We finally got to do something hands on and out of the classroom. We went on our first "mini spike" (one day trip) to a local urban farm about 15 minutes away. The project was called Soil Born, and it's a small urban market garden and non-profit education center, thats mission is to "strengthen and support local food systems by educating youth and adults about food, nutrition, sustainable living, and ecological farming." Its pretty much a place where locals of all ages can come and learn how to farm so they can raise food for themselves to eat and to sell to local businesses. They had another farm in a different part of Sacramento but the farm we went to was just recently purchased. The group that had previously owned the farm left it in terrible condition and our job was to restore it.
We arrived to the farm around 8:00 am and were met by two other Americorps teams and a dozen local volunteers. The two guys running the farm, Shawn and Marco, had also previously been Americorps Volunteers about 15 years before. By the end of the day another 3 Americorps teams had showed up and we stayed till around four. Team Green 2 started off clearing trash, brush, rocks, random wood and metal from around the corals. Something I soon learned about Sacramento is that there are Black Widows all over the place. I had never seen a Black Widow before until I lifted up a sheet of plywood from one of the pig pens and there were about three of them running around. For as deadly as they are, they were really small. After barely escaping death we moved onto something a little easier... repainting the two corals. This was surprisingly pretty entertaining because there were chickens and pigs still running around and attempting to eat the paint. My favorite pig was nicknamed whiskey because he had trouble staying on his feet and looked like a drunk. After a couple hours of painting we switched up jobs with another group so the paint fumes didn't get to us and we started to plant garlic. Yes, i just said planting garlic. And no, not a couple of pieces but easily a thousand cloves of garlic. After planting we had to mulch the field with straw. It took about 30 bails of straw and a good hour to make sure everything was covered.
We stopped for lunch and I was able to try an all organic vegetable chili. As most of you know, I'm normally not the kind of person that would eat something that was organic and only involved vegetables but it was some of the best chili i have ever had (Sorry mom!). All the food they grow on the farm are organic.
The final project I worked on for the day was transporting wood from the farm into dumpsters down in one of the fields. I believe we filled three large dumpsters with wood alone. As a whole group, we also moved numerous bathroom fixtures (toilets, sinks and tubs), metal fences, gates, logs and sticks, cement slabs, plastic roofing, rocks, and tons upon tons of garbage.
I got to talk to a couple of the local volunteers who were really excited to see all of us there. They said they usually go to the other farm every Tuesday and work all day then have a potluck dinner at night. They invited us out and I'm hoping to get a small group of CM's together to go and help next Tuesday or one a free weekend. They also said that there are usually a couple of family's that work on the farm everyday so they are able to make a little money and bring home some food. The whole idea of this Ranch was pretty cool. Shawn and Marco were also really chill and I can only hope that Americorps has such a large impact on my life as it did on theirs.
We arrived to the farm around 8:00 am and were met by two other Americorps teams and a dozen local volunteers. The two guys running the farm, Shawn and Marco, had also previously been Americorps Volunteers about 15 years before. By the end of the day another 3 Americorps teams had showed up and we stayed till around four. Team Green 2 started off clearing trash, brush, rocks, random wood and metal from around the corals. Something I soon learned about Sacramento is that there are Black Widows all over the place. I had never seen a Black Widow before until I lifted up a sheet of plywood from one of the pig pens and there were about three of them running around. For as deadly as they are, they were really small. After barely escaping death we moved onto something a little easier... repainting the two corals. This was surprisingly pretty entertaining because there were chickens and pigs still running around and attempting to eat the paint. My favorite pig was nicknamed whiskey because he had trouble staying on his feet and looked like a drunk. After a couple hours of painting we switched up jobs with another group so the paint fumes didn't get to us and we started to plant garlic. Yes, i just said planting garlic. And no, not a couple of pieces but easily a thousand cloves of garlic. After planting we had to mulch the field with straw. It took about 30 bails of straw and a good hour to make sure everything was covered.
We stopped for lunch and I was able to try an all organic vegetable chili. As most of you know, I'm normally not the kind of person that would eat something that was organic and only involved vegetables but it was some of the best chili i have ever had (Sorry mom!). All the food they grow on the farm are organic.
The final project I worked on for the day was transporting wood from the farm into dumpsters down in one of the fields. I believe we filled three large dumpsters with wood alone. As a whole group, we also moved numerous bathroom fixtures (toilets, sinks and tubs), metal fences, gates, logs and sticks, cement slabs, plastic roofing, rocks, and tons upon tons of garbage.
I got to talk to a couple of the local volunteers who were really excited to see all of us there. They said they usually go to the other farm every Tuesday and work all day then have a potluck dinner at night. They invited us out and I'm hoping to get a small group of CM's together to go and help next Tuesday or one a free weekend. They also said that there are usually a couple of family's that work on the farm everyday so they are able to make a little money and bring home some food. The whole idea of this Ranch was pretty cool. Shawn and Marco were also really chill and I can only hope that Americorps has such a large impact on my life as it did on theirs.
No comments:
Post a Comment