The housing market sucks. Builders are having enough trouble selling the houses they have already built, so slabs, half-built homes, and empty lots are sitting there, accumulating dust. So what did one local builder do? Put his employees to work, tilling fields:
They may not have built any houses this summer, but employees at J.W. Gibson Construction Co. in Kingston have been as busy as ever. Using their backhoes and landscaping equipment, they tilled enough land to grow more than five tons of vegetables to donate to local anti-hunger organizations.
“Construction has been slow, and we had some spare time,” said owner J.W. Gibson, 74, explaining why he had six of his employees plow about 17.5 acres of the 250-acre family farm where his business offices are located.
“I didn’t want to lay anybody off. We have tractors and staff, and that’s what we used in the gardens,” said Gibson, who has been a builder and developer in Oak Ridge since 1957.
Between chores to maintain the company’s commercial properties, Gibson’s employees planted, fertilized and harvested more than 10,000 pounds of corn, beans, tomatoes, greens, okra, beets and other vegetables. They took donations regularly to FISH Hospitality Pantries of Knoxville, which offers free groceries to those in need. They also made a delivery earlier in the summer to The Love Kitchen, which feeds the homeless.
Employees stayed employed, land was used, and homeless shelters and aid centers throguhout Eastern Tennessee got almost more food than they knew what to do with. Would that more builders had taken this kind of initiative… I cannot tell you how many half-built homes, abandoned slabs, and empty spec housing we have seen in the past year…
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