It’s a beautiful, crisp and clear late summer morning in the glorious year of 2008 and we’ve just arrived for a workday at the Noyo Food Forest Community Garden in Fort Bragg .  Senora Ruiz is already busy tending the enormous tomatoes in the greenhouse that are overripe and ready for canning.  She sings, “Buenos Dias!” and smiles as we open the garden gate that was built by Mark and Rainbow, two alter-able friends of the garden who did a terrific job all by themselves.  The garden is bursting with colors and delicious smells and we hear a ruby-throated hummingbird zoom past us, heading straight for the native fuchsias we planted last year. 

    We follow the path and marvel at the flowering arugula and the summer squash, which provided a bulk of the profits from this year’s Farmers’ Market because of its popular sweetness and size.  The beds are all overflowing with abundance and we are amazed at how productive this land is.  All those hours of double-digging really paid off.  And our compost is so rich and vital; we’ve got people wanting to buy it from us.  We are so grateful to our local restaurants for giving us their organic kitchen scraps.

    Suddenly we hear the laughter of children as they climb out of the bus and roar with excitement and delight.  Derek will teach them about solar cooking today, using all fresh vegetables and herbs that they will select and harvest themselves.  They skip to the center arbor, where they sit and listen to Katrina tell the story of how the garden got started.  “We just never gave up, we kept at it, because we knew that it would be like this,” she says as she scans the beauty all around them.  Their joy is contagious and soon everyone is singing a harvest song and doing the circle dance that Lea taught us last fall. 

    We cruise over to the raised beds where Grandmother Rena is showing Tommy how to harvest the corn she coaxed from the earth.  We are mystified by how large and sweet it is, we never thought we could grow corn like that here in Fort Bragg .  We overhear her reminisce about times long since past when she grew corn and beans for her whole family.  Tommy kindly says, “Grandmother, I wanna be a farmer when I grow up so I can give you all the corn and beans you could ever eat.”  She looks up at us and we see ancient wisdom in her eyes.  “Thank you,” she says, “for bringing us together in this beauty, for making this happen.”  We embrace and look over the scene with utmost gratitude.  What a gift this garden is.