Project Feed the Hood

" Yeah, this spot right here, it kind of changes every year. The broader area that we're in, we call our agroecology center, it's a mix of native perennial herbs, shrubs, fruit producing trees, berries, stuff like that, it's one of the more young parts of the site. So each year, as we continue to plant things and work on it, there's new spots that'll have volunteer native grasses or wildflowers that pop up, perennial things. Most mornings, I'll walk through here and be able to see the wildlife, the abundance of it and this whole habitat that we're trying to make here, I'm real proud of it." 

"The group that runs this project is with a larger nonprofit, and they do a lot of youth work, so youth internships. So I actually started when I was 13, down in the valley again at another site that they were working at, in one of those summer internships. I was with a group of primarily upper high school level kids and then just the regular hands on farm sites. It was kind of an intimidating space to first come into, being a younger kid, having all these other folks that are a little more experienced. But through that first summer of working there, it was the first exposure experience I had to what intergenerational work and education could look like. It was kind of a machismo, trady blue collar vibe, and we were ribbing with each other, but that can be an intimidating space for someone who wouldn't traditionally be in that sort of space. Through that though, it was a very equal playing field, as far as people's efforts, labor, and input in dialogue on how to do the work. It was inspiring and just an immediately welcoming space. So, that got me into farming, and I kept doing those internships in my middle and high school age, and once I graduated high school, there were opportunities through them to still do this work."

"I started farming when I was 13 down in the valley, doing very traditional kind of row crops, artificial fertilizer amendments, all that sort of stuff. I was trained in the traditional way of growing. And as I've started to work here, we've obviously learned more and moved away from that type of ag, looking towards more sustainable practices. And some of the key ones really is our soil health, so we really prioritize that. We do rotational cover cropping whenever we're in the off season, regular soil testing, just making sure that our micro life is doing well. It is simple, the practices themselves that keep your soil covered. Don't just pull as much as you can from a nutrient rise, so we've actually seen since 2020 and with the building of our soil, both our water usage go down and our need for organic pesticides. The wildlife out here is starting to kind of manage and balance out on its own. So I haven't had to do a lot of neem oil sprays for aphids or different pests that you usually find out here. The environments kind of started to work with us."

"When I'm trying to teach younger generations how to do this work, I think a  lot of people nowadays don't perceive or see these living things as equals, or necessary parts of what sustains them (humans). There's I'd say a really large disconnect with the actual work that goes into creating food and how you do that without interference or extraction and damage to the natural elements. So I love to try to teach kids that these are relatives that have feelings and you can hurt them, you can do things to them that are disrespectful. One of the things with our internship, one of the first things we do is have a long dialogue around consent, consent for harvest and consent for interacting with the plants. When you start to teach young folks that these aren't inanimate objects that you can do whatever with, that there are real world consequences for how you treat them, it starts to change people's approach, and how they look at the broader world."