ANDERSON, Ind. (WISH) — National Nutrition Month is winding down, but the goals of it will live on, through an ambitious project from Community Health Network.

The health system’s Anderson hospital campus is home to an effort to grow 30,000 pounds of fresh produce on four acres of property. Mikkal Hodge leads the charge as the official Community Health Network Farmer.

“The goal is to provide a resource for fresh produce to the community when it’s not necessarily readily available,” Hodge said in a visit with WISH-TV’s Daybreak. “The farm’s there to provide this as one of the spokes in the wheel to help alleviate that need.”

The numbers suggest Madison County is a fertile place for anti-hunger efforts. According to a study of Census data, “Feeding America” finds that 59% of the county lives below the threshold for SNAP benefits, and 15% of people in the county are “food insecure.”

“So we bring people to the Jetty Center at Community Farm and teach them how to grow their own produce, teach them how to cook with the produce that we’re growing for them, and just sort of build that sense of community that we all need,” Hodge explained.

Hodge’s work on a large-scale garden offers lessons everyone can use in their own at-home or community garden to provide produce for healthy eating, even in a limited space.

His tips include:

• Set Goals: Decide ahead of time if your aim is to produce something fresh to eat, to preserve for later, or simply to try something new.
• Plan your resources: Settle on whether you’ll use a yard, container, or community garden. Acquire good soil and, likely, fertilizer. Also, choose whether you want to grow from seeds or seedlings.
• Anticipate the end of the season: Since many things mature at the same time, harvest needs to happen quickly – so have a strategy for handling it. If you won’t eat all you grow, think about how you can share with neighbors and the community. If you want to preserve anything, make sure you’ll have space to keep it.

If you’d like to learn more about the Community Health Network farm, click here.