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On this episode of Broadening the Narrative, I talked with my friend Greg Singleton about the community garden he has cultivated. Greg shared about his vision for the garden and the community as well as the benefits, challenges, and celebrations. I hope that if you know and love me you can engage with the Broadening the Narrative blog, social media accounts, and podcast, as well as any recommended resources. Then, you can share with people who know and love you, and little by little, person by person, we can broaden the narrative.
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“It’s past time to broaden the narrative” (said by Sequana Murray)
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Introduction: Hello and welcome to another episode of Broadening the Narrative. This is a podcast where I talk to some of my favorite people who have broadened the narrative for me. I'm your host, Nicki Pappas, and I'm so glad you're here.
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First Segment
Nicki: On today's episode of Broadening the Narrative, I am joined by my friend Greg Singleton, and we will be discussing how he has cultivated a community garden. Before we begin, I just want to say that Greg is one of my favorite people because of the ways he not only acknowledges that a problem exists but sets about to find a solution to the problem. And Greg, I've learned so much from you over the years, and I'm excited for our conversation. And thank you for joining me.
Greg: Thanks for inviting me, Nicki.
Nicki: Yeah. Well, let's jump in. Tell us a little about yourself and your background.
Greg: Okay. So, Nicki introduced me, so I go by Greg. I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, and was born and raised there, went to school at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, and then got a job in Charlotte, North Carolina. Decided to move with a childhood friend to Rock Hill, kinda like a halfway, so I could still be close to the fam and like have a decent commute to work. So it's where I've been since. And kind of, definitely took on some different projects to try to change some things around where I live. So.
Nicki: Very nice. Thanks for sharing that. Well to begin here, where is the community garden located that you started?
Greg: So, it's of course it's in Rock Hill. The community is called Boyd Hill. It is about 15 minutes away from where I currently reside, so not too far. And it's an older neighborhood for sure. But, and it's definitely a lot of different activities going on, but I just felt like that was something I could contribute was the garden, so.
Nicki: Yeah. Well, why did you choose that particular location?
Greg: I feel like it, in a lot of ways it kind of chose me. Like, I like for sure had an idea of what it took to actually like start a garden. So just like certain things that needed to like stand out about the area. One thing was just knowing that, you know, obviously you need a lot of sunlight, so it turned out that the area that garden’s now at, it had like a pretty massive tree on, by the way, like, I guess I should mention that I bought the property with some friends, and the property itself had like a whole extra, like half an acre behind it. That was no construction has been done on it. It's just sitting there kind of like unaffected by anything. No one’s done like construction or anything. And so I had an issue where the largest tree on that on the piece of property fell and this is during a storm and just took out like all the other trees that are lined up next to it. And that kind of created a big job obviously, but it also kind of, this was like 2017, so it also kind of prepped the ground because like one of the things I didn't know, but kind of had an idea of I needed to figure out is like a good part of starting a garden is a soil test. And so I just was like, okay, well, I haven't done anything like that kind of like testing before, but just knowing that the tree fell and it had been like two years since that happened, that more than likely that it kind of helped with prepping the area in the first place. So there was that, and then the fact that the trees, the largest tree had taken out all the others, like competing trees, kind of like left the area like super open relative to like, you know, what you would expect in a condensed neighborhood. So it's plenty of sunlight, like the average, I think is like expected for a good garden plot, it would look like six to eight hours of like exposed sunlight with no shade or anything. So it definitely gets that. I like learned that when I was cutting the tree down.
Nicki: Nice. So you said you had some ideas. Does that mean you had experience with community gardens in the past?
Greg: Like not a community garden. Like my mom was like, kind of like doing that as like a side hobby, her little tomato patch.
Nicki: Gotcha. Yeah.
Greg: That was like my level of experience was her telling me to go out there and water her tomatoes.
Nicki: Yeah. So what prompted you to start this community garden then in the back of the property?
Greg: So when I first bought the property with my friends, we were talking about how we could not only have some stake in the prop, in the neighborhood, as far as like property or houses are concerned, but also trying to figure out how we could help rejuvenate it. And it was obviously, it's like one of, one of the things that you first comes to mind when you think about like rejuvenation is like landscaping and things like that. So, it kind of like naturally came up in the conversation and say like, maybe we could start a garden, not to mention there was also, I think, a previous effort by, it was like a church had set up their own little like box plots that they had made and they weren't tended to at the time when we like first bought the property and we're like looking around to see like what was going on in the community. And I actually like went door knocking with another friend in the neighborhood just to like talk about Jesus for a little bit with some different people and ran into this one really friendly guy who like let me in. We like talked for a little bit about some scripture, and then I asked him about the plot, like the little area where the little church had obviously set up and he told me it was like a woman minister and she would, she like, just tried to do some different things, but kind of got burned out. I think that's basically what it sounded like he said. So it was kind of encouraging to know that someone had already tried, but, just say like, you know, obviously if she's, you know, she's part of ministry, she's probably trying different things, throwing out different feelers to figure out what sticks and this one just didn't. But kinda just knowing that someone had already made an effort like people would be like used to seeing people try stuff like that. So it gave me a little bit of encouragement to try.
Nicki: Yeah. I love that. Well, what's your vision for the garden?
Greg: So another like side project I’m a part of is up in Fort Mill. I kind of got involved with some other brothers that are trying to help with like “rejuvenation” of a neighborhood called Paradise, which when you think about Fort Mill in the first place, like living up here for about the past seven years, I realized like how big of a disparity of I guess economic status I feel in Fort Mill have. So just when you even think about it, like off hand, you're like, well, Fort Mill for sure needs less help than Rock Hill, but like this particular neighborhood is just, been neglected for a while. And so it's a task that was taken up by a guy I met through this program, this outdoor workout men's group called F3 and, you know, we instantly clicked cause he was about the same different types of like grassroots activist kinds of things I was interested in. He was, you know, 10 years my senior year. So he was already established as far as working and had you know, built out into his lifestyle, this opportunity to like go and mentor the different age groups of kids in the neighborhood. They had already started like a reading center. We obviously, like I said, there's like the aspect of getting outdoors and exercising. So just naturally we had already kind of like moved towards the conversation of saying we needed to talk about nutrition and health just to kind of reinforce that like, it's like a whole body thing when you start talking about, you know improving yourself, like you can't neglect even like what you put in your body as far as like how you eat and stuff. So it's like that kind of like was one of the elements of we were just trying to like touch on when we started talking about mentoring in the neighborhood. So having that kind of being further along than what I'm doing down at Rock Hill kind of moving forward with what I know I can do, just having that property, piece of property, in Boyd Hill and being able to contribute to not only like whatever I can produce, but also like just the knowledge that I have from like actually getting like involved in that type of activity and just kinda like passing that knowledge on to our group up in Fort Mill and, you know, already having like that blueprint of what they're doing at Fort Mill slowly replicated in Rock Hill. Yeah.
Nicki: Yeah. Well, let's talk more about the garden, like what you grow and why you chose to grow those foods.
Greg: Okay. So I kind of, this being like my first like large plot it's like I said, it's about half an acre, the whole like area, but some of it's still covered with like brush and like different things, I guess, a couple of like smaller trees, but they're like further back to where it's not affecting like the shade, the area as far as shading and stuff. But the area that's pretty open, I’m still only using about half of it and it still comes out to about 1800 square feet. And so I was like, okay, what's the most efficient way to utilize this? So that was kind of like my first thought process was, let me think about the amount of space I have. And so I started out with the plan to use a lot of it for tomatoes and green beans and cucumbers, just like a lot of things that people would typically could like use to compliment whatever they're already eating. I did try to experiment a little bit, too, with some radishes and beets just to like have like that combination of things that grow above ground and underground. So that was kind of an experimental thing I decided to do. I also added, I wanted to try some different fruits, but the only thing I have done this year successfully looks like it's going to be is watermelon. So pretty excited about that. Yeah. So it takes up a lot of space. That was kind of like a secondary thing of, I had already planted a lot of everything else and was kind of saying, okay, I have this one area that I haven't really committed anything to. And I figured this was also kind of like an experimentative year. So I was like, let me just see how out of control this gets. So I planted some watermelons, and they're definitely taking up space, but like, I think I'm managing.
Nicki: That's awesome. And you said you experimented with radishes and beets.
Greg: Yeah.
Nicki: How did those do?
Greg: They're doing pretty good. I've harvested a few. I actually feel like that's, they're a little bit easier. The reason why it was kind of, like I said, kind of an experiment was I had done a lot of my research early on trying to figure out how to like time things and just knew just because, I don't know if I even told you this, but I, you know this, but I'm a tax accountant, so the busiest part of the year for me is obviously like the growing season. So, I was doing, trying to figure out how to do a lot of my growing indoors so I could kind of like tend to it without having to be outside, at least the initial phase, because that's probably like the most vulnerable part for most plants is like when their seedlings, which kind of makes sense. But I tried to just make sure I had a good start with whatever I put out outdoors so I wouldn't like, you know, put a lot of time into it and then, you know, something happen to it halfway through it's like early stage which worked out really well, but obviously you can't do that with things that grow better underground. So that's why I basically said it was more of an experiment is to see how well that, how well they did. So it turned out pretty well though.
Nicki: Yeah. And when we first got on the call, you showed me a plant. Can you talk about that plant?
Greg: Yeah. So it's called the moringa plant and basically the health benefits that are perceived by are supposed to be like, like a lot more widespread than like your average like vegetable that you can harvest from, like, you know, like I talked about green beans and tomatoes and cucumbers, which are like mostly water, but like there is, there's a lot more nutrients apparently in these, the fruit from these plants. So they're also supposed to be highly used within a lot of African cultures. And my knowledge of it really is just getting started with like how like widespread like agricultural knowledge is for, you know, for African culture. And so this is kind of like my ability, my opportunity to just kind of step out of my comfort zone and was encouraged by, except one of the guys up in F3, that’s where I got, up in Fort Mill, sorry, where I got the seeds from, and the plants took off pretty well. So I'm interested to see once it starts fruiting how it tastes, because I actually haven't even tasted it yet.
Nicki: Yeah. You'll have to let me know.
Greg: Yeah.
Nicki: Yeah. I love that so much. Well, what does it take to cultivate the garden?
Greg: So like I talked about earlier, kind of the first phase of your planting is going to be just trying to make sure that it gets a good start. And one of the things I learned about starting plants, especially from seed, is that it's not as high of a success rate with your seedlings when you plant them outdoors and the, like straight into your soil, just because a lot of the stuff that you're using outdoors is going to be more compact than what seeds really need to have to actually like really get a good starting on their roots. And so that was kind of one of the other good reasons to start a lot of things indoors was just to help the plants get good strong rooting system and just kind of transplanting, which still transplanting has its own risk, too, cause it's just, it's pretty easy to damage the root system. And that's one of the things that you have to like really be careful with is how you deal with transplanting the plants and, you know, I think watering is obviously like a super important part about any type of plant you're like trying to take care of. And it's I think it's probably the most unclear part even after doing research of like what's the most efficient thing to do, but you definitely just have to kind of just watch the plant and just kind of respond to the changes that you see in it as you go. I kinda got like a general rule of thumb that most plants, most yeah gardens need about, was it 0.6 gallons per week. And so I kind of like use that as like a barometer to try to avoid over watering and kind of like not being consistent with watering, because I think that's probably like the biggest thing is your plants like respond to what you what you do. So like it's kind of goes back to like the transplanting part as well. Anything that you do, you gotta be consistent with. So starting plants on the indoors kind of like increases the need to like slowly get them used to being outdoors. So you have to kind of like put slowly, put them out outside over you know, the less heated part of the day and like do it like with hour increments. Like the first day you have it outside for like an hour and then bring it back in indoors and then slowly increase the time over the course of a few days. So a lot of it’s just consistency. A lot of what I’ve planted, I’ve seen things start to wither, and I was like, “Oh no, I’m killing it.” And then, you know, I stayed consistent, made sure I kept watering it, pruned it where a lot of parts had fully died off, and a lot of things did come back. So it was definitely a learning process with that, but after doing a lot of research about saying, “You’re not killing it if it starts to yellow” and things like that, sometimes it’s just trying to tell you that it needs something. So you’ve just kind of got to learn to listen to what it’s trying to tell you.
Nicki: Yeah. So it does sound like a lot of experimentation and yeah looking at the plants and figuring out what they need. And I love the language of listening to them to see, like, they're going to tell you what they need. I really like that. Well, what have you seen as far as benefits of a community garden?
Greg: So I had already had the property like I said since 2017 and you know, that kind of helped me get more acclimated with the neighborhood and, you know, different things, like I talked about the door knocking and how that kinda like helped me know a little bit better, you know, what the demographic was in the neighborhood. If you actually like look at it, it almost looks like it's a lot more older people in the neighborhood than younger, but I think it's actually pretty evenly spread out. And I think over the time spent like, you know, spending a lot more time outdoors over there, just like, you know, watering and trying to attend to the area, I definitely have a better idea of who lives in the neighborhood. So that's just like one of the benefits of trying to do something like that in like a new environment is like, obviously you're going to get to know people as they walk by and they'll stop and talk to you. So I've like I've had some people introduce themselves multiple times, which is fine, but, you know, but I definitely think people have gotten used to me being over there now. And, you know, I'll hear the, I guess, more encouraging voice say, “You know, we're just really happy to see someone doing something like this in the neighborhood.” And so like, it's been people being willing to give me grace or encouragement about, you know, what I'm trying to do in a neighborhood that a lot of them say that they've lived there their whole lives and they haven't seen like, particularly my layout, my layout’s kinda interesting. But they were just saying like, “Yeah, we never really even really seen anything like this, so we were like really excited to see something like this show up in the neighborhood.” And you know I've also handed out a lot of what I've grown, just to some of the different houses. They've been really thankful. I made like some friends with some of the young people, like one of the kids has been out there since like the tree fell and he like would come over and try to ask to like cut up some of the wood, and I helped him with that. Since then he kinda would, you know, call out to me when he sees me and like I've had him out there helping me tend to some of like the weeding and stuff like that. I haven't really had him doing the planting yet, but, because a lot of that was really kind of like at the height of when we were worried about the virus and all that. So he wasn't out there with me then, but since then I've had him out there helping a little bit and I've given him some cucumbers for the work he's done. So that's kind of like a part of like the long-term goal is to kind of continuously like get people like him, some of the younger kids, more involved with what I'm doing, have them go through the whole process of planting and seeing their plant come to maturity and stuff. So.
Nicki: Yeah, I love that so much. In what other ways have you seen the garden cultivate community in addition to relationships like that?
Greg: So I think, like I said, there being like a mixed group of age ranges. There's the older generation, obviously, like it's going to be a little bit less likely to be engaging with the young folk outside of, you know, I'm assuming most of it's probably just going to be like them interacting, I guess, at church. There is like a larger church in Boyd Hill, and so if they're not doing that, I don't know, like if the kids aren't going there or some of the older members in the community aren't going there, I don't imagine how much more they're really interacting with each other. So one of the other aspects of that is I've seen across from my plot another gentleman, and I've talked to him, his name's John, who also is like a pretty good gardener, a lot better than me right now. But you know, he told me if I ever needed some help he would be willing to lend a hand. And I didn't take advantage of it this year, obviously, like I said, with all the other stuff going on, but I just, I can see that kind of being like, this was something that when I talk to different people, which are obviously going to be older and more experienced with gardening, that this was just a really easy way to kind of like start some mentoring opportunities like just more naturally than kind of like forcing it. Which, you know, the older generation, the younger generation, it’s kind of like, I talked to my parents a lot about this, was that it was kind of like, I feel like my age range, like people born between like, I guess probably like 1985 to like maybe like maybe mid nineties, we're kind of, especially people of African-American descent, kind of see a lot of like the outdoor work, with like gardening and things like that, that's a little too closely tied to like, you know, our history in this country. And we just kinda, I think struggle with like a lot of outdoor things, but we're like, my generation for sure is kind of like working on that stuff as we get older being more outdoors, being more in tune with nature and stuff, but it's just that kind of hangup isn't even there for the generation that's coming after us and just kind of like trying to take advantage of that, and just trying to nurture like that type of interaction outdoors which is obviously missing, cause we're slowly becoming more attached to technology and detached from nature, so.
Nicki: I'm glad you've been able to have conversations like that with your parents and be able to kind of bridge some gaps with the younger generation. And it's really cool to hear how you're doing that.
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Second Segment
Nicki: I was wondering if you could speak to some of the challenges that you faced with the garden and how you've responded to those challenges.
Greg: Yeah, so like I talked about some like the watering stuff, but one of the biggest things was probably me moving, this is just my, I guess I find myself trying to be like really patient with the, all the steps, but kind of got ahead of myself and transplanted some things probably faster than I needed to. And so like it, I really think this is kind of a common thing that a lot of people deal with, but just, it was kind of discouraging my first year. We had a little bit of a cooler like start to summer than we normally do. And the fact that I did try to time a lot of my stuff like as if it was going to be a warm, you know, spring into early summer, a lot of the things I put outdoors, like some of my tomato plants, a large portion of my tomato plants plants, a large portion of the green bean plants, really just did not do well early on. And so, like, I really didn't have a lot going for me as far as harvesting wise all the way through like late April, and I had already started putting things out through like March. So it was kind of just having like, you know, endure that, have a lot of things out there watering and nothing really coming as far as like anything fruiting or anything. So that was pretty discouraging. And then having the layout. So I didn't talk about the layout yet, because I was telling you how it is interesting compared to a lot of the people in the neighborhood had seen before. I actually like had it where I had gotten a lot of mulch from some work that we had done at the church I was attending and had spread that on the ground to kind of like help like keep the weeds down. And one of the people that was helping me kind of told me that they thought it should, it would be more beneficial for the older generation if I got more people that start helping me, once I got things going on, to have like a raised bed set up. This, mind you, they told me this, it was like sometime in December. And I had already like, made my decision cause I had started by prepping the ground since like September and like had already gotten my soil tests started, I think I had gotten the results back like early October and was already like knowing what I needed to do as far as like what to plant, as far as a cover crop, how to get the soil ready as far as tilling and all that kind of stuff, thinking about what kind of fertilizer I needed because that was one, another one of the tidbits of information that you get from the soil test is it tells you what type of fertilizer to use. So all this is assuming I'm using my top soil, right. And so I'm like, okay, so I'm going to use my top soil. I'm going to use the, which has some things like that to help partition my layout for the ground. And, you know, I get this conversation about the raised beds in December. And so I'm like, man, I got like I am a tax accountant so like busy season’s still right around the corner, and so I like, I really want to have it as inviting as possible to like different age groups cause I guess, like I said, I already knew what I was doing within the neighborhood. So I said, okay, I'm going to buckle down and I'm going to try to like get this thing to where it's like a raised bed set up. So I got, I fortunately had a connection to get a large number of wooden pallets and mind you it's like, you can't use any pallet, but you have to actually have untreated pallets and these are like, because obviously like if you have them treated, they have chemicals on them and that's not safe for a garden. So I had to find a certain type of pallet. It was probably like upwards of like over 36 pallets out there, like stacked, some like half of them stacked, there's probably like 24 stacked two high. And then there's like 12 laid out on the other like southern part side of the garden. So it's like one side's obviously shorter than the other, but it took so much work to not only get the layout done, but then like get the soil high enough to where, you know, the raised bed, like the higher side actually like was ready to be planted and you barely need to bend down. So I got to where like one side was definitely higher than other and like ready to plant, I think by like March, I had everything set up and of course, you know, that was when COVID hit. So I was like, oh, okay, well I'm not going to have that many people out here, especially not older people. So I had done a lot of that work for no reason, but I definitely knew how to, I know how to do it now. So there's that. And it’s definitely, I’ll remind you, a lot more garden soil to buy when you do raise beds than if you have it ground level. But so yeah, those are some of like the hardships for sure. But I'm pretty proud of what I've done. So.
Nicki: Yeah. I guess not having the older people out there is one way that COVID-19 has affected your plans, but has COVID-19 affected your plans connected to the garden in any other ways?
Greg: I'd say like that would probably be like the negative part of it, but the positive side is I kinda took it as this year, it was a lot more upheaval to where it gave me more room to just kinda like do whatever. So like, I guess I had done a lot, enough research to kind of know like what I needed to do as far as like starting a lot of different types of plants and things like that. And so that's really where I was like, yeah, I have all this space like that wasn't, that was another part was like spacing was like, obviously going to need to be a little bit more intentional than if it was, you know, just people my age and younger and out there. So I had it spaced I feel like to where it was plenty of room for people to walk, but, you know, after realizing that it was just going to mostly just be me out there, I kind of, that's really where I got the incentive or the idea to just go ahead and like plant the watermelon. So that's kinda like where I was like, if, even if it does get out of control, I can step over it. Like, it's fine. But that was kind of like one of the things that came out, it was like, oh, I can experiment more cause like no one else is really going to be out here and kind of felt a little bit less restricted. So.
Nicki: Yeah. Yeah. I love you being able to take that negative aspect, but then do something like utilize the land for watermelons then, or some crop that you wouldn't have probably done otherwise.
Greg: Right.
Nicki: Yeah. Well, what have you been able to celebrate as a result of cultivating the community garden there?
Greg: I definitely feel like I've like changed people's outlook of me in the neighborhood. I think just knowing that like we talked about a little bit earlier, like it's a low-income neighborhood, and I'm young and I come in there and I buy a property, you know, people have a certain, going to have a certain like perspective of me, that I might not be down to earth, that obviously I'm not from there, but I think trying to contribute in this way kind of like changes a lot of aspects of that. I definitely feel like people have been much more willing to kind of like come up with and start a conversation. So I definitely feel like I'm more a part of the neighborhood now which is, you know, in some ways invaluable. So yeah, just kind of looking forward to what I can do with that over the course of, you know, years of like working and, you know, getting better and better at what I'm doing as far as the gardening aspect of it and what else I can contribute to that neighborhood.
Nicki: Yeah. I didn’t send you this question ahead of time, but something I have been thinking through is when you talked about like the rushing with the transplanting for some of the crops at one point and the needing to kind of just be patient, I was curious if you could talk about what the garden has taught you.
Greg: Yeah. I guess, I like to think I'm like a patient person, but I think kind of when things don't go the way, you know, you plan them, it kind of creates like that rushing feeling like you got to, you still have to figure out how to make it work, and I definitely think going through this the way I've had to the first time, it's kind of like, like I've reflected on it more now that, you know, obviously things are doing a lot better in the garden, that you know, it's gonna work out even if a lot of things don't go the way you, like, you plan them as long as you stay consistent. And you know, I definitely think some of, like a lesson like that kind of kinda comes around in different shapes and forms, but this is probably the first time I've really had to deal with it with like something I was saying like, it's a hobby is like, it's like a lot of benefits to it, but if you try to, you know, get too far ahead of yourself, you know, it creates a lot more stress than you really, than necessary. And so it's definitely like a different type of patience that I've had to experience by working with plants and gardening. So I'm looking forward to kind of growing in that way the more I do this, cause I definitely think it kind of like becomes more of an ingrained thing the more you like work with plants that, you know, you're gonna just have to learn how to tend to them the way they want to be tended to. So yeah.
Nicki: Hmm. Thanks for answering that kind of on the fly. Well how can others support the garden?
Greg: So I've been trying to think through like what I need with it being kind of like a off year. I've got different like ideas like out there as far as like being a part of a farmer's market. I didn't take advantage of that this year just because some of the earlier mishaps, but then also like, just starting to think even once it kind of took off as far as like the fruiting for a lot of the plants, I was like, I really just didn't have that in mind early on, like, obviously that was like something that down the road would be a good way of kind of like encouraging some of the younger folks to like start with, you know, earning some money even before they could like, especially some of the younger kids that can't get a job yet, like letting them be a part of something like that so they can kind of like be encouraged about, you know, putting in some work and getting a reward for it financially. So I thought that was like a really good idea. So long-term, I want to try to continue building a network between the farmer's market and whatever else I can do as far as like getting resources for that neighborhood. I definitely think there's like with all the different things going on during COVID with the social unrest and stuff, Rock Hill’s kind of responded in its own way. Like I got invited to this Facebook group for Rock Hill and they have some different gentlemen that are like trying to do different things in the community as far as like mentor opportunities. And so I want to continue to try to build a network of people who are doing those types of things cause like I got, like I said, a lot of like progress as far as like really giving back to the community and making sure like some of these more neglected communities are still getting access to resources. A lot of that's happening up in Fort Mill with the group I'm working with, but I'm trying to replicate it down here in Rock Hill. So I definitely think that's helped with that Facebook group. I got in contact with a guy that was trying to put on like workshops and like a mentorship program for repair and maintenance, so like HVAC and electrical an different types of repair, repair and maintenance types of work like that for people from the age group of like 8 to 18, I think he said, or, and so like if I could, I want to try and find more things like that to get kids involved with in that neighborhood. Cause there's plenty of them around and I mean the garden is obviously like for sure like the route I'm taking personally, but I think the more we build a network of different things I can point people to as far as saying like, okay, well yeah, we have the farmer's market, we're doing like the maintenance and repair mentorship stuff where we're trying to get kids involved with any other type of activities like that, where they kind of get, you know, busy with something and like kind of start to like do their own personal research and start to become, you know, more knowledgeable and things like that. I think that's kind of like where I'm trying to get to is like having, being a liaison for that kind of stuff for people in a neighborhood like that. So, yeah.
Nicki: Yeah. So what is your hope for the community then as you continue in your endeavors cultivating the garden?
Greg: I mean, I've talked to some of the older folk in the neighborhood and they talk about the need to really try to revitalize Boyd Hill. I think that there are a lot of efforts already in the neighborhood, as far as different churches investing. Like obviously I talked about the female minister that started her own plot and, you know, obviously like, you know, she moved on to some different things, but there's some other church communities that have come into the neighborhood and invested. I've talked to some of the guys in F3 and they've told me they're aware of some churches that invest in Boyd Hill. And like I said, obviously there's already the established Boyd Hill church that I know for sure invests, but there's, you know, there's still plenty of things to do. And, you know, just knowing that right now Fort Mill is seen as like the most the, I think the fastest growing like city in our country I’m pretty sure it said, like some article I read recently. It’s, I think it’s becoming more apparent in a lot of people’s minds like what is, what’s been happening to like a lot of predominantly African American neighborhoods over the course of our country’s history and stuff like that. This is one of those neighborhoods in Rock Hill that for sure still has a lot of history with it and still is inhabited by predominantly African American community. So just trying to preserve it and have it be ready for the changes that are happening to Rock Hill, just knowing about the Panthers practice facility trying to move down. There’s a lot of opportunity for people to come in and really kind of change things, hopefully for the better, but the more we’re investing already in the direction that we want it to go before someone else can come in and kind of decide it for us, that’s probably the better. So, you know, that’s kind of like the far off thought process with what I’m doing.
Nicki: Yeah. Well what can privileged people commit to in order to help bring this just hope of yours to fruition in the Boyd Hill community for them to have access to all the resources that they need to have access to?
Greg: You know, I’ve been trying to take advantage of how close I am back home in Columbia. This is just something that I’ve kind of had like a little bit of a barren success with as far as like collaborating with different people. It was really surprising how much progress I had made just from speaking up during the workouts with the workout group I’m with with F3, and, you know, it’s in Rock Hill, like I said it’s predominantly white, and, you know, but they understand, the way I express it to them, they understand the how financial hardship and economic situations can affect your outlook and progress and things like that, so when you tailor the conversation a certain way, people who aren’t even, I guess what’s the best way to say it, aren’t necessarily prepared for some of the more nuanced or maybe like unfamiliar conversations about bias and things like that, they’re ready to hear how to make things better, some people do have a heart for that but just aren’t knowledgeable about just different disadvantages and issues that people are facing. So I think my biggest thing that I would say about privileged people, and this is including myself, too, is like us trying to be more, just be more humble and recognize like gatekeeping some of this progressive work as far as like, especially community stuff, you’re going to run into people in different stages for sure, and I think that that’s a big roadblock with like grassroots stuff is like stuff we need to educate and stuff we need to continue to try to like move the whole group forward as much as possible with a lot of these issues, like a lot of these social issues even with gentrification and things like that that I talked about earlier aren’t going to get fixed without people knowing what’s going on. But I definitely just think I’ve run into enough roadblocks, kind of funny dealing with the members of church communities, not just in Rock Hill, just, like I said, I went down to Columbia and talked to some people at my parents’ church about what I’m trying to do, and like surprised at how much pushback I got with people saying, “Well, we don’t work with these people, and, you know, we just see things differently.” I think the more you can figure out how to work around that, whatever it takes, I think is really important cause like all of that, the issue of like gatekeeping, trying to say, “We’re going to include these people. We’re not going to include these people,” it’s a double-edged sword for sure, so, just kind of trying to keep that in mind as the group that’s more privileged to try to say like, figure out how to be more inviting to those that you disagree with.
Nicki: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that, Greg, and thank you for opening up about your experiences cultivating the garden, the challenges but also the things that you can celebrate, and I’m really excited for the future of the garden and can’t wait to hear how the rest of the crops do and the next season of crops as you’ve taken things you’ve learned and will apply those, and I’ve enjoyed just getting to have this conversation with you, so thanks for coming onto the show.
Greg: Thank you for having me again. Yeah.
Nicki: Yeah. It was so good.
Transition Music
Closing: I want to thank Sequana Murray for the voice clip she sent to me for the episode intro. You can purchase her music on Bandcamp at bandy17.bandcamp.com. Her music is available on most streaming services under the name Bandy. I also want to thank Jordan Lukens for his help with editing and Danielle Bolin for creating the episode graphic. Please subscribe and review the show, but only if you’re planning on leaving a 5-star review. Otherwise, you can just skip this part. You can access the Broadening the Narrative blog by visiting broadeningthenarrative.blogspot.com, and you can find the Broadening the Narrative page on Instagram by searching for @broadeningthenarrative and on Twitter by searching for @broadnarrative. I hope that if you know and love me you can engage with the Broadening the Narrative blog, social media accounts, and podcast, as well as any recommended resources. Then, you can share with people who know and love you, and little by little, person by person, we can broaden the narrative. Grace and peace, friends.
Outro Music
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