Help Us Make More Shenanigans: Growing Our Communal Garden!

Welcome to Shenanigans Communal Farm & Gardens!

We are a communal garden project started this year to support local Queer & Trans folks and allied community members on unceded Abenaki lands (Champlain Valley, Vermont). We are a group of about 20 community members of varied ages, backgrounds, and physical abilities coming together to create food security for ourselves and our community by growing fresh organic produce through crowdsourcing our labor and resources for the promise of shared bounty. Our members are majority working class and fixed income folks of varied backgrounds, life experiences, physical abilities, or otherwise marginalized communities.

We kicked off our efforts this March from the remains of my wife Steph and I's personal garden started in the spring 2024 growing season. We've broken ground on a 5000sq.ft. plot that includes 20 growing beds with 150' of arched trellises for vining fruits and vegetables. Each weekend our group has made progress on creating plant starts, prepping beds, mulching pathways, laying compost, and setting up trellises. We've crowdfunded about $650 for compost delivery, the first load of which was delivered in early May (and which consumed about $475 of our aforementioned $650). We estimate at least 3 more deliveries of compost will be needed to cover all of the current growing beds, and additional supplies are needed as well, such as wire fencing for potato towers, silage tarps for weed remediation, additional garden tools (wheelbarrows, shovels, etc.)

The bulk of the work thus far has been physical labor without the assistance of mechanized equipment, with the exception of breaking ground and bed shaping which occurred last year. The ground breaking was done by a neighbor with a tractor that gave us a good deal. And our 1980s BCS walk-behind tractor, lovingly dubbed Bonnie Jr., was used for all of the bed shaping. Otherwise, we have been out there weekly with our hand tools, shovels, and hoes at times on our hands and knees getting the work done.

From this first 5000 sq.ft. we will grown more than enough food to sustain our small group. We have members interested in preserving and canning crops for the winter as well. Additional bounty will be sold at a road side stand frequented by summer bicyclists to fund the project, and otherwise donated to local food shelves and food assistance organizations. In addition, we have over an acre of additional land suitable for growing. We also have a partially collapsed barn that wee would like to replace with a greenhouse. This would give us the opportunity to open the project up to more folks, and do more good.

The model so far has been formed around the idea that we are all adults, some with kids, and otherwise with day jobs and/or school to attend. We work at our pace, when we are available to do so. We provide our labor with the understanding that not only are we laboring for our own share of the bounty, but also that we are laboring for those that can't labor as much (for whatever reason, be it physical ability or life commitments). However we are at the labor intensive part of this project. Bed prep and infrastructure building. Next growing season will be easier. But expanding this project for future growing seasons and additional community benefit is going to take more resources than we currently have or can reasonably expect in the near future.

That's where you come in!!

In the face of the current political and social climate, marginalized folks of all types deserve access to affordable, healthy food through a system which is intentionally attempting to detach itself from capitalism and respect our individual limitations. With your assistance, we could complete our current growing area, and expand our space further to help more folks benefit from this land.

Your financial assistance will allow us to:

We would be grateful for ANY contribution to our project. If you would like to assist in a more fiscally significant fashion, please contact me directly.

Are you passionate about food security? food sovereignty? LGBTQ+ rights and food access for marginalized folks? Message me about becoming a board member!

Thank you so much for helping us bring this dream to life!

Love and Shenanigans,

Sydney(She/Her), Steph (they/them), our mini Shenaniganators E (he/him) and J (he/him), and the Shenanigans Family & Community