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.]

A Crowd of Kids and Their Plot of Land

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

This week we saw the first class of students from the ReWA youth program, a middle school summer program targeting refugee and immigrant youths, visit Lettuce Link’s Seattle Community Farm for the first of a five-week gardening and nutrition curriculum based at the farm. The farm team consisting of Scott, Amelia, Kelly, and a few other interns split the kids up into three small groups rotating around stations centered on cooking/nutrition, gardening, and touring the farm. 

In the garden, Scott showed off the farm highlights of the week: crops of lettuce, bok choy, snap peas, and beets among others. The kids were invited to harvest and sample the plumpest snap peas hanging off the vines, and gained interesting tidbits about each vegetable on the farm. 

In Amelia’s group, the children busily staked the ground, claiming their own small plot for planting in hopes of harvesting their own line of crop at the end of five weeks. Interns scurried to and fro from the hose refilling watering buckets as the kids enthusiastically watered theirs, and also their friends’ seeds. 

Finally, with seeds in the soil and the taste of fresh snap peas on their tongues, the last group filled out a short questionnaire and received a short nutrition lesson from Kelly. With raspberries making up the main ingredient balanced with ice, salt, honey, and lemons, everyone had the opportunity to have a glass of the natural electrolyte refreshment.

At the conclusion of the program, all the ReWA kids and the farm staff gathered for the closing circle to recap the day’s activities. “Today I learned that gardening is fun,” said one middle schooler. “Today I learned that you can make juice out of fresh fruit,” chimed in another. But as for me, the most important thing I learned was that no matter where you’re from or what your personal background, whether you’re from North Dakota or from Atlanta, from Central America or Asia, gardening is an act that brings communities together in a group effort that oversteps plots and boundaries.

---

Raspberry Electric

Recipe by Leika Suzumura of Community Kitchens Northwest

This is a natural homemade electrolyte drink, minus the cost or artificial colors. Get creative with different combinations that you enjoy.

Ingredients

• 1 quart filtered water
• 1 cup fresh berries [we used raspberries]
• 2 tablespoons honey
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• Juice of 1 lemon

Instructions

• Fill ½ gallon pitcher with filtered water.
• Place raspberries in a bowl and gently smash them with a fork to break the skin and release juices. Pour into water.
• Add honey, salt, and lemon juice and stir.
• Taste and adjust to desired flavor and strength.
• Add ice and enjoy!

Other additions:

• You can use other berries for this drink, including strawberries, blackberries and blueberries.
• Cucumbers in place of raspberries works well.
• Add in fresh mint, lemon balm, or other refreshing herb to your taste.

Makes 16 ounces

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.”

Learning about Pollinators

The beehives at Marra Farm emit a steady hum that fascinates children. We stop on our tours of the farm to watch the constant stream of bees on their way to and from the hive, some setting out to find nectar and pollen, others return to the hive laden with food they have collected.

When bees fly from flower to flower to collect their food, pollen sticks to their legs, allowing them to pollinate the plants they visit. Bees work nonstop during the summer to stockpile enough food to last them through the winter.

These beautiful cucumbers began as flowers cross-pollinated by bees.
Thanks, bees!

As we learn in our kids’ classes at Marra Farm, we humans should remember to thank the honeybees. We reap the benefits of their hard work, consuming not only their honey, but the literal fruits and vegetables of their labors.

Global Pollination

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 70% of the crops that produce 90% of the world’s food supply require pollination by bees.

A complex mix of factors has contributed to the catastrophic collapse of bee colonies around the world in recent years, including the widespread use of toxic agricultural chemicals, the decline of flowering plants, a rise in pollution, and even the globalization of food supplies – international shipping quickly spreads virulent fungal pathogens, which can wipe out entire hives.

Colony collapse disorder spells bad news for global food security. In the words of Achim Steiner, the executive director of the UNEP, “Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature’s services in a world of close to 7 billion people.”

For a holistic look at the threats facing bees around the world as a result of current mainstream agricultural practices, consider watching the award-winning documentary More Than Honey.

A honeybee industriously collects pollen in the
Childrens’ Garden at the Seattle Community Farm.

Pollinator Lessons

Despite the grim future of our most vital pollinators, in our garden and nutrition education classes we focus on teaching children the important role bees play in the garden:

• We examine the Velcro straps on a student’s shoes and learn how bees also have sticky “Velcro” on their legs that collects pollen when they buzz from flower to flower. 

• We learn how a bee returning from a successful foraging mission performs a “waggle dance” to tell the other bees in the hive about the direction and distance to flower patches with abundant nectar and pollen. And then we do our own waggle dances! 

• We visit flowers in the garden and observe bees collecting nectar. Then we watch as pollen from one flower brushes off a bee’s legs onto another flower. 

• We learn about the different roles within the bee colony by dividing the class into worker bees, drone bees, and the queen bee, and then we fly around going "buzz buzz buzz!" 

By teaching the next generation about the importance of honeybees, we hope to instill appreciation for these buzzing friends and their habitats.

Bumblebees throng to the vibrant purple artichoke flowers.
The many artichokes at Marra Farm and the Seattle Community Farm
are planted expressly to attract our bee friends.

-Cordelia, summer Children's Garden and Nutrition Education intern

Rainbows and Bravery Bites: Lessons from the Children's Garden

After 130 years of cultivation, the dirt at Marra Farm is like no other. 130 years is a long time. “It’s probably older than your grandma’s grandma”, I would tell the wonder-struck kids as they wandered through our sunflower forests this summer. “After 130 years, this dirt understands more about good health than we’re ever likely to know.”

Under the shade of these magnificent 10-foot tall sun-towers, we’ve been bonding with the dirt and cooking up its marvelous creations.

How do you grow magical sunflowers?
By using magical soil!

Here are seven lessons, tips, and grubby seeds left behind from our summer kids’ nutrition education classes at Marra Farm and the Seattle Community Farm.

Rainbows Rock

We built our summer series with preschoolers around the theme of colors. We prepared a rainbow of recipes: purple kohlrabi and beet hummus, orange carrot and yam mish-mash, yellow squash and eggs -- you get the idea. The kids ate it all up! The theme of colors integrates beautifully with the MyPlate nutrition guidelines. Because really, who doesn’t want to eat a rainbow?

Signs and Senses at the Seattle Community Farm

At the Seattle Community Farm, we've been making some exciting improvements to the Children’s Garden!

With the help of our learners from the Rainier Vista Boys and Girls Club this summer, we rehabilitated the worm bins, and learned all about worms, composting, and the nutrients the soil needs to grow healthy vegetables.

Amelia painted a big sign welcoming visitors to the Children’s Garden, and we made signs identifying all the new and interesting plants growing in the garden. We planted cilantro, radishes, spinach, and beets with our students this summer, and now visitors to the garden will know exactly what’s growing where.

We've also planted marigolds and other cheerful flowers at the end of each bed to add beauty and invite our favorite helpers, the bees, to visit our garden.

Laminated signs decorated by the children let visitors know what’s growing where.

Sensory Garden

This year we've established a Sensory Exploration Garden filled with plants that invite you to look, smell, touch, and taste. (We haven’t yet found a plant that specifically invites listening, but then, plants are generally pretty silent!)

Cooking in the Open Air

This summer at Lettuce Link we're lucky to have a stellar intern crew. Today, we're featuring the writing of Danielle, a UW student, food policy guru, and garden chef. 

When it’s time for cooking during our children’s classes at the Seattle Community Farm, we set up outside. Stationed under a canopy, we enjoy the fresh air while preparing our snack. Though we set up this way because there aren't any enclosed buildings at the farm, I have noticed that cooking outside is an ideal environment for engaging and educating children about food.

As I child, I spent many summers at the Boys and Girls Club of Spokane. I have great memories of my time there, but I never got to do any cooking or gardening. I am honored to be part of the Lettuce Link teaching team that puts on these classes for campers from the Rainier Vista Boys and Girls Club summer program. I know that we, along with the Boys and Girls Club staff, are creating positive memories for these kids.

Ripping up chard for Purple Plant Part Pancakes

I love seeing the joy and excitement in our students’ faces when they visit me at the cooking station. Cooking can be sometimes looked at as a chore, or something that only grownups do.

But at the outdoor kitchen of the Seattle Community Farm, everyone is a chef.

The kids see what parts of the plant we eat (or don’t eat) because they are cooking with freshly harvested produce. They chop up veggies while butterflies and bees fly by.

Our kitchen is different than their kitchens at home, and we remind our students that even though they might have tried a food before, they haven’t tried it here. This encourages trying-new-food adventurism, and the kids are often surprised with how much they like what we prepare!

When we wrap up the day and share what we learned, our students always mention how much they enjoyed the cooking station. Here at the Seattle Community Farm, cooking isn't merely the transformation of food from raw ingredients to a delicious snack. It’s an experience of seeing, feeling, and tasting your food as it moves from the soil to your mouth. 

This amazing sensory experience would simply not be possible if we had walls.

Teaching and Learning in the Children's Garden

This summer at Lettuce Link we're lucky to have a stellar intern crew. Today, we're featuring the writing of Cordelia, who recently moved to Seattle and is interning this summer with our Children's Garden and Nutrition Education programs.

My Food Roots

Coming from a family of “weekend farmers” - enthusiastic amateurs who spend a lot of time Googling topics such as ‘how to prune an olive tree’ - I grew up knowing the satisfaction that comes with eating food you have grown yourself, and subsequently have always been interested in issues of farming and food justice.

Like many, this interest translated into a desire for action and education – for myself as well as others. In college I edited the food section of my college newspaper and while studying abroad in Latin America, started a now-permanent column in the college paper where students studying abroad share what they have learned about the food cultures and food practices of their host country.

My other passion is working with children and I hope to become an elementary school teacher someday.

As a recent college graduate, I came to Seattle looking for a project that would allow me to continue my education about food justice and small scale, community farming while working with kids. As a summer intern with Lettuce Link’s Children’s Garden, I feel so lucky to have found an experience that allows me to engage both of these passions. 

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.”

Singing in the Garden

Some of Lettuce Link's interns and volunteers will be guest blogging for us over the next few months. Today, we welcome the words of Molly Bell, a UW student and Lettuce Link spring intern.

As summer draws near, Marra Farm is slowly growing greener and taller. The tiny starts we planted in March have sprouted and grown into heads of lettuce and flowering pea vines. In the Children’s Garden, the empty beds have transformed to an abundant garden full of vegetables (and a few weeds).

At the beginning of April, the students planted a variety of vegetables, including bok choy, kale, and cilantro. Each week, the children observed, watered, and weeded their individual plots. Now that their plots are ready for harvest, we are busy cooking up delicious and healthy snacks with their vegetables. We are also learning together about good nutrition, healthy soil, and all the creatures that bring life to the garden.

The young learners don’t just work the whole time. We also play games and sing songs. My favorite song is the leafy green rhythm that goes something like:

“Leafy greens, so good for me. My eyes, bones, muscles, my teeth. Leafy greens, they‘re so healthy, and give me lots of energy!”

We use songs and games as teaching tools to help students focus in the outdoor environment. Since they spend most of their learning time inside the classroom, kids often associate being outside with free playtime. Educational songs and games channel their excitement and rambunctious energy.

Using the garden as a classroom allows students to learn in different ways. Digging in the dirt gives students a hands-on, personal experience with the subject matter. Playing games such as “I Spy” encourages their observational skills.

Plus the games and songs are a fun way to engage with the activities and remember things – for both the students and the adults!

Another favorite garden song of ours is “Dirt Made My Lunch” by the Banana Slug String Band – take a listen and sing along!

The Marra Farm Ecosystem

Some of Lettuce Link's interns and volunteers will be guest blogging for us over the next few months. Today, we welcome the words of Rachel Sofferin, a children's garden and nutrition education volunteer.

An ecosystem is a community of living organisms and the nonliving components of their environment (such as air and water) that interact as a system.

Ecosystems are defined by both the interactions between different organisms and the interactions between organisms and their environment. Ecosystems can come in any size, but usually encompass specific, limited spaces.

The specific ecosystem under discussion recently is that of the four acres of preserved farmland in Seattle’s South Park neighborhood known as Marra Farm. Here, groups of second and fifth grade students from neighboring Concord Elementary School bring classroom learning to life. Students identify components of the farm’s ecosystem and learn, hands-on, just how connected everything is.

Before spring break, students in Mr. Hunt’s class planted their garden experiments. After a few weeks there is much to observe. Crouched figures huddle around the raised garden beds and speculate about the height of sprouts. They carefully count and record the number of plant leaves in their field books and make other observations about their experiment and control gardens.

On the other side of the fence in the Giving Garden, volunteers from local businesses, religious communities, and schools work tirelessly to cut grass, weed beds, and mix nutrient-rich compost into the soil. Local food banks receive the organic produce grown here - over 22,000 pounds a year!

As the students learned, Marra Farm is a thriving ecosystem of plants, animals, and people. Come join the ecosystem! Volunteer in the Giving Garden, donate gardening tools and supplies, or stroll through the farm on your daily walk. 

The Marra Farm ecosystem is constantly growing and evolving - how can you be a part of it?

Cooking at the Farm: Herbed-Tofu Tacos

Some of Lettuce Link's interns and volunteers will be guest blogging for us over the next few months. Today, we welcome the words of Molly Bell, a UW student and Lettuce Link spring intern.

There’s something about cooking fresh food that gets every sense tingling. Recently the second graders of Concord International Elementary had the chance to experience this sensory adventure, watching vegetables grown at the farm transform into a delicious snack.

In Lettuce Link’s children’s garden and nutrition classes, we try to connect the dots between how food is grown, prepared and cooked. Plus, it’s fun. If food doesn’t excite a kid, I don’t know what will!

So, with great excitement and a little team effort, the second graders harvested chives and other herbs. The students then helped clean, cut, prepare, and mix all the ingredients necessary for herbed-tofu tacos.

While preparing snack, we all had a chance to talk and share stories. There was a unanimous love for cooking among my group. I noticed pride and a sense of accomplishment that the students had when talking about cooking. A few bragged that they had made dinner or even made cupcakes by themselves.

It’s a good reminder that something when you’re eight (or eighty), something as simple as cooking a meal can be such a triumph!

At the end of class, all the students had a chance to rate the tofu tacos on a scale: happy, neutral, or sad face. I was pleasantly surprised how many of them liked it, since tofu was a new food for many of the students.

The ratings also included a few neutral faces and a few sad faces as well. But that’s okay – as we tell the students, everyone has different tastes. It’s good that the students were willing to express their own opinions, given that kids are often swayed by their peers when deciding what they like or don’t like.

It can be challenging to get kids to make their own decisions and also try new foods. But when they’re involved in harvesting and preparing it, they develop a certain connection and pride.

Plus, the diversity of food grown at Marra Farm makes it easy and fun to try new things. I’m excited to keep cooking with the students this spring!

A Spring to Remember

Some of Lettuce Link's interns and volunteers will be guest blogging for us over the next few months. Today, we welcome the words of Rachel Sofferin, a children's garden and nutrition education volunteer.

Spring seems to have been beckoned to Seattle early this year, and when Mr. Hunt’s fourth and fifth grade students from neighboring Concord International Elementary filed into to Lettuce Link’s Children’s Garden at Marra Farm last month for their first day of hands on learning, the day seemed ripe for it.

Still a little cool, breezy, and slightly overcast in Seattle’s South Park neighborhood, the rain held off long enough to allow for students to leave their rain jackets behind. Excited faces gathered in opening circle on a grassy, dandelion filled patch of earth to meet their garden teachers: Amelia, Glenn, Michelle, Rachel, and Sue.

Before their visit to the farm, the students had been divided into gardening groups and came up with questions for the experiments that they would be conducting in the garden. The group of four that I am leading, The Incredible Crew, decided to run their experiment on the effects of darkness on plant growth.

To start we had to prepare the garden bed: weeding, turning the soil, adding compost, and - “Eww! Look! There’s a worm!” - discovering the slimy and squiggly worms that make the soil fertile. Students masterfully shoveled compost and maneuvered wheelbarrows though the garden and used child-sized pitchforks to turn the soil.

After the beds were prepared it was time to plant, accompanied by ongoing chatter about worms and other critters in the soil. Rows of starts and seeds - bok choy, beets, onions, and peas - were pushed into the soil by small hands wearing oversized gardening gloves.

In neighboring garden beds, other planted their experiments as well: seeds cut in half, seeds watered excessively, planted in sand, water or in close proximity, and even some watered with lemonade. We planted each bed with an experimental and a control group for determining the effects of the experimental conditions on plant growth.

After what seemed like a quick minute, the 45-minute class was over and it was time to round up the students for their return to school.

I think I might be more excited about the learning at Marra Farm than the students. The hands-on learning that the Lettuce Link program of Solid Ground offers at the farm is fantastic. Kids are able to apply what they are learning in other areas of science, social studies, and history. They run garden experiments using all of the tools of a scientist, learn about nutrition and cooking, and even the history of the area and the native Duwamish people.

These kinds of applied learning experiences are the ones that stay with a student long into adulthood. This is going to be a spring to remember!

Marra Farm: Initial Reflections from an Intern

Some of Lettuce Link's interns and volunteers will be guest blogging for us over the next few months. Today, we welcome the words of Molly Bell, a UW student and Lettuce Link spring intern.

Nestled among the warehouses, machines, and houses in South Park is a hidden field of hope, a sign of resilience. Marra Farm hides like a secret weapon, rebelling against the issues created by our industrial food system.

Upon first arriving at Marra Farm, my first impression was amazement at the size of this hidden gem. How can four acres of land produce over 22,000 pounds of food, sustain, and run itself within the city boundaries?

My question was quickly answered as I grabbed a pair of gloves and a trowel alongside ten or so other volunteers. Whether people come to improve their own food security, gain gardening experience, or to have a team-building experience with their co-workers, Marra Farm is meticulously tended and cared for by these relentless volunteers. On a rainy Saturday morning, I was astonished by how much a dozen hard workers could accomplish.

Since the growing season has only just begun, most of the tasks around the farm are based on preparing the beds for planting and planting the little vegetable starts grown in the greenhouses.

Preparing beds is one of the most labor-intensive farm chores, in my opinion. It requires pulling out the plants that have over-wintered in the beds, removing weeds, tilling the soil, adding compost and sometimes even building a trellis.

One volunteer commented that it was weird to go to a farm that is so full of life, just to remove from the soil all the plants, even if they are weeds! However, the favoritism for vegetables instead of dandelions is what allows Marra Farm to have such abundant summer harvests.

Another amazing aspect of Lettuce Link and Marra Farm are the programs that educate local children about nutrition, cooking, and health. Hands-on learning is becoming recognized as an essential component of environmental and traditional education.

The children I help teach are second graders from Concord International Elementary School. The students are so fortunate that their school is located next door to Marra Farm. Although school gardens and farm-to-school programs are growing, most schools do not have a farm two blocks away!

I have been thrilled to see how good-spirited and intrigued the second graders are at the farm. For the first class, we had them plant their own small gardens.

There were some challenges, like the cold and rainy weather, and trying to keep the students on track when they are so excited to be outside. However, I found it refreshing to watch the students would stop whatever they were doing to peer down and look at a bug.

Their contagious excitement over the wonders of nature is a good reminder to us adults that we need to slow down and look around. I am excited to work with this group of young learners the rest of the spring. It will be fun to watch them learn and grow as they plant and maintain their personal gardens.

Marra Farm is a place filled with life and so much hope. As I spend more time there this spring, I’m excited to see the garden evolve and learn about how community farms and gardens help combat the the negative consequences produced by our current food system.

Volunteers: Teach kids and eat vegetables this spring at Marra Farm!

Do you like working with kids outside? Lettuce Link is looking for volunteers with our kids' garden and nutrition education classes at Marra Farm this spring. We work with elementary school students from Concord International Elementary School to plant gardens, cook healthy snacks, and read culturally relevant stories to learn about soil, plant parts, ecosystems and more.

We are seeking volunteers to assist in teaching classes, engage with students, and share their enthusiasm for healthy eating and gardening. This is a great fit if you're energetic, have experience working with kids, are passionate about educating through an anti-oppression framework, and like the outdoors!

Volunteer Requirements

• Ability to attend an evening orientation the last week of March and commit to coming regularly to at least 7 of the classes
• Some experience working with kids
• Energetic and like to eat vegetables!
• Ability to pass a Washington State Patrol background check

Classes

• Tuesdays, April 9th-June 4th, 11am-12:30pm; Fourth and fifth grade students
• Tuesdays, April 23rd-June 4th, 4-6pm; Afterschool program students (mixed grades) FULL
• Wednesdays, April 3rd-June 5th, 1-3pm; Third grade students
• Thursdays, April 11th-June 6th, 10am-12pm; Second grade students
• Thursdays, April 11th-June 6th, 2-3:30pm; Second grade students
• Fridays, April 5th-June 7th, 10am-1pm; Fifth grade students
• Fridays, April 12th-June 7th, 1:30-3:30pm; Second grade students

We are looking for 1-4 dedicated, thoughtful, reliable volunteers for each of our garden education sessions. We'd be extra thrilled if you wanted to volunteer for multiple classes on the same day.

Marra Farm is located in Seattle’s South Park neighborhood, at 9026 4th Ave S, 98108.

If this sounds like a good fit for you, please download and fill out a volunteer application and return to Robin at lettucelink@solid-ground.org, who will follow up with you.

In order to best serve the children in our program, we will be holding short volunteer interviews to determine how your interests and skills might best fit with our program.

Please share this volunteer opportunity widely!

Sprouting Young Farmers at the Seattle Community Farm

A New Idea

At the end of the summer, we tried out a new idea – what would happen if we hosted informal farm classes for kids from the Rainier Vista neighborhood? The kids who live in the houses adjacent to the Seattle Community Farm frequently visit and want to help out, learn, and explore. The farm is for them, so we decided to plan some kid-friendly garden activities and invite them to come on over.

The First Class
Though we posted fliers and planned two classes for the last week of August, we weren't sure whether anyone would show up. But we had nine kids come to the first class, ranging in age from 4 to 12!

With that wide of an age span, we kept our activities simple – a farm tour (playing 'Guess The Vegetable'), planting bok choy starts, and watering. Then it was on to cooking!

We harvested beans, tomatoes, chard, and basil. With garlic leftover from the spring and olive oil, we made a basic tomato sauce, and served it over sautéed green beans. Though it wasn't a hit with every student, each one of them tried it and many liked it. Moreover, each kid participated in the cooking process - plucking a tomato or a bean from the vine, harvesting a leaf of chard, and tearing or chopping a vegetable for the sauce.

The Second Class
For our next class, five students returned, and we welcomed a few new faces. After watering our recently-planted bok choy starts, we dug into the worm bins.

Worm bin maintenance is an ongoing task that also seems to be almost endlessly entertaining to children of all ages. We spent the time tearing newspaper, adding it to the bins, mixing it in, and looking at all the cool critters that live in the worm bins. Our students had so much to say about worms and soil that we couldn't get a word in edgewise.

Amazing Rainier Vista mom and educator Mimi was back as well, with freshly made bread and a new recipe for us to try:

Vegetable Cookies

• 1 beet, 2 carrots, and 1 small zucchini, all grated
• 1 egg
• ¼ cup of flour
• some chives, chopped
• a couple sprigs of parsley, chopped
• salt and pepper to taste

Mix everything together in a big bowl. Have students form batter into patties, and then pan fry in a little bit of oil, about 3 minutes on each side. Eat alone or with bread.

Tuyetlam and Tran, 
at the entrance to the Children's Garden

A Success! 
After the second class, I received an e-mail from the mother of seven-year-old Tuyetlam, one of our students. This is what Tran wrote:

“My daughter attended your classes last week and she really likes it. Thank you very much for providing this kind of opportunity to the kids. After your sections, she was willing to eat vegetables for a day or two. She wants to attend the farmer classes.”

Tran and Tuyetlam have been back to the Seattle Community Farm several times, for both our adult cooking class and for work parties. Tuyetlam is an enthusiastic worker, teacher, and learner, who hopes to have her own farm someday. We're so glad that they are both a part of our farm community! 

We hope to replicate our kids' drop-in classes next summer, and children are always welcome to help out on harvest days and at work parties, which continue through November. 


~Leah, summer outreach and education coordinator at the Seattle Community Farm

From Duke to Seattle: Kids, Zucchini and Food Systems galore

Over the next week we'll be posting wrap-up reflections from our summer interns. Today, we're featuring Wendy, who left her home in Atlanta to spend the summer in Seattle with Lettuce Link as a DukeEngage intern. She's gone back to school, leaving us to harvest giant zucchini without her.  

While sitting at Lettuce Link’s monthly staff meeting the other day, I realized that it was the last time I would see all of my coworkers gathered together in one location. Almost seven weeks had passed since I first stepped into Solid Ground’s office and surrounded myself with Lettuce Link's supportive, helpful, and knowledgeable staff. But August had arrived and it was time for me to move on.

What have I learned from my time at Lettuce Link? It’s difficult to explain the impact these passionate coworkers have had on me. They have taught me so much - probably without even realizing it. At the beginning of the summer, I had only a vague sense of how food justice and hunger intersect with many of the larger issues that plague society today.

In my first week at Lettuce Link I began to learn all about this tangled web from Sue’s introduction to volunteers at Marra Farrm (if you haven't heard it, you certainly need to make a trip down to Marra). This was the first time I had heard how climate change, immigration, the obesity epidemic, hunger, and our food system were intertwined. Why have we not spent more time improving our food system if it is a major root cause of so many social and political issues?

I feel so fortunate to have been one of Lettuce Link’s summer interns.

During the past eight weeks I have learned how hard work and persistence can reap real rewards. On my first day at Marra Farm in early June, the Seattle rain poured down in buckets, my clothes were soaked through and my fingers were numb, but because we continued harvesting through the rain, we sent over 300 pounds of vegetables to local food banks that day.

Contrast this with my last day at Seattle Community Farm, the hot crops finally started coming in and we had our largest harvest of the season to date - over 700 pounds of produce! Coming from the South, I was unsure whether or not I would even see summer hot crops in the Pacific Northwest. Imagine my surprise when we harvested 251 pounds of zucchini in one afternoon! The zucchini plants were just babies when I first arrived, and now they are large and plentiful.

One of my favorite aspects of working at Lettuce Link this summer has been much time is spent outside. Seattle summer days are (mostly) sunny and temperate. I loved spending half my day in the office and half in the garden.

Farm days are particularly nice because I worked with Lettuce Link's Children's Gardening for Good Nutrition classes. Let me work with kids, and I’m sold - I love their creativity and honesty. When the kids at the Seattle Community Farm tried radishes for the first time, almost all of them immediately wrinkled their noses and spat out the radishes with distaste. But one boy liked them from his first taste. At our most recent class, weeks later, he told me, “I like radishes. They’re spicy.”

I am sad that I will miss the final classes. One girl echoed my own thoughts when she looked up at me and said, “You’re leaving? Don’t go, Wendy.”

On Kids and Carrots

Marra Farm is a place that defies stereotypes. The word ‘farm’ even takes on a new meaning when applied to our little agricultural oasis in South Park. The images associated with that word—solitary, quiet, pastoral—dissolve when you step onto our farm.

Truthfully, it can be a little chaotic. Kids from Concord International Elementary or the South Park Community Center running around; a few dozen of our 1800 annual volunteers working and digging and planting; planes, trains, and cars filling the air with that distinct urban din—it’s not at all what you would expect on a farm.

So, true to form, Marra Farm manages to do what many parents thought impossible: it makes kids love vegetables. It's a bold statement, we know. But it’s a hard thing to deny when a 5-year-old, while pulling one carrot out of the ground and simultaneously munching on another exclaims,

“I WANT TO EAT ONE MILLION CARROTS!!!!”

And when you think about everything these kids experience throughout the growing season, it makes perfect sense. They dig in the dirt and plant seeds. They water to their heart’s content, and then they watch their little plants grow.

They harvest the veggies themselves—chard, sweet peas, carrots, broccoli—and help prepare a snack especially for them. Today, it’s Chinese Veggies and Rice, and it’s a hit.

We can’t help but wonder, then, if all children are secretly veggie-lovers. It appears the only thing kids need is a little involvement in their food—planting a seed or chopping a leaf—anything to make it more fun, more exciting, and more delicious. After all, if we can get a 3rd grader to eat kale, the sky truly is the limit...

For more information on gardening and cooking with kids, check out these amazing projects:

Lettuce Link's Seattle Community Farm, GRuB: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities, Seattle Youth Garden Works , Seattle Tilth, The Edible Schoolyard Project

~Jessica, Harvest Against Hunger Summer VISTA

Bean and Chard Tacos: A Tasty, Kid-Endorsed Summer Snack

Harvesting green onions

It's finally summer at the Seattle Community Farm! In addition to the bountiful harvests of our second growing season, one of this summer's highlights is our Gardening for Good Nutrition class series with students from the Rainier Vista Boys and Girls Club. The students come once a week throughout the summer, learning about the journey of food from seed to stomach. We plant, tend, harvest, and eat together each week.

In addition to learning about the farm and seeing the work that goes into producing food for the Rainier Valley Food Bank, the students take command of the Children’s Garden, where they do everything from preparing the soil and making worm compost, to planting, watering, weeding, and exploring. During our first class of the summer, we saw some familiar faces from last summer, as well as many new ones. Students tasted fresh carrots, radishes, peas, and lettuce, with mostly positive results – carrots were a huge hit, while the late-in-the-season radishes were a bit too spicy.

Chopping ingredients

Our second class focused on People and Plant Nutrition. We used natural fertilizers to add nutrients to our soil in the Children’s Garden, and discussed how people (just like plants!) need lots of nutrients to grow and be healthy. 

We introduced students to MyPlate and prepared a delicious snack: Warm Bean and Chard Tacos, which were a hit with students at Marra Farm this spring. With a side of strawberries, this healthy snack contains foods from all five food groups on MyPlate! Most of the students loved the tacos; we fed the leftovers to the worms, who will produce more healthy soil to feed more plants to nourish more people! 

Warm Chard and Bean Tacos
Ingredients: 

• 2 cups chard, washed and chopped
• 1.5 cups cooked pinto beans, drained 
• 1 Tbsp olive oil 
• 1/2 onion, minced 
• 2 cloves garlic, minced 
• 2 green onions, chopped 
• 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped 
• Some lettuce leaves, torn or chopped 
• Cheese (we used part skim milk queso fresco) 
• Whole-wheat flour or corn tortillas 

Directions: Sauté onions and garlic in olive oil. After a few minutes, add beans. Then add chard and cook 2 minutes. Pile cooked mixture into a warm tortilla. Add the green onions, cilantro, lettuce, and cheese as garnishes.

~Leah, summer outreach and education coordinator at the Seattle Community Farm

Volunteer Opportunity: Teach garden and nutrition education with kids this summer!

Do you like working with kids outside? Lettuce Link is looking for volunteers to help with our gardening and nutrition classes at the Seattle Community Farm in Rainier Valley this summer.

We will work with 7-11 year olds from the Rainier Vista Boys and Girls Club to plant gardens, cook healthy snacks, and have a fun outdoor learning experience! 

We are seeking volunteers to assist in teaching classes, engage with students, and share their enthusiasm for healthy eating and gardening. This is a great fit if you're energetic, have experience working with kids, are passionate about educating through an anti-oppression framework, and like the outdoors!

Volunteer Requirements:

• Attend the volunteer orientation the first week and commit to coming regularly to at least 7 of the 10 classes 
• Some experience working with groups of kids 
• Energetic and like to eat vegetables! 
• Ability to pass a Washington State Patrol background check

Classes

• Tuesdays, June 26th-August 28th, 1:30-4:00pm 
• Thursdays, June 28th-August 30th, 12:30-3:00pm 

We are looking for 1-4 dedicated, thoughtful, reliable volunteers for each of our garden and nutrition education sessions.

If this sounds like a good fit for you, please fill out a volunteer application and return to Leah at leah.seattlecommunityfarm@gmail.com.

In order to best serve the children in our program, we will be holding short volunteer interviews to determine how your interests and skills might best fit with our program.