EVERYONE should try to garden SOMETHING, even if it's just a couple of tomatoes in pots on the verandah. Some of us get to take it just a bit further than just a bit of a garden.
A bit more than four acres, before we're done. Once everything is de-toxified and back up to full fertility and good tilth. Inside the town.
We live in a small town, there are still about 7500 people left living here since Wally-World came in and shut down all the small businesses. Mine included (computer repair, some hardware sales, all gone thanks to those Bentonville Bastards). There are some junk shops and "antique" stores where there used to be small retailers and service providers. Not much left, and less every year.
The new neighbour across the street just bought the nice old house (built around 1895, our house was built in about 1891) and the land which went with it. Almost 4 acres of land goes with the acre and a half of grass with the house on it. She is a recent immigrant down here to Nowheresville, Illinois, moving in from east of the Chicago Imperium, and she had not a clue what to do with all that land she wound up with..... Heh. Heh. Heh. (Cue maniacal chuckle.)
It so happens that I'm an aulde pharte of a farm boy, but I'm stuck living in town. Along with my wife, and another neighbour - a carpenter who is medically retired due to a traumatic brain injury (caused by a company with more of an eye on the bottom line, less on personnel safety), I convinced our newest resident that it would be best NOT to plant more grass, with maybe a rose or two.
Instead, after some fast talking, we are all three families collaborating on making the entire thing into a community garden. It will be just US this year, and we're working our proverbial tail-feathers off. Next year in conjunction with the food pantry and some other charity organizations, we are hoping to get other local folks involved.
They will work the land with us and get a spot of their own for their own specific choices of vegetables, plus a portion of the production of the whole community garden, as recompense for putting in labour on the community areas. (AND they can also use the canning and processing equipment we're trying to get set up in the "country kitchen," if they'll chip in something for the propane! Labour, or cash, for the gas. I hope to move to methane from a waste-digester, perhaps in a few years, and cut that petro-chemical umbilical, too!!)
(More after the Orange Cheesy-Poof-Of-Death.)