Recipe for a School Garden

Natasha Hegmann is an MTCC AmeriCorps VISTA serving with the FoodCorps team in Ennis.

Natasha explaining the garden layout

As an MTCC AmeriCorps VISTA serving with the FoodCorps team, I spend a lot of time cooking. I bake goodies for my weekly continuing education classes, I help sell produce at the Farmers’ Market by serving samples of veggie dishes and handing out recipes, and I even test my hand at cooking the venison, elk, and pheasant that community members share with me. In addition to all that cooking, I’m a self-proclaimed food blog addict - when I’m not cooking or working, I’m bookmarking recipes for future reference. I love the tantalizing photos, the unique ingredient lists and suggested modifications, but most of all I love the stories that come with recipes. From deep family tradition to a random purchase of an unfamiliar vegetable based on a grower’s recommendation, recipes carry and communicate who we are and what we’re about.

I’m also working on cooking up culture on a different scale: a culture of active kids, healthy families and vibrant communities. Take building a school garden:

Ingredients:

• 30 volunteers
• 13 yds soil
• 11 yds cedar mulch
• 300 ft lumber
• Shovels, rakes, wheelbarrows, screws, weed barrier, garden gloves and other assorted tools
• A warm spring day

Sound pretty simple so far? The ingredients may seem straightforward, but getting them together is a bit trickier. It took hours of committee planning, meeting with community leaders, soliciting support from partner organizations, and grant writing to bring everything together for our first scheduled garden work day this past Saturday. Even then, we were short a warm spring day. Instead we had clouds, breeze and graupel off and on throughout the day.

Luckily, the recipe is quite forgiving. Elementary school boys don’t care what kind of precipitation is coming down so long as they have toy dump trucks to haul soil around in. Committed parents and community members break sparingly for refreshments when the culmination of a garden project more than six months in the making is finally within reach. And I was too giddy from the unprecedented support and incredible progress for chilly fingers to deter my rock picking.

The result of all this hard work is a beautiful school garden with ten raised beds and two perennial gardens that rose out of rocks, weeds and litter in just four hours. An amazing feat, but I think the success will just get sweeter as students plant seeds in their garden beds and as they watch the garden’s progress throughout the summer.

 

Every student and teacher will have the opportunity to add their own special touch to the Ennis Mustang School Garden recipe. Kindergartners will plant a rainbow of vegetables, fourth graders will sow and save seeds from heirloom rattlesnake snap beans, and a collection of native perennial plant species will gradually overtake parts of the garden.  The school garden recipe may have a simple ingredient list, but its story is uniquely tied to the community where it resides. The most exciting part of the process is seeing what grows!

Before

After

The Story of Poop

Alyssa Charney is an MTCC AmeriCorps VISTA serving with the FoodCorps team in Red Lodge.
 

“So next time you see an animal around, whether it’s a cow or a deer, a goat or a chicken, make sure you thank them for helping to make the soil that grows our wilderness and gardens.”

And with those words of wisdom from local farmers Ivan Thrane and Chia Chen-Speidel, the next group of students jumped up to help spread two-year-old cow manure on the raised beds of the new Red Lodge Youth Garden. At first I was shocked by how eager they were to dig in, so as we filled up the wheelbarrow, I wanted to make sure they really knew what was in the pile.

“It’s old cow poop!”

And why are we adding it to the soil?

“To feed our vegetables!”

Excellent.

The activity was part of an Earth Day celebration for kindergarten through fifth graders at the new Youth Garden. In addition to meeting Ivan and Chia’s goats and helping to spread cow manure, the students also learned about recycling, ground wheat and made butter, and then enjoyed the local snack they had helped to create.

For some students and teachers, it was the first time they had seen the garden with its filled raised beds, hoop house structure, and tilled plots. Two days earlier, the Red Lodge community had come out in full force to build the garden.

I’ve been saying since I arrived how impressed I am by the community’s enthusiasm and support, but on this Garden Work Day, I was completely blown away.  Throughout the afternoon over fifty kids, parents, grandparents, teachers, school board members, and community gardeners came out to help us build.

We unloaded four trucks filled with donated soil, got the hoop house into the ground, picked out rocks from an area that a community member had tilled for us the day before, and dug up some additional beds. People donated shovels, seeds and pots of rutabaga, oregano and chives.

At the end of the day I thought about about how well Ivan and Chia’s “story of poop” represents the interconnectedness of what we’re building here. The manure is connected to local beef in the schools, to the fields where the cows graze, and to fresh produce that is sold throughout the area. These different components rely on each other, and together they form a sustainable food system.

And here in Red Lodge we’re creating a system whose pieces and people rely on each other just the same. That sense of connectedness and interdependency is reflected when a student suddenly exclaims, “I helped fill this with soil last weekend!” or “My class worked to build these raised beds!” or even “This soil came from my family’s land in Belfry!”

Just as all the complexities of our food system (even the poop!) build sustainability, by bringing more and more youth and community members into the project, we’re ensuring the sustainability of the garden for the years to come.

Making Changes and Transitioning

Anina Estrem is a Communities in Action AmeriCorps VISTA serving with the FoodCorps team in Forsyth and Lame Deer.

“What do you think this is?” Students reach for the pieces of vegetable I’m offering and examine it closely.

“Is it lettuce?”

“It smells like broccoli.”

“I don’t want to eat it.”

Several weeks ago I introduced Rosebud’s elementary students to kale, most of whom had never tried this strange green leaf before. Raw kale can be slightly bitter and tough, so I also brought ample amounts of baked kale chips which I assumed students would gobble down. Imagine my surprise when every one of the kindergarten through 6^th grade classes tasted the kale chips, exclaimed over how they tasted like potato chips, and clamored for more raw kale. In my final lesson of the semester last week, we reviewed what we’ve learned this year (in song) and ate what else- more kale! One student informed me she got kale seeds in her Easter basket. A kindergartener was thrilled to announce he had kale for dinner the night before. A third-grader told me that she intends to plant kale in her garden plot.

During the last eight months, I have not always been convinced that I am making a difference.  Change comes reluctantly, and results often aren’t easily discernible. I’ve had to accept on faith that the ideas I’m spreading and relationships I’m building have an impact, even when I can’t see it.  My faith was rewarded by finding Rosebud’s elementary students transformed into kale-eating fiends!

This success gives me new confidence and enthusiasm to take on the final three months of service. Because over 50% of Rosebud students live out-of-district, developing a summer program isn’t feasible. Looking to stay busy with the end of the school year quickly approaching, I have transitioned to serving with the Boys & Girls Club in Lame Deer.

Lame Deer is a town of about 2,000 people located sixty miles south of Forsyth on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. My new host site, the Boys & Girls Club, offers a safe and fun hang-out spot and in the summer provides meals for hundreds of children. I’ve already learned that accessing fresh or local food is even harder here than in Forsyth, and diet-related disease is widespread. To change this, we are building a garden out of shipping pallets to help supply the Club’s kitchen and allow members to learn the origins of what they’re eating. We intend to partner with the Club’s mentoring program to get both kids and adults gardening, and to integrate nutrition education into other existing programs.

At the Echoes of the Earth Conference in Bozeman on Climate Change, 

with representatives from the Club and tribal Elders.

Lame Deer is a new experience for me- I’m learning to live in a new community and a new culture where I face harsh local realities about accessing food and good health. But my experience in Rosebud taught me that even when it feels hopeless and like no one is listening, change actually is happening.

Baked Kale Chips

Wash and dry kale thoroughly, and strip leaves from stem. Toss lightly with olive oil and salt, and bake at 350 on a cookie sheet for 10-15 minutes until crispy for a delicious crunchy snack!

Want to learn more about how to build a garden using shipping pallets?  Check out these links:
http://lifeonthebalcony.com/how-to-turn-a-pallet-into-a-garden/
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=190224761089118&set=a.117496841695244.18428.117483991696529&type=1&theater