Chalupa tends to UP community garden

When residents at the UP Home need fresh vegtables from the garden, Carl Chalupa is the man they can depend on.

Growing food for others has been part of Chalupa's life for a long time. Raised on a farm in Washington, his family always had a garden which he'd often help his mother tend to.

As he grew up, though, he moved away from agricultural farming and ended up raising cattle in Utah, where if he was growing anything it was usually hay for the cows. During their time in Utah, his wife Martha always wanted him to start a garden, but he could never find the time.

'She likes fresh products rather than buying them out of the store,” said Chalupa. 'Her folks had a garden to so she was used to having home grown food.”

It was 2004 when Chalupa retired and moved back to Washington, and after about a year had the itch to start gardening again, so he took a plot at the UP Home.

Watermelons, onions, peppers and radishes are some of his favorite things to grow. He does this in addition to tending to the community garden. Martha isn't able to help him in the garden much for health reasons, but Chalupa doesn't mind, gardening get him outside and keeps him active.

During growing season, Carl Chalupa will spend hours each day outside, growing tomatoes, beans and other crops, not just for himself, but for any UP Home resident who wants some.

When he took over running the UP Home community garden about two years ago, he didn't change much. He and his set of assistants have been planting the same sorts of crops that have been popular in the past, the kind of food people are going to eat, but the biggest crop is the sweet corn.

According the Chalupa, the sweet corn takes up half the space in the garden when they plant it.

'When the corn is ripe we get volunteers to help pick it and we bring it to all the cottages around here,” Chalupa said. 'People will go down and pick their own too if they want corn.”

While he gets a lot help while growing corn, much of the year it's just him and his two assistants tending to the garden. Chalupa estimates that during growing season he averages one to three hours gardening a day. Chalupa said it's a rewarding way of staying active and growing food for other UP Home residents.

'We harvest (the crops) and take it down to the center,” Chalupa said. '(Residents) can just come by and take what they want. The community garden's for everybody to share in the food.”