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July 2016 - Square Foot Gardeners Connie and Patrick Lahr were the Grand Prize winners of Square Foot Gardner's Certified Instructor Drawing! Check it out on Facebook!
July 2016 - Square Foot Gardeners Connie and Patrick Lahr were the Grand Prize winners of Square Foot Gardner's Certified Instructor Drawing! Check it out on Facebook!
About Us   Patrick and Connie Lahr of Maple Lake, Minn. are taking the concept of square foot gardening around the world. Following are excerpts from published articles...
Gardening done on the square Originally published in the April 2, 2010, print edition. By Richard Siemers The Land Correspondent Patrick and Connie Lahr sat in their Maple Lake home and listened to reports of Haiti’s earthquake on January, 12, 2010. They were set to fly to Haiti two days after the quake. Their flight was canceled. Their primary concern were friends they made while living in Haiti from 1985-89, and whom they have gotten to know in their biennial trips back to Haiti. These friends continue a program the Lahrs started. Once called Haiti Gardens, it is now incorporated as Gardening World Wide. Gardening World Wide is an education effort to bring fresh nutritious food to people by teaching them to grow their own. Four square feet The method the Lahrs teach is called Square Foot Gardening, an approach developed by Mel Bartholomew. “How did we learn about Square Foot Gardening?” I asked Connie asked, “Fixing televisions.” Pat was a self-employed electronic technician in St. Joseph in the early 1980s and first saw Bartholomew’s program on PBS, on television sets he was repairing. They were already gardeners but, Pat said, “We needed some help to do a better job gardening.” Square Foot Gardening is a method of planting not in rows but in a four-foot square, divided by a grid into 16 one-foot squares. Planting up to 16 different vegetables and fruits — though some squares can be duplicated — and rotating what is planted year-to-year, the raised garden with its special soil mix can produce abundant food. Mission trip Pat and Connie were invited to go along on a mission trip to Haiti in February 1985. Accompanying Brother DePaul and the Mission of Mercy, they saw the conditions in Haiti and how the people lacked fresh food. They decided to go back at Thanksgiving in 1985 to promote gardening. Pat took his equipment to repair television sets for the wealthier people so the Lahrs could support themselves and work among the poorer residents. With a visit from Bartholomew to boost their work, they trained people in Square Foot Gardening. The Haitians laughed at their small plots, until they saw them bulging with produce. There were challenges to meet. One was to learn what kind of produce the Haitians would eat. To foil wandering animals, gardens were built on the roofs of houses. Before leaving Haiti in 1989, the Lahrs trained project leaders to carry on their work, in both urban and rural areas. The project leaders send monthly reports to the Lahrs. According to those reports, over 50 urban families (with an average of seven people per household) have gardens, and in the rural areas, over $4,000 of produce is harvested each month. In addition to Haiti, Gardening World Wide has a project in Guadalajara, Mexico, and they serve as advisers to people around the world through e-mail, including projects set up by folks they know in Zambia in Africa. Maple Lake headquarters Gardening World Wide is headquartered in Maple Lake, where the Lahrs settled upon returning to the United States. Nutritious food is as important locally as it is internationally, so they promote Square Foot Gardening wherever they can. During March, they give presentations in neighboring towns, via the Community Education Program with numerous people attending the sessions each year. They founded a group called Wright Home Gardens, now called Gardening World Wide, a gardening group that focuses on vegetables rather than flowers. They teach community education classes in communities surrounding Maple Lake and have established a garden at the Maple Lake Elementary School, now in its 14th year, in which the first graders help plant in the spring, tend and harvest during the summer, and as second graders in the fall collect seeds and dig potatoes. Despite the fact that they are both of retirement age, that won’t hinder them. They have a passion for what they do. “Our effort is to provide, through the Square Foot Gardening system, the best nutritious, fresh vegetable garden to people around here and abroad,” Pat said. How Does Your Garden Grow?
By Jared Roddy, Catholic United Financial, June 2009 In a classroom at Maple Lake Elementary School, surrounded by white boards and colorful learning guides, filled with miniature furniture and miniature people, it sounds as if recess has moved indoors. The high-pitched din of excited first graders fills Ms., Hagen’s classroom as a 64-year-old man tries to talk over the multiplicity of little voices. Here in Maple Lake, MN, the first-grade gardens have become something of a tradition. Connie Lahr, 70, and her husband, Pat, are giving the year’s final gardening lesson, tasting some of the veggies that have grown in the gardens and giving out awards for the most helpful and exuberant future gardeners. “The kids love it,” the teacher Ann Hagen, 25, says. “They’re always excited and interested. As you can see, they get over-excited.” The Lahrs, known as Mrs. Ladybug and Mr. Earthworm to the children, have influenced a generation of Maple Lake students. Crossing the street from their home once a week during the growing season, they show the first graders how to plant, care for and raise garden vegetables. They teach a simple system of gardening called Square Foot Gardening and the goal is a modest one. Help children reestablish a connection to their elders, to the earth and to the cycle of life. But that’s just here at the elementary school. What they really want is to improve the world’s nutrition, thereby improving the world. The way they see it, there really isn’t much humans do that can’t be improved with better eating from organically grown vegetables. It’s clear the Lahrs are project people. They are the admirable sort of couple who conceive of wild ideas and audaciously work to make them come true. Rain collectors, electric shutters and elevated gardens around the home are all cases of seeing a problem and devising a solution. In Haiti and in many U.S. cities, the problem they see is nutrient-poor soil and reliance on chemicals to enrich it. By focusing on organic gardening, they bypass the issue of bad soil and ensure that the materials they use are available to all. “When you’re poor in Haiti,” Connie explains, “you can’t go to Menards and buy fertilizer or topsoil. So we teach people how to make their own.” The method has not only proved workable in Haiti, but in Maple Lake too. Hundreds of people are adopting square foot gardening through the gardening group the Lahrs lead. There is no grand strategy. Just talk to people, show them how it’s done, show them the results and send them packing with the tools and knowledge to help themselves. It’s a long road to see change, but they show no signs of tiring or slowing down. Back in the classroom, hands shoot up to try a mustard leaf. Ms. Hagen tours the room desk to desk and hands out quarter-sized pieces of the scratchy leaf. Moments later, several are jumping up and down, fanning their tongues, “AAA! Hot hot hot!” “That’s got a little bit of a kick to it,” Pat says, smiling. The specifics of each lesson are quickly forgotten, the Lahrs say, but the point is not to teach specifics but to create the interest and show what you can do when you play in the dirt. For the rich and poor alike, a garden offers health, hobby, family and community. “They’re spreading the seed,” Hagen says. “Spreading their knowledge and encouraging the kids to do the same.” It’s part of the long-term goal to spread gardening to all. The Lahrs focus on gardening because it’s what they’re good at, something they enjoy and a step toward better health and environment the world over. Starting small with the first-grade classes in Maple Lake, the lesson the Lahrs are teaching isn’t one you take a test on, but one you take an interest in, and benefit from for the rest of your life. Patrick and Connie Lahr from St. Joseph, Minn. took their first trip to Haiti with Brother DePaul of the Mission of Mercy in February 1985 and from that said, "Some day we will return to promote food via home gardens."
Since 1983 they have been practicing the Square Foot Garden system of Mel Bartholomew and this was a blessing as they started the program in Haiti in November 1985, planting directly in the ground with Haitian, Priest Benoit, in containers at the Caribbean Christian Center where they first stayed, and on the rooftops as they moved to the Rue Marian address in the Delmas area of Haiti. After nearly two years here, Pat and Connie moved to the Peguyville area, higher up the mountain side to the left of Petionville. Here they rented the entire home with access to the empty lot next door, with Haitian, Herve Brutus, as manager for a Community Garden accommodating 25 families. Miradieu Estinvil continued serving as the promoter for gardens in the Delmas area as Pat and Connie made weekly Tuesday morning visits to see the gardens. His future wife, Dula Thelemarque and sister Valine, were very sad to see Pat and Connie move, but they came to visit at the Peguyville residence and gardens every Friday after school, staying overnight, and returning to their own humble home on Saturday. Their special delight on one particular visit was to watch THE SOUND OF MUSIC on the large TV that Pat was fixing for the Hotel Montana and begged to return the next week to watch the movie again! Upon departure from Haiti in September 1989, Pat and Connie settled in Maple Lake, MN, promoting Electronic Repair and Home Gardens via Community Education Classes and volunteering at the local school teaching the children Square Foot Garden techniques for the past 12 years. The Haiti Gardens program in Haiti was left in the hands of Miradieu and Dula Estinvil providing monthly reports to then receive monthly funding for their work. Many wonderful gardening and food growing activities have developed over the years. Today in Haiti Miradieu and Dula continue their work with the help of garden promoters: Yvette Papillon, Wilky Estinvil and Celidon Jean Antoine. We praise the Lord for their endurance in working with us and for the blessing that they have been to their people! Pat and Connie were in the 1990 parade when Maple Lake celebrated their 100th year as a city, riding bicycles and thus promoting a local garden group. But later, 1995, Mel Bartholomew, promoted a generous grant to make a garden in a public place, such as $150 given: $90 the first year for set-up and $60 the second year for continuance. WOW! This inspired the 4' x 8' garden at St. Timothy Catholic Church with the approval of Fr. Mark Juettner. He enjoyed bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches and thus someone put little piggies in the garden, as it already had the lettuce and tomato! |
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