At a shuttered Texas coal mine, a 1-acre garden is helping feed 2,000 people per month
The garden in the middle of a 35,000-acre former mine is supplying thousands of pounds of fresh produce to families in three counties that have few grocery stores.
“You wouldn’t think that this could happen,” Glaze said. “I think it is amazing that the ground is actually growing all these vegetables after all that mine digging.”
“The mining industry has always been seen like we’re the bad guys, we’re destroying the Earth,” Michael Altavilla, Jewett mine’s manager, said. “We want to take people out and show them this form of reclamation, a second purpose, not only mining the coal for energy, but utilizing the ground afterward.”
“We've been in this part of the mine trying to fill the hole in for almost a year. It takes quite a long while,” Mark Payne, dragline operator, said.
“I’ve seen the mining, the clearing, to everything,” Joe Harris, a 56-year-old Jewett mine reclamation specialist, said. “I take a lot of pride in this. We want it to look like it was never mined before so when I bring my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I can say, ‘Look, there was once a mine here.’”
“Moving up here from Houston, it was such a culture shock because down [in Houston] there is a grocery store on every corner and here it’s only Brookshire [Brothers],” Amy Windham, a 37-year-old pantry client and single mother of three, said. “So that’s the one thing I appreciate about this pantry. The produce is better, you can tell.”
