It’s been nearly a year since I posted on this Green Acres Permaculture Village (GAPV) site.
However, make no mistake: this tiny, three-home habitat has been thrumming and evolving all this time. Indeed, I’d say our potent, fertile little retrofit village in the heart of suburban Green Acres neighborhood in Bloomington Indiana is drawing more and more attention, especially this year, this spring, due to the main garden having “leveled up” to the max.
All this is thanks to Elisha Hardy, who bought the third house at my suggestion, last August, after regularly attending our Community Dinners for at least three years. I was aware that though she works remotely as some kind of techie for the federal government, she calls herself a farmer; but I had absolutely no idea just what a farmer she is. In fact, this place now sports what she rightly calls a “production garden,” with way too much food bursting out of its seams. Taken in late May . . .
How, you might well ask, did that happen? Easily, thanks again to Elisha, who is as much of an organizer as she is a farmer. We hold only one work party per week, for two or three hours, with very specific tasks to attend to each time. Here are a few photos from the two most recent Sunday mornings, where, beginning at 9 AM, workers fan out to get various jobs she notes done.
June 1, 2025
Left to right, top: freshly painted stand for extra plants we are going to put out for neighbors as they walk by; Ben Hur (friend), trimming one of our fig trees.
Left to right, bottom: Marita working in garden; Joseph and Marcella (neighbor) getting old signs ready to be repainted.
Notice one of the workers is a neighbor! I now call our main garden “The Great Attractor,” with anyone who walks down the street utterly astonished at the transformation.
June 7
Given that at least three other neighbors had asked to join the garden group that gets Group Me texts from Elisha, we were not surprised that today’s work party was bigger than ever, with The Great Attractor drawing in even more neighbors, including three IU student housemates from one house on nearby Bryan Street, very excited to join us; as one of them said, I wish I had listened when my parents wanted me to learn in our garden when I was a kid!
So they’re beginning to learn something now! Who knows? Maybe The Great Attractor will inspire at least tiny gardens in all sorts of even student rental homes in the Green Acres Neighborhood.
And since Elisha is so knowledgable, everybody who comes learns something about how to grow plants. An extremely valuable skill set if you assume, as we do, that local and community gardens are going to become utterly necessary in the coming years.
Four women, two neighbors and two from down the road, also joined us June 7.
Top: Elisha with Marcella (neighbor at other end of Green Acres) and Carisa (lives right across the street)
Bottom left: Wendy (our postman’s wife!), Carisa and Marcella, Mer in background.
Here’s our knowledgeable farmer and organizer, Elisha, overseeing her partner Dave last Sunday, as he gets to building an enormous sign to her specifications.
(Implied question . . . “are you doing it the way I want it?”)
Yep, as she says, “I’m the slave driver!”
This is the first of two posts on what’s goin’ on now in GAPV as we as begin again, to document the ongoing manifestation or our original intent to “grow community from the ground up.”