The first signs of spring are already starting to sprout in a back room in Edith Schaeffer’s home a couple of km north of Blackfalds.
Tomato, basil and parsley plants are all underway. Mint, rosemary and cabbage have started to poke through in a variety of seed starter trays.
Although Schaeffer can tend her tiny plants inside, once they move to her garden outside they will no longer be within her reach.
Schaeffer, 67, lost her right leg in 2007 after a medical procedure didn’t go well and then her left leg last November after an air cast put pressure on her foot and caused pressure sores that wouldn’t heal.
“I can go out there and go onto the grass, but that is as far as I can go,” she said, looking out her living room window. But for the first time in many years, she is hoping to be at the centre of things in her garden again.
A gardening mobility device — basically a wheelchair made to manoeuvre through tilled soil — has been designed for her by University of Alberta mechanical engineering students Tenille Camphaug, Robin McCaffrey, Jacquelyn Powell and Joshua Ulliac.
The device has tracks that will allow her to rise up higher to pick saskatoon berries or lower to get her hands in the dirt.
Unlike the push wheelchair she has with narrow tires that sink in the dirt and her motorized wheelchair that will only allow her get onto the grass, the new device will allow her to manoeuvre into the middle of the garden.
Schaeffer approached the U of A mechanical engineering program in the fall because she heard about the department working on projects.
“It’s a win-win for both of us. I’ll have this chair and they’ll have the knowledge about it,” Schaeffer said.
The four students put more than 800 hours into designing the device. The U of A student’s industrial professor of design engineering Curt Stout said the project gives students the chance to do real engineering, learn how to communicate with their clients, document what that client wants and also learn to think and function under time pressure.
It will take another eight to 12 weeks to work on the specifics of the design and then the device will be built. More than 20 engineers, welders and machinists from across Alberta, including those from Red Deer College, will be involved in perfecting the design and constructing it on a voluntary basis over the next number of months at no cost to Schaeffer. The device would normally cost around $250,000 to design and build from scratch.
“The goal is to have this running for Edith by fall in time for harvest,” Stout said.
It will make a difference not only to Schaeffer, but the gardening students she teaches at the community garden plot on her property.
Over the past decade, Schaeffer has shown beginner gardeners how to till, plant, water and harvest their crops. People drop by the community garden every Wednesday night from May to September to work on the garden plot. For $184, students receive all of the instruction, seeds and tools they need and bring home around 360 kg of vegetables, including carrots, potatoes, green and yellow beans, and more during the summer into the fall.
For the last couple of years, she has had to teach gardening along the side of the two plots, using her motorized wheelchair to get around. Soon she’ll be able to take her hoe, which sits sentinel at her back door, out into the garden to demonstrate the correct technique.
“I like to put seeds in myself,” she said. “I like to be connected with it all. I feel that connection has been severed and I want it back.”
John Person, vice-president of engineering with Tangent Design Engineering Ltd., is acting as the project manager. He said it is great to be able to help someone out.
“It’s neat because it is something that as professionals we can do to give back. It’s a neat way to make a contribution,” he said.
Once Schaeffer receives the gardening mobility device, it will allow her to continue the work she feels is so important. She started out a decade ago first with the idea to feed the hungry and then it dawned on her that it was more important to show people how to feed themselves.
“When you find your purpose in life, nothing will stop you from doing that,” Schaeffer said. “That is my purpose, to show people how to live off the land.”
Anyone who wishes to find out more about the community garden can contact Schaeffer at 403-885-4666.
sobrien@www.reddeeradvocate.com