Save the date for Fall Fest!

Please join us for the 13^th Annual

Marra Farm Fall Fest

Celebrate the harvest,
South Park style!

Saturday, September 20, 12:00–3:00PM
Marra Farm: 9026 4^th Ave S
(between South Henderson and South Barton)

* farm-fresh food * apple cider pressing *
* live music * children’s activities * farm tours * 

Free and family friendly!

Volunteers needed: assist with kids’ activities; prep, grill, and serve food;
wash dishes; help setup and cleanup, etc.
Contact Kyong: kyongs@solid-ground.org or 206.713.3247

We hope to see you there!

~ The Lettuce Link team:
Amelia, Kathleen, Kyong, Nate and Scott

Lettuce Link’s Giving Garden at Marra Farm is a program of Solid Ground

        

Unfortunately, Marra Farm is not wheelchair accessible

Hamm Creek Restoration: Would you believe this is Seattle?

Harmony. Lots can come to mind when you really think about it. But I’m talking environmental harmony. I visited, photographed, chatted at and volunteered on the Marra Farm Giving Garden for the first time a couple weeks ago. It was one of those rare Seattle spring days where the sun lingers all day and the temperature is just right. While I poked around the farm (before getting down and dirty planting tomatoes), I kept the idea of Hamm Creek in the back of my mind.

About three days before my visit, I talked to Nate Moxley, Lettuce Link Program Manager at Solid Ground, about where I might find the creek once I arrived at the farm. He explained to me exactly where I could find it. I mean, the exact placement of the creek from any standing position, whether you’re facing north, south, east or west; are 300 feet from 4th Avenue South; next to the tallest scarecrow, etc. Let me tell you: I stillmissed it. After slowly exploring the farm, I finally circled back to where I’d started.

[Read about the rest of Nicole's visit to Hamm Creek on the Solid Ground blog.]

June 2014 Groundviews: Growing Healthy Partnerships

Groundviews is Solid Ground’s quarterly newsletter for our friends and supporters. Below is the June 2014 Groundviews lead story; please visit Solid Ground's website to read the entire issue online.

If you visit Lettuce Link’s Giving Garden at Marra Farm in Seattle’s South Park neighborhood on any given day from March to October, you’re likely to find a beehive of activity — often involving groups of students from Concord International School (pre-K through 5th grade), located just a few blocks away. Via collaboration with Solid Ground’s Lettuce Link and Apple Corps programs and Concord teachers, students learn about nutrition, the environment, and sustainable gardening and food systems.

At the center of the buzzing, you might find Amelia Swinton, Lettuce Link Education Coordinator, who describes her job as “the meeting ground of two different education programs.” There’s gardening education through Lettuce Link, combined with nutrition education through Apple Corps. In the fall and winter, she partners with an Apple Corps AmeriCorps member to teach weekly indoor nutrition-education lessons at Concord. Then during the growing season, classes move outdoors for hands-on gardening at Marra Farm, where kids get to “Adopt-a-Plot” that they plant, nurture and harvest themselves. Best of all, they get to bring the veggies home for their families to enjoy.

Nate Moxley, Lettuce Link Program Manager, says it’s “a collective approach. We’re working together to achieve common goals around food justice, access and education. Almost everything that we do comes back to that.”

Engaging families 

Since 1998, Solid Ground’s involvement as one of several stewarding organizations at Marra Farm has greatly increased access to healthy nutritious food in South Park, and one of the most effective conduits for this has been Concord students themselves. When Solid Ground launched the Apple Corps program in 2007 to do nutrition and fitness education in schools and nonprofits, Concord became a natural partner.

In addition to classroom lessons, there are afterschool events designed not only to engage families, but also to encourage self-determination where healthy food choices are concerned. Annual “Market Night” celebrations are one such event, combining health and nutrition information and activities with cultural sharing presentations, and an open-air market where each kid is empowered to choose from and “purchase” a variety of fresh produce.

Rained out from the outdoor classroom,
Joanne cooks up some fresh
produce grown at Marra Farm.

At Concord’s recent Market Night, Amelia introduced us to Joanne – a 4th grader and very enthusiastic budding gardener – who has brought her family to the Farm on several occasions. Joanne tells us, “I like Marra Farm because they garden, and also they let other kids do it.” Her favorite veggie to grow is “peas. They’re actually a little hard; you have to use sticks so they can climb, and you need to water them and weed them every single time.”

Joanne definitely thinks it’s better to grow your own food rather than buy it in a grocery store because, “It’s more nutritious, because you’re proud of yourself, and you think it’s very good!” She says someday, “I’m going to go and make my own garden in the back of my house.” For now, she and her parents are happy to live so close to Marra Farm.

Another way families get involved is through student-led Community Kitchens, known at Concord as “4th Grade Cooks.” Amelia says, “The logic behind 4th Grade Cooks is that the best way to learn something is to teach it – and kids should be the nutrition teachers for their families. Kids are a great ‘carrot’ to get their whole family involved, and then it becomes a night where kids are in the lead in cooking healthy food – the end result being a fun, positive space where everybody eats a healthy, free dinner. And what family doesn’t want to come cook with their cute kid?”

Amelia Swinton helps Concord International 5th graders tell the difference between weeds and edible plants. (Photo by Brad Fenstermacher)

Honoring community strengths
In South Park, 30% of residents speak Spanish, and Latino students make up the largest ethnic group (over 61%) at Concord. As an international school, the dual-language immersion program strives for all students to become bilingual/biliterate in English and Spanish. While Amelia is fluent in Spanish, she says she hopes that Solid Ground’s work in South Park will become “more community based and build leadership amongst folks from the neighborhoods where we’re working. As a white educator not from the community, this feels especially important to me.”

One way Amelia connects the community to gardening and nutrition education efforts is to invite parents and teachers to guest-teach classes in their areas of expertise. Recently, one student’s mom gave his class a tour of the Marra Farm Chicken Co-op that she helped to create. “To encourage families to share some of their knowledge is a really powerful way of switching out those roles of who has knowledge, and who’s the giver of knowledge, and who’s the receiver of knowledge.”

But she adds, “I think the most important kernels of my work at Marra Farm are getting kids to bond with nature and healthy eating – and doing so in a way that acknowledges how agriculture and farming have been felt really disproportionately by different communities. Particularly in the Latino community, there’s been a lot of suffering through agriculture. There is also a huge amount of knowledge and pride. I hope the program continues to grow in a way that acknowledges people’s different experiences, while leading with the really beautiful and important things that happen when people love on their environment, feed their bodies well, and treat animals with respect.”

Amelia says, “Part of what makes nutrition education and the Marra Farm Giving Garden such a natural fit is that nutrition is all about, ‘Eat your fruits and veggies!’ And the Giving Garden makes it possible in a community that would otherwise struggle to access produce. Where do you get fresh vegetables? Marra Farm! Actually being able to say, ‘This is important and this is how you can get it’ is really powerful.”

Marra Farm Chicken Cooperative

Last summer we introduced 17 teenage chickens (pullets) to their new home at Marra Farm as part of the Marra Farm Chicken Cooperative (MFCC)!

This was a monumental step towards the dream of a community-led chicken cooperative at Marra Farm. Though Lettuce Link provided staffing and support for the initial phases of the project, the long-term vision, however, has always been to see the chicken co-op become self-sustaining and self-governed by South Park community members.

Over the past few months, the Marra Farm Chicken Cooperative has narrowed down to a core group of 13 members who share the responsibilities of morning and evening care for the brood of hens. With the help of Lettuce Link’s Marra Farm Coordinator, Kyong Soh, and AmeriCorps member Amanda Reeves, the cooperative has developed systems for accountability, communication, and collecting dues, ensuring that they properly care for the chickens and fairly share the work (and benefits).

Cooperative members have committed to daily care of the chickens, cleaning the coop on a regular basis, and regularly communicating with each other. We commend the ways that the members have worked together across linguistic, cultural, and relational differences!

To maximize the health of the chickens, the land, and the eggs, the group decided to feed the ladies organic feed, greens, and other plant scraps. With an abundance of fresh greens at Marra Farm—including scraps from Lettuce Link’s Giving Garden, the brood has a diverse array of healthy greens to munch on alongside the store-bought feed. The hens get quite excited when presented with some scrumptious chard or bites of winter squash.

Given the timing of the project, the hens approached egg-laying age as winter approached and egg production dramatically tapered off. However, in late October co-op members collected the first few eggs, allowing the group to see their commitment pay off! It’s a nice taste of what the springtime will bring.

We welcome you to visit the chickens at Marra Farm. Community neighbors and visitors alike have enjoyed watching the chickens and seeing urban farming on a whole different level. The chickens also provide an opportunity to educate visitors about the importance of ethical and healthy animal care, and the amazing possibilities that emerge with community collaboration. Next time you come to Marra Farm, please walk around and say “hello” to the Marra Farm chickens!

What's Cooking at Concord?

While the gardens snooze, our education programming sneaks indoors to Concord Elementary. We're two months deep into our school-based work, so we thought it was time for an update!

Monday through Wednesday, we teach cooking-based nutrition education to grades K-5. Recently, second graders met Pepita, the Purple Protein [hand-puppet] Squirrel and explored plant-based proteins through black bean and sweet potato chili. In fifth grade, we listened to a story about the Three Sisters - corn, beans, and squash - and learned about the traditional importance of these crops for Native agriculturists across the hemisphere. Kindergarten noses were tickled by the soft aroma of cabbage soup, which they seasoned and sampled.

At the end of October we held a Healthy Halloween raffle, where kids could turn in 5+ pieces of candy for a raffle ticket. This effort collected more than 45 pounds of candy (not quiiiiite as much as Emerson Elementary), which a kind dental office in Bellevue shipped to military personnel overseas.

Outside of the classroom, Apple Corps members have coached a Girls on the Run! team. Fifteen third, fourth, and fifth grade girls trained after school all fall for a 5K race, which took place last Saturday, December 7 at Seward Park. It was a chilly day, but the Concord Cougars had a great run!

We've begun a second year of 4th Grade Cooks, a night of community cooking led by students. Below are some pictures and a recipe from our first evening, which featured the return of some favorite menu items from last year. Want to join the fun? We could use 1-2 volunteers on Thursdays December 12 and January 16 from 5:30-8pm. E-mail Amelia at amelias@solid-ground.org if you're interested!

~Amelia Swinton, Lettuce Link Education Coordinator

Mahlet fine-tunes the griddle for pupusas

Salad fingers massage repollo

Souperstars making Squash and Lentil Soup!

Spicy Squash and Red Lentil Soup

Ingredients:

• 6 cups peeled, cubed winter squash 
• ¾ cup red lentils 
• 2 Tbsp canola oil 
• 1 cup chopped onion 
• 5 large garlic cloves, minced 
• 1 cup chopped celery 
• 2 tsp curry powder 
• ¼ tsp ground nutmeg 
• ½ tsp coriander 
• Cayenne, to taste 
• Salt, to taste 
• 3 Tbsp fresh lemon juice 
• 1 Tbsp tomato paste 
• 2 cups milk (optional) 

Directions:

1. Cook squash and lentils in 5 cups of water in a large soup pot until tender, 20-25 minutes. 
2. Working in batches, puree the squash, lentils, and cooking water in a food processor or blender. Return puree to the pot and set aside. 
3. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat. Sauté onion, garlic, and celery until tender, about 5 min. 
4. Add the sautéed vegetables to the soup pot. Stir in spices and lemon juice. Heat soup and bring to a simmer. Add tomato, milk if desired, and simmer 10 more minutes, stirring occasionally. 

Serves 8

Marra Farm Fall Fest 2013: A Sunny Celebration

On the day before the autumnal equinox we hosted our 12th Annual Fall Fest at Marra Farm. All week we had been worriedly watching the weather forecast, which predicted a dismal cold and wet day. But to our delight, we woke up to sun and a fresh, fall day!

It was the perfect summer sendoff. People of all ages came out for the celebration – South Park neighbors, Mien and P-Patch gardeners, Lettuce Link volunteers, and students from Concord Elementary.

Over the course of the sunny afternoon, we feasted on a delicious potluck, with items ranging from neighbor Mike’s freshly caught salmon, to grilled summer squash harvested from Marra Farm, to a wide array of international dishes from members of the Mien Community Garden and the Marra Farm P-Patch.

And we drank fresh-pressed Marra Farm apple cider! We washed and quartered the apples, cranked the cider grinder, and then pressed the pulp through to make sweet, tangy cider. The press ran the entire afternoon and every drop was thoroughly enjoyed!

Kids of all ages (and the young at heart) enjoyed pumpkin painting, apple bowling (using the Marra Farm Putt Putt hole), gunny sack races, story time with librarians from the South Park branch of the Seattle Public Library, and exploring the sensory wonders of the farm—including a ginormous sunflower head.

And what would a party be if there wasn't any music? The Rooftop Dogs bluegrass band and the Seattle Fandango Project serenaded the crowd with fun, harvest-time tunes and fantastic, foot-tapping music from Mexico.

This year’s Fall Fest was also an opportunity to honor the amazing ten years of work of Farmer Sue McGann, who will retire from Lettuce Link in early October. We welcomed two new staff members - our new Marra Farm coordinator, Kyong Soh, who started training with Sue in September, and Lettuce Link’s new Program Manager, Nate Moxley, who started work in July. Fall Fest happened to be the day before both Sue’s and Nate’s birthday, so we serenaded them with a festive, chaotic rendition of “Happy Birthday.”

Community, delicious food, games, music, sunshine - we had all the ingredients for a good party. Thanks to all of you who were a part of Fall Fest in 2013, and we hope to see everyone again next year!

~ Amanda, Apple Corps Member with Lettuce Link

12th Annual Marra Farm Fall Fest

Lettuce Link invites you to come celebrate the harvest, South Park style!

Saturday, September 21, 12–3pm

Marra Farm: 9026 4th Ave S, 98108

* farm-fresh food * apple cider pressing * live music * children’s activities * farm tours *

Free and family friendly!

We’ll appreciate the amazing work of Farmer Sue McGann, who is retiring after 10 years at Marra Farm, and we’ll welcome new Marra Farm Coordinator Farmer Kyong Soh!

Volunteers needed: assist with kids’ activities; prep, grill, and serve food; wash dishes; help setup and cleanup, etc. Contact Amelia: amelias@solid-ground.org or 206.694.6731 for details or to sign up.

We hope to see you there!

South Park Putts Out

At Lettuce Link we've been lucky to have a stellar intern crew. Today, we're featuring the writing of Bea, a Whitman College student who infused Lettuce Link with her artistic talents this summer.

When I first started my internship at Lettuce Link, I joyfully volunteered for my first project: the construction of a mini putt-putt golf hole. At first it seemed like an odd task – I thought my internship was about farming, not mini golf construction.

But I learned that as part of the National Night Out Against Crime, the group South Park Arts organizes a mini-golf course each year, and this year they had invited Lettuce Link to sponsor a Marra Farm hole.

As a naive, over-excited college student, I was ready to jump to any height for my awesome new internship. Conveniently ignoring the fact that my construction skills were somewhere between rusty and nonexistent, I began making lists of materials and costs.

In the first couple of weeks, I filled my office hours with brainstorming, and assumed that one day soon I would proudly display the completed project on my desk.

What I didn’t know then was that in the weeks to come, in between my time working at Marra Farm and the Seattle Community Farm, I would end up hauling electric drills and large pieces of wood as part of my daily commute.

Since my commute was two hours long and included multiple buses and a ferry, this was no small feat. As much as I loved it when a suited business man came up to me on the 7:05 am boat to tell me that the wooden two-by-four hanging out of my backpack was a safety hazard, I was a bit overwhelmed by the increasingly large scope of the project.

After several late nights finishing the construction, I could almost take a sigh of relief…almost. Yes, I had finished the construction process, but my plans were not complete – I still had to paint the hole. At this point, I was kicking myself for having such extravagant expectations for the project, and was just ready to be done with it. It took me five hours to complete the painting.

Finally, the hole was ready. We transported it (rising to the task of wrangling a large, unwieldy structure into a small car) to the Putt Putt event, where it delighted and challenged our mini-golfing South Park neighbors all evening.

Despite the unexpected challenges with the project, I survived it all. And, if I do say so, the Putt Putt golf hole looks awesome.

Thanks, Bea, for all your hard work on the project. We agree, it looks great! Check out the South Park Arts Facebook page for more pictures of the event.

Chickens Have Arrived!

For many months now, we've been busy planning, organizing, building, moving, discussing, and planning some more to bring chickens to Marra Farm. We’re happy to announce that the hens finally arrived at Marra Farm in late July, officially kicking off the start of a South Park chicken cooperative.

Our 17 happy hens are finally home, but getting them there took months of planning and years of dreaming and scheming.

South Park Community Corner

Marra Farm chard, photo by Steve Tracy

Do live or work in or around South Park and wonder how to get involved with Marra Farm? We've got a new page on the blog, the South Park Community Corner, with all the information you need. Come on over and say hello!

Thank You Amanda!

This summer at Lettuce Link we're lucky to have a stellar intern crew. Today, we're featuring the writing of Victoria, who left her home in Texas to spend the summer in Seattle with Lettuce Link as a DukeEngage intern. 

It’s hard to imagine a job that involves monitoring school recess, teaching children how to cook, leading volunteers, and organizing a chicken cooperative. But Lettuce Link AmeriCorps member Amanda Horvath had that job and did it all.

After graduating from the University of Portland in 2012 with degrees in Spanish and Environmental Ethics and Policy, Horvath applied to work at Lettuce Link through Solid Ground’s Apple Corps AmeriCorps program, which requires 1700 hours of service in ten and a half months.

“I had spent my last couple of years working at our school’s organic garden and studying our food system and food policy,” Horvath said. “This position was a perfect mesh of being able to get my hands dirty and learning about what it takes to grow food.”

Horvath started work on September 1, 2012. During the fall, she worked in the Lettuce Link office at Solid Ground, performed outreach cooking demos at the Providence Regina House food bank in South Park, and worked at Marra Farm.

“When I started on the farm,” Horvath said, “I shadowed Sue to learn about how she led workparties and then slowly transitioned into leading workparties around the farm and doing more hands-on work.”

During the winter, Horvath increased her time in the office in order to organize a tour for the American Community Gardening Association Conference in August, and organized a chicken cooperative project for the South Park community.

“I had never run a project before and was really grateful [Lettuce Link Program Manager] Michelle let me do it,” Horvath said. “I learned that working with people is very challenging. I have a new appreciation for those who have the ability to work with people who have different interests, different ideas, and different ways of working and then bringing them together around a common goal.”

In addition to working in the office, Horvath spent Thursday afternoons at Concord International Elementary School, helping support the school’s move to schedule lunch after recess.

“I helped with the transition,” Horvath said, “by going to the playground, oftentimes monitoring behavior, and hanging out with the kids in the lunchroom. I also realized that the kids did not have sufficient time to eat lunch. They were given twenty minutes, but getting through the lunch line would sometimes take ten minutes. I started recording how many kids had not finished eating at the end of lunch and wrote a report for the staff. At the last staff meeting of the school year, they were unsure about continuing to scheduling lunch after recess, but committed to working on the issue of kids not having enough time to eat.”

When Lettuce Link’s garden classes started in the spring, Horvath co-taught fifth graders during the school day from Concord with Lettuce Link Education Coordinator Amelia Swinton and taught an afterschool class that incorporated cooking, nutrition, and gardening.

“My favorite role was working with the kids,” Horvath said. “I enjoyed the outdoor setting—getting to be a teacher but not necessarily being inside a classroom. It’s fun to see the kids be so excited about being in the garden. I definitely want to work with kids in the future. I’ll either get a degree in teaching or a master’s in public health that will be related to working with kids or working on childhood obesity or other child development issues.”

Horvath finished her AmeriCorps term on July 14, 2013.

“The biggest challenge,” Horvath said, “was grappling with the idea that I was doing a lot of community outreach and being involved with the community while knowing that I was leaving in ten and a half months. It’s such a short time period to build a relationship with the community and then just leave. It’s a really hard transition. This is something I’ve thought about a lot throughout my life, and I’m still struggling to figure out why I keep choosing to put myself in positions where I am involved for a short period and then leave. But through AmeriCorps I found my dream job I could do for a full year, and I loved it.”

How Much Time Is Enough for Lunch? (Recess Before Lunch Part 2)

Our Apple Corps member, Mandy, has been reflecting on Concord's Recess Before Lunch program and how to encourage physical activity during the school day. Read Part 1 of her reflections here. 

In my time at Concord International Elementary this school year, I've realized that it’s not just an issue of Recess Before Lunch (RBL) or Lunch Before Recess. Rather, it’s a question of whether students even have enough time to eat their lunch. This is an issue not just at Concord, but at many Seattle Public Schools and likely schools throughout the country.

Students don’t have enough time to eat their lunch. From what I've heard, even when the students ate lunch before recess at Concord, they still rushed through their meals to get outside for recess and didn't spend much time eating.

Concord has a large number of students receiving free and reduced lunch. Unlike other schools where many students bring their lunches from home, the majority of the students at Concord have to get through the lunch line to receive their food. So, part of the problem is an issue of capacity.

Seattle School District Nutrition Services recommends, based on national standards, that students have 20 minutes to sit down and eat lunch. However, this is only a recommendation; schools are not required to budget that much of time.

If they are at the end of the lunch line, Concord students sometimes have only three to five minutes to sit down and eat lunch after waiting in line. This isn't because lunchroom staff members aren't doing their jobs – they manage to get a very large number of students in from the playground and through the lunch line in record time. However, there are too many students to serve in too short a time period.

I believe that even if Concord switches back to a recess after lunch model, the challenge of allocating enough time to eat will remain. Dr. Zavala, the principal at Concord, as well as faculty and staff, agree on this point and they have created a "lunch team" to address the issue.

It’s important to realize that Concord is not the exception. Many, if not most, schools face similar challenges and likely the majority of students throughout the Seattle School District (and beyond) do not have enough time to eat lunch.

If we want to encourage our students to exercise and eat healthy foods, we must have a school schedule that allows them to do so. Forcing students to sacrifice the social aspects of eating together and encouraging them to gorge on their lunch doesn't promote the healthy eating habits we want to develop.

So perhaps, rather than questioning the efficacy of Recess Before Lunch, schools and school districts should begin by questioning whether or not students have enough time to eat at school. Although it may prove to be challenging, allotting students enough time to eat is a great start to helping them develop positive eating habits.

Read Part 3 of her reflections here.

Why We Give: Reciprocity

When asked why she thinks growing and giving is important, Sally, a gardener at the Hawkins P-Patch has an elegantly simple answer: reciprocity.

“One summer, an unidentified neighbor left a bag of potatoes on my porch. It was a gesture that made me inexplicably happy, and I thought ‘why wouldn't this make other people happy?’—especially those who don’t have access to a garden, or healthy food.”

And so, for the past four years, Sally and her co-gardeners Hope and David have coaxed three raised beds into productivity; a bounty of kale, cherry tomatoes, beans, and chard going to The Food Bank @ St. Mary’s in the Central District.

Sally is not alone in her motivation for growing and giving. Reciprocity is a concept that resonates deeply within the food bank and gardening communities, and can be observed profoundly at the Providence Regina House Food Bank in Seattle’s South Park neighborhood. On any given distribution day, dozens of neighborhood volunteers—young and old—mill about helping unload trucks, bag peppers, make signs, and wash produce. They joke with each other as they work, talking with friends, and entertaining children.

As Paige Collins, director of the Providence Regina House Food Bank explains, many of her volunteers are current or past clients. They are both the people the food bank serves and those doing the serving. The South Park community has taken ownership of their food bank—they have made it a comfortable, fulfilling place to volunteer, valued by the community.

In food banks and at gardens across the city, reciprocity is a driving force. Whether it’s a bundle of kale, a bouquet of chard, or a bag of potatoes, Sally, Hope, David, Paige, and countless others know the personal value of good produce, and are doing what they can to share it with others.

After all, what is happiness if not a sun-ripened tomato?

Thank you Hangar Café and Friends!

This past Saturday, the Hangar Café hosted a Beer and Wine garden outside of their normal business hours to raise funds to support Lettuce Link’s work at Marra Farm. It was a lovely summer evening spent on their garden deck and raised $300.

This amount will go far! Every dollar invested in our work at the farm is worth at least twice as much in organic produce for people in need. Plus, it produces many other intangible benefits such as life-long learning, friendships across cultures, a child’s love for vegetables, a home for honey bees and a beautiful piece of biodiversity in an unexpected place.

If you weren't able to stop by, you can still donate funds to Lettuce Link by clicking here and next time you go out for breakfast or lunch, visit the Hangar Café!

Tomatoes & Peppers & Eggplants, OH MY!

Update: At the end of May, the Marra Farm community came together for food, celebration and planting. See photos of the day here.

The rumors are true, folks: we are now the proud stewards of a grand new greenhouse, to be used and enjoyed by all who grow food at Marra Farm.

Stretching 60' x 25', it looks impressive and feels even better 
Come visit the steamroom soon!

In a greenhouse, incoming solar radiation (light) enters through clear glass or plastic walls and becomes trapped, creating heat. Greenhouses help farmers in many ways - allowing us to extend the growing season, control weather conditions, and grow delicious vegetables that thrive in climates warmer than Seattle. The greenhouse, like almost everything at Marra Farm, has already been been adapted for unforeseen purposes, serving as an 'indoor' garden classroom for the young farmers from Concord International Elementary who came on a rainy day.

Sue McGann, who coordinates Lettuce Link's Giving Garden at Marra Farm, has been dreaming and scheming about this project for years. The greenhouse wouldn't have come to fruition without the extremely generous support from our friends at the BDA Corporation. Over the past ten month, these fine people not only provided funding and materials, but volunteered their time and labor to move existing garden beds, level the ground, and finally build the greenhouse.

We are also grateful to Eddie Hill of Seattle Tilth, who used his skills and expertise learned from Growing Power to oversee the construction procress. José Basilio and gardeners from the Marra Farm P-Patch, Yao-Fou Chao and other Mien community farmers, Marra Farm beekeeper David Feinberg, and many others came together to raise this project up from the crabgrass.

Day 1: Leveling the ground

Measuring the site

Sawing the pipes, which will become the support beams

End of Day 1: the skeleton is up!

Day 2: Wrangling a gigantic piece of plastic

Eddie secures the plastic

And voila! A greenhouse is born.

2011 and Beyond: Joys, Challenges and New Directions

Welcome to 2012! On these gloomy January days (when we are rather glad to be warm and dry indoors rather than out in the garden), it's a good time to pause and take stock of where we've been and where we're going.

So, without further ado, here are a few of our accomplishments in 2011, made possible by the help of our generous volunteers (over 9,329 volunteer hours!) and financial supporters:

• Provided seeds, plant starts and gardening information for 3,695 food bank clients at 23 different locations

• Supported gardeners at 49 P-Patches to grow and share over 17,000 pounds of organic produce for food banks and meal programs (with only half of the gardens reporting)

• Distributed seeds, starts and resources to 13 community gardens at schools, low-income apartments, food banks and churches

• Despite a chilly spring and summer, grew 18,594 pounds of organic produce in the Lettuce Link Giving Garden at Marra Farm to donate to the Providence Regina House and Beacon Avenue food banks 

• Helped develop and provided seasonal vegetables for South Park’s first Community Kitchen 

• Held community meetings and garden classes (in 5 languages), built a shed, fences and tables, planted, tended a grew 3,023 pounds of vegetables for the Rainier Valley Food Bank and community work-trade participants in our inaugural season at the Seattle Community Farm! 

• Taught nutrition, organic gardening and ecology at the Seattle Community Farm and Marra Farm, reaching over 170 children

• Harvested 4,605 pounds of local fresh fruit that would otherwise go to waste for food banks and meal programs across the city

• Held events to raise $20,000 in needed funds. Thank you Friends of Lettuce Link!

• Partnered with Clean Greens, Delridge Neighborhood Development Association, Just Garden Project, Seattle Tilth, UW Department of Urban Design and Planning, Seattle Works, King County Food and Fitness Initiative, the Community Alliance for Global Justice and many others on projects that will increase access to healthy foods for everyone

And yet, as we catch our breath this winter after a busy year, we've found ourselves at a bit of a crossroads. Fewer grants, budget cuts and belt-tightening measures provide an opportunity to reassess our work - what are our program's strengths? What do we do that's unique? How can we continue to grow and change our program to meet community needs, provide wrap-around services for Solid Ground participants and further our anti-racism work?

These are not easy questions, but we're committed to working through them with your support. Here are a few exciting projects to keep an eye out for in 2012:

• Building an overhead structure at the Seattle Community Farm, which will allow protection from the elements and make the space more conducive to community gatherings

• Continuing our work with the Healthy Foods for South Park project, partnering with the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle, Community Coalition for Environmental Justice, Eat Better Feel Better and Concord International Elementary to develop and implement school wellness policies

• Expanding our CSA at Marra Farm, to both raise funds for our program and offer a sliding-scale subscription to our neighbors

• Advocating for just food policies on the city, state and federal level. Watch this space for details in the next few days! 

Thank you for your time, resources and support both this past year and as we boldly stride into 2012 - pushing a wheelbarrow and wearing our rainboots!

The Lettuce Link team - Michelle, Sue, Scott, Robin, Amelia, Mariah and Blair

(with much gratitude to Molly, Kate, Andrea, Sophie and Alice, our staff, AmeriCorps volunteers and interns who have moved on to new adventures)

Marra Farm in 2011: Success, Challenges and Looking Ahead

As the Giving Garden farmers at Marra Farm transition into hibernation mode until February, we want to recognize our accomplishments and give you a sense of where we’re going next year.

This year, Lettuce Link produced more than 18,500 pounds of produce from our Giving Garden at Marra Farm. These organic vegetables were distributed to a wider-than-ever array of community organizations. We continued to donate the majority of our harvest to the Providence Regina House Food Bank, and also broadened our donation network to include the Beacon Ave Food Bank.

Many of the vegetables that grow abundantly in our cool climate, such as kale, daikon radish, mustard greens and bok choy, are more familiar to families from Vietnam, Cambodia and China. The Beacon Ave Food Bank primarily serves people from these and other Asian countries, so our partnership with them increased our ability to connect food recipients with culturally appropriate vegetables. 

In addition to our Giving Garden, we also: 

• Supported our friends at the SeaMar Community Health Centers and the South Park Community Center with the launch of a bilingual South Park Community Kitchen. Participants came together monthly to prepare and share food from the Marra Farm Giving Garden, while learning new recipes, nutrition and cooking skills. 

• Painted a mural on our shed!

• Educated scores of young gardeners, aged 4 through 11, who came to Marra Farm from SeaMar Child Development Center and Concord International Elementary School for weekly classes this spring. They romped around, nurtured seeds, fed worms and conducted science experiments as well as harvested fresh, organic vegetables for their families. One guardedly optimistic student informed us, “Peas are not that bad.”  Click here to watch Amy's video about the pre-kindergarten kids at Marra Farm. 

• Partnered with the Cooking Matters program at Solid Ground and the South Park Community Center summer day camp to offer another summer of Gardening for Good Nutrition classes to elementary school-aged students. This includes the return of Chef Sue Sheldon's purple vegetable pancakes, developed by Sue and the Marra Farm summer program students in 2009 during an abundant beet harvest. Click here for the recipe - it recently won a national award from Share Our Strength. 

• Completed our pilot Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) project. As a way to generate a modest amount of revenue, we sold a small percentage of our weekly harvest to paying customers, which usually meant 7-10 items packaged up in snazzy orange bags. 

• Worked to train 1750 volunteers about food justice, sustainable agriculture, and anti-racism - principles that provide the foundation for our work at Solid Ground. These amazing volunteers devoted nearly 6000 hours in 2011. We are so grateful for your work to improve healthy food access for struggling families as well as educate yourselves on social justice.

As we look ahead, we see challenges and opportunities.

• The Giving Garden is infected by the soil disease clubroot (which affects members of the brassica family - including cabbages, radishes, bok choy, kohlrabi, kale, collards, and broccoli). We will be unable to grow these vegetables, which are both well-suited to this climate and popular among many eaters!

• Our supporters at BDA Inc have donated the supplies and labor for a 25’x 60’ greenhouse, which we anticipate constructing in the spring of 2012!  

• Our CSA combined many strands of Lettuce Link’s work: delivery of fresh local produce, recipe sharing and culinary literacy, and education about sustainable agriculture. Furthermore, it offered a small source of revenue, crucial in a time of frugal budgets. As we evaluate and expand our CSA in 2012, we hope to find ways for this model to not just generate income for Lettuce Link, but serve the needs of low-income members of the South Park and White Center communities. 

Thank you to all of you who support our work and use our services. We are truly fortunate to work with such an outstanding constellation of people.

~ Amelia and the rest of the Lettuce Link team 

Celebrating Food Day at Marra Farm

Food Day -- sounds like a rough description of many holidays, right? National Food Day was indeed all about eating, but the 2,300 groups participating in this nation-wide day of action were hungry for more than a special meal. Across the United States, organizations working in the fields of nutrition, anti-hunger, garden education, sustainability, farm worker justice, and more held events to spark conversation and action around our food system.

At the Marra Farm giving garden, we welcomed more than 120 young students from Concord International Elementary and Somali Community Services Coalition. Together with our partners from Healthy Foods for South Park, we harvested pumpkins, pressed apples into fresh cider, and helped put the garden to bed for the winter. Some of these students had come down to the farm last spring to plant the very pumpkin plants that they harvested on Food Day, which they had started from seed into their classrooms.

Youth from Somali Community Services meet "Tiny", our friendly tromboncino squash.

One my favorite lessons to learn with new visitors is that everything we eat was once alive. Whether it's a head of lettuce, a cheeseburger, or even a can of soda pop, we can trace everything back to plants. Several visitors felt a little nervous about sampling fresh apple cider because it didn't come in a package, which is a very justified way to feel given the way our food system disconnects all of us from the farms and people that grow the stuff we eat. Marra Farm is a place where we intervene in that system to revive and embrace the relationship between humans and food. Not everyone felt comfortable sampling cider on Food Day, and that's okay. Maybe next time, or next next time ... it's a long process and we're all learning together.

First grind the apples (left), and then press the pulp into cider, and finally take a long, sweet sip (if you dare!).

Thanks to all the students, parents, teachers, and volunteers who joined us on Food Day!

Marra Farm is letting forth a big yawn as winter approaches, but we're not sleeping yet. Please contact us at lettucelink@solid-ground.org if you'd like to help out with our last work parties of the season.

What's new, Marra Farm?

The ground remains soggy; our spirits do not! The spring growing season is enthusiastically under way, and many people have been out preparing the land at Marra Farm. Lettuce Link is just one of the several groups who cultivate the four acres of Marra farmland, shown in the aerial photo above. The community that works this land is diverse in countless ways- our languages, cultures, economic means, growing methods, preferred varieties of vegetables- but share the common work of growing good food on this piece of public land. We've certainly been busy over in the Lettuce Link corner.

Digging forks take a rest after spending hours turning beds.

For starters, we've finally put some starts into the ground. Several teams of volunteers, such as a recent group from the NAAAP-Seattle, have planted peas, onions, and raspberry canes. After a heroic day of hard work in cold drizzle, this team finished off their Saturday afternoon with giant burritos at South Park's Muy Macho Mexican restaurant. See more of their beautiful pictures, such as the one pictured above, here.

And it's not just plants we're growing, but also new gardeners! With the help of committed volunteers, three groups of local students will come to Marra Farm on a weekly basis. Two classes of 5th grade scientists from Concord International Elementary have planted fields (er, garden beds) of inquiry, asking, what happens if you plant seeds on ice? Or, what happens to vegetables if you water them with coffee? Or, what effect does watering with juice have on vegetable taste? Over the next seven weeks, the research teams will record observations and analyze their findings. Check back here in mid-June--we'll be sure to publish their conclusions.

We also have a group of 1st/2nd graders who are designing a new raised bed in the kids' garden. They are most excited to plant silver shield sorrel (to make 'garden gatorade'), nasturtiums ("spicy flower"), cilantro, and the flesh-eating pitcher plant (pictured below).

The carnivorous pitcher plant drowns its prey inside its deep cavity, which is filled with liquid. 
The plant secretes enzymes that gradually dissolve the unfortunate insect, which the plant then absorbs.

The last class, pre-K students from SeaMar Community Health Center, has been rained out for two consecutive weeks ) : But when we visited their classroom for some preliminary taste testing, they chowed down on raw spinach, snap peas, and beets like champion farmers. So we're patiently waiting until they can come help us plant seeds of all shapes and sizes in the kids' garden.

And there you have it! As always, we welcome volunteers to help us grow delicious, organic vegetables for people who struggle to afford healthy food. Contact Amelia at amelias@solid-ground.org if you're interested in joining us sometime.