Hope is taking root in Butler County.

Community Partnership, a local program under the Alliance for Nonprofit Resources umbrella, recently announced it will receive $2,500 in grant money from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture's Urban Agriculture Infrastructure Grant program.

Sandra Curry, ANR Community Partnership manager, said the money will help Butler County implement the Seeds to Supper program in Western Pennsylvania.

“It's small, but what we're going to be able to do, that is pretty exciting,” Curry said. “We really needed the funds to pay for the plants and the soil we're going to work with.”

Seeds to Supper is a six-week gardening course for beginners, specifically novice adults. The program targets people who will garden on a budget and those living in an urban setting.

“You can call that backyard gardening, or you can call that urban agriculture,” Curry said. “People wanted to know how to grow more food themselves.”

Curry said Community Partnership is working with the Penn State Extension to cut through the red tape. The model is trademarked after having been developed through a partnership between the Oregon Food Bank and Oregon State University's Extension network.

“We're trying to get permission to use Seed to Supper and their materials and change them for Pennsylvania growing,” said Mary Alice Gettings, a senior educator for the extension office in Beaver County.

Diane Dallos, extension office master gardener coordinator for Butler County, said Pennsylvania has different pests, growing times and climate than Oregon.

“Our growing seasons are very different,” she explained.

Gettings said the extension office also intends to expand upon the program by adding more nutritional education, such as canning and preparing meals from the harvested food.

“Something that I'm hoping to do is some food demonstrations at the end,” she said. “It's great to grow all these things, but how do you prepare them? A lot of people don't know how to prepare greens like kale and chard.”

Curry said Community Partnership wants to start the classes on March 22. The weekend classes would be about two-and-a-half hours long and span six weeks.

She said for the first year running the program, she wants a maximum of 10 people participating with a possible waiting list in case people drop out.

Program qualification will be income-based with the threshold at 125 percent of the federal poverty guidelines, which amounts to an annual income of about $14,364 for one person and $29,613 for a family of four.

“It was really designed in Oregon toward people using a food pantry,” Curry said.

Curry said she hopes to start advertising the application process in December, which will likely come in the form of posters and fliers positioned throughout the county, a food pantry and other assistance service locations.

Curry said she's looking forward to trying this in Butler County and being Pennsylvanian pioneers.

“We're really excited,” she said.