OAK GROVE — Comet Grove, the name of Oak Grove’s Community Garden, is growing and looking good, but besides the important food that is being raised there that will be available to local residents, the garden will provide information for research about how communities can best utilize their resources.

Hunter Morgan, a junior at Auburn University majoring in public administration, is coordinating the garden project this summer as an intern with the David Mathews Center for Civic Life. The New College at the University of Alabama and the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University are partnering with the Mathews Center in this internship.

“Foremost, we’re getting the garden up and running, but also we’re working to understand the dynamic that exists in Oak Grove – how a community of only 600 people can come together and create a project that can feed an entire community, and do it with such short manpower and resources,” Morgan said.

“Also, one of the primary goals that I have is just to get people talking,” he said. “What I mean by that is talking about the issues that pertain to them and their community and their state.

“A lot of times what I’ve experienced is people have a lot of opinions, but they don’t express them because they feel that the person they would otherwise talk to is very exclusive, but I want to help them bridge that gap and understand that a lot of the people they see as gatekeepers are really door openers.”

Morgan, a Gadsden native, is helping to facilitate this discussion by opening his door to the people of the Oak Grove community every day from 2-3:30 p.m. for “barn hours.” He is living in the barn beside the community garden located on Odens Mill Road where the former Zeigler Christmas Tree Farm was located.

He wants to meet people in the Oak Grove community with questions and suggestions about the garden and how the produce will be distributed to needy families.

Chris McCauley, program director with the Mathews Center, was checking out the garden and said Corene Lackey had contacted him on behalf of the town about using public deliberation and bringing community members together to solve problems.

McCauley said, “The community garden is a perfect example. Here in Oak Grove, they are dealing with issues ranging from unemployment to poverty and some folks who need better access to food.

“What they did is work with (former mayor) Bloise Zeigler and looked at a community resource they had, which is the 21-acre farm here that Bloise donated to the town. Now they’re in the process of developing the voucher system where low-income folks can come out here and get produce.”

McCauley said the Mathews Center’s goal for Morgan is to gain first-hand experience in community decision making in the areas of food safety and food independence and for Morgan to eventually moderate a community forum in Oak Grove on those subjects before the completion of the internship.

“It’s really a way for him to have a true embedded internship experience to where it’s not just kind of a hit-and-run kind of thing,” McCauley said. “We want him to be seen as an incomer, not an outsider.”

Lane McLelland coordinates the community-based research internship program at the Mathews Center under the New College at the University of Alabama side of the partnership and was also on site to check out Comet Grove Friday.

“We’re really interested in how do you make that connection between food and public health. Eating locally is good, but is eating fresher, local food better for you?

“We’re beginning to explore that with public health officials and how community gardens can contribute toward their own efforts toward lessening diabetes, obesity and blood pressure,” McLelland said.

She said the center is working on getting research in four sites in the state and seeing how well ideas from one site translate to another site. Oak Grove is one of those sites.

Besides the barn hours, there are community meetings every Thursday at 6 p.m. at the barn where anyone in the community can come and get involved with volunteering as well as assist with the decision making involving the garden.