Delia Buxton travels 45 minutes from her home in Statham to attend PlowShare meetings at Georgia Farm Bureau in Crawford each month. She said she’s hardly missed any over the past 10 years.
“It’s one of the best ways to fellowship with your community,” Buxton said. “If you’re a new person in your community, you come to one of these meetings and you’re suddenly overwhelmed with new friends.”
PlowShare, Oglethorpe County’s backyard gardening and farming group, celebrated a special milestone Monday night: its 10th anniversary. As a birthday cake was cut and potluck dinner was served, a lively jumble of conversation fell upon the meeting room.
Don and Carol Williamson of Winterville were one of two founding couples when the organization started. They began with about 15 members, and the group has grown to roughly 60 people who come together every month to share what they grow.
“It gives us a place to get together and know each other,” Don Williamson said. “We made a lot of friends here.”
PlowShare meets on the second Monday of each month. Members bring homemade dishes to contribute to a potluck, browse seeds, plants and gardening literature they can take home for free, and listen to a guest speaker present about a different topic.
Steven and Vickie Coker, also of Winterville, now help to run the organization alongside the Williamsons. Steven led a blessing before Monday’s dinner, which was accompanied by a sentimental photo montage, expressing gratitude for the friendships and camaraderie the group has fostered.
“The camaraderie in there is unbelievable because everybody’s so like-minded,” Coker said. “We all garden, we all share in the knowledge of gardening.”
Not only does the group provide a space for friendship, it also allows gardeners to share their experiences, including what worked for them and what didn’t.
Kathy Stege, Monday’s guest speaker, gave a presentation about how to care for the human-dependent purple martin bird. Members asked questions and shared their past encounters with the species.
“Probably my favorite part is how people talk about their successes and their failures,” Buxton said. “Every year, there’s a different issue that somebody seems to be having, and so we all benefit from that.”
PlowShare welcomes new faces, and Buxton said it gives members the chance to meet people of different backgrounds. Buxton is originally from Italy and said the group is also home to someone from Switzerland.
This makes the journey each month all the more worth it for her.
“It’s the people that you get to meet and sharing of plans and sharing of knowledge,” Buxton said. “I don’t get that nowhere else where I live.”