneurs. Kathy says she loves getting to take home an unlimited supply of fresh vegetables each week.
“Oh my goodness, the green zebra tomatoes were absolutely my favorite. They are just absolutely luscious!” says Kathy, who works a day job, like most of the other growers, outside the SAGE micro-farm. She and the other SAGE growers also earn a few hundred dollars apiece at the end of the year based on the group’s produce sales.
The food is grown on Charleston’s West Side, in a high-crime area with many vacant lots. Over the past two years, the SAGE program has transformed two of these lots into working micro-farms.
New this year is the Rebecca St. garden, with its unusual swirling starburst shape. At the center of the beds of squash, kale and tomatoes is a bright circle of sunflowers, zinnias, basil and cilantro. Kathy is surprised that the garden’s design has been so successful.
“I had no idea that it would be so inviting. So, yeah. It’s a really nice design, and people are excited just to come and look at it.”
Credit Roxy Todd
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Rainbow chard and collard greens have been some of SAGE’s best sellers this year
Credit Roxy Todd
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SAGE sells edible flowers to a local restaurant in Charleston called Mission Savvy. The flower and herbs are grown in a circle at the center of the Rebecca Street garden.
Credit Roxy Todd
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The SAGE program teaches growers like Meg Reischman how to make a business plan and how to choose the most profitable types of produce.
“I was having a difficult time sitting down and figuring out what my break even price was, and whether it was worth growing it or not, making a plan,” Meg says.
Many of the students struggle with these questions, says SAGE instructor Dr. Dee Sing-Knights, Assistant Professor of Agricultural Economics with West Virginia University’s extension services. She teaches the SAGE growers how to manage small businesses and how to market their produce. She tells the growers to make sure the public knows that SAGE’s organic produce might cost a little more than supermarket vegetables, which often come from larger, more mechanized farms.
“I always tell them, you have to tell your customers that listen, the reason this costs more is I squashed my bugs by hand!” says Dr. Singh-Knights. The SAGE growers are also learning to educate more potential customers about the value of spending money inside the community, versus sending the money out of state by buying food at a chain store.
Even if the 18 SAGE graduates never become full time farmers, this morning for breakfast they are probably all making food using at least one ingredient they grew themselves.
This year, the group has seen an increase in the sales of produce and flowers at their local Saturday markets, as more customers are enjoying the fruits of their labor, too.
Wyoming County is one of the state’s most rural. It’s home to about 20,000 residents, but no hospital and zero certified treatment beds, according to the West Virginia Office of Drug Control Policy. As the nation’s opioid overdose epidemic raged, Wyoming County had a prescription overdose death rate of 54.6 per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014 — the highest in the nation.
Some counties are using opioid settlement funds to pay jail bills and in the southern part of the state, the story of one restaurant struggling to recover from February floods.
This week, people with mental health challenges or substance use disorder often end up in jail. But crisis response teams offer another way. Also, one year after the Mountain Valley Pipeline went into service, people who live directly in the pipeline’s path have received compensation. But not everyone. And, the Sacred Harp songbook gets an update for the first time since the early 1990s.
