Azle Community Garden Contributes to 600 Families a Month
Most mornings, Darryl and Deanna Keen get up and pull on mud boots before the sun comes up. They are usually at the Azle Community Garden by about 6 a.m.
The Keens, both volunteers, are keys to the success of the garden started by Texas Health Resources and community organizations in 2014. Today, it provides about 1,500 pounds of produce each year to the Azle Community Caring Center, a local nonprofit that distributes food to about 600 families a month.
“Having access to healthy foods is a key factor to healthy living and addressing the social determinants of health upstream, before problems emerge,” said Marsha Ingle, senior program director for Community Health Improvement. “Many times, canned vegetables are full of salt, which can have a negative effect on a person’s blood pressure. If canned foods is all a person can afford, it can have a domino effect on health. This community garden is one step towards stopping the cascade.”
Texas Health’s Mission to improve the health of the people in the communities we serve was the driving force behind the system’s involvement, Marsha said. Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Azle pinpointed a lack of affordable and accessible produce as a problem in the area.
Health problems were developing as a result. For example, at the time the garden was started, the death rate among Parker County residents due to heart disease was at 196.9 deaths per 100,000 population, higher than the both the state and national average of 170 and 171, respectively, according to the state Department of Human Services.
Ken Leemon, business manager/director of serving ministries at First United Methodist Church of Azle, said he first became interested in taking action after learning that one in five children in Parker County didn’t know where their next meal was coming from. The Tarrant Area Food Bank website says the figure is now one in four children in North Texas.
“I thought, ‘How can we make sure people have food?'” He started talking to community members, and “when Marsha came through we were talking about a garden.”
A collaboration was born
“Texas Health has been right there with us all the time,” said Ken, whose church handles the financial end of the garden — it operates solely on donations and in-kind labor. “We’ve kind of walked hand in hand with them.”
Texas Health Azle paid for an irrigation system, a well with a 3,000-gallon storage tank, a well house, storage for tools, a prayer garden/picnic table and a sign. The hospital also paid for a fence around the garden after deer ate all of the first winter’s crop. The hospital has provided money annually from grants, which expire this year, and also through a community fundraising gala that netted about $25,000. Marsha said the hospital is pursuing other funding.
The rest is up to the community, which has stepped up in countless ways.
“We get a lot of people that offer things,” Darryl said. “We really owe a lot of gratitude to a lot of places that have helped with advice, materials and more.”
Heavy equipment is donated by a local rental company. A local business donated concrete for ditches. The city of Fort Worth donates mulch. Even the lettering for the garden’s sign was made by an area school shop teacher, who donated his services.
The Caring Center, which also receives food from an area food bank, also donates old produce back to the garden, which the Keens compost. The food bank receives produce from larger distributors that sometimes reaches the end of its usefulness before it can be handed out to families.
“It’s sort of like the circle of life,” Darryl said. “We give, take some bad stuff back, put it into compost and back into the garden.”
Next on the horizon: Regular classes for children to learn how to grow their own gardens at home and a rain collection system, Ken and the Keens said.
“It’s that number – one in four children going hungry — that keeps us going,” Deanna said.
(Pictured top right: Darryl and Deanna Keen, both volunteers, tend the Azle Community Garden started by Texas Health and community organizations.)
By Judy WIley • Posted July 9, 2019
