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BY COLIN HICKEY
Staff Writer 07/01/2008

enlarge Staff photo by David Leaming

FRUITS OF THEIR LABOR:Volunteers Julie Perry and Jim Griffin weed around vegetables growing in a community garden behind Lawrence High School in Fairfield on Monday. Food raised in the garden will go to the Fairfield Interfaith Food Pantry and other recipients.

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The Carpentiers have planted tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers, both hot and green, and they plan to donate any surplus harvest to the Fairfield Interfaith Food Pantry Inc.

For the Carpentiers, it amounts to an opportunity to give back.

Clients of the pantry themselves, they relish the opportunity to help themselves and other families struggling to put nutritious food on the table.

And they are not alone in that regard.

Nancy Marcoux, a director of the pantry, said five of her client families work the community garden that Lawrence High School students started two years ago.

The idea, she said, is to give people the means to help themselves.

"People want to give back," Marcoux said. "When they are sitting here (at the pantry) we try to find them something to do.

"People don't want something for nothing."

An avid gardener herself, Marcoux saw community gardening as an ideal opportunity for the pantry's clients to get quality food through their own sweat and toil.

Paul Carpentier is grateful that opportunity exists.

"It is something that if we had our own piece of land, we would do," he said, "but since we live in town, we aren't able to do that."

Marcoux enlisted the help of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension office in Somerset County to provide expertise to the project.

Two graduates of the Extension's master gardener program volunteered to lend a hand to the venture, including David Perry, who oversees the community garden, which is about 5,000 square feet.

Perry and his wife, Julie, worked the garden Monday, along with volunteers George Hofgren and Jim Griffin, another master gardener.

Griffin, who lives in Fairfield, said the project definitely addresses a growing need in the area -- Marcoux said the pantry at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church served 316 people last month.

But Griffin added that even those not struggling financially should consider starting a garden.

"For anybody who has a plot of land just sitting there," he said, "it is a perfect opportunity to make it something productive."

Perry and Hofgren both hope the garden's high visibility will spark interest among teachers and students at Lawrence High School, as well as other people in the community.

Like Griffin, they hope the project will help cultivate a new generation of gardeners -- and organic ones at that.

Colin Hickey -- 861-9205

chickey@centralmaine.com

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