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| Soon, I shall pass the baton off to the next runner... |
LITERAL
(a) Include this statement: “I, Robert Edward Machuca, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30.5 hours of work.”
(b) Research sources that guided the effort...
The three sources that most helped me in realizing the establishment of iPoly’s very own school community garden were the books “Farm City” by Novella Carpenter and “Grass, Soil, Hope” by Courtney White, as well as the interview I coordinated with cathy Morrison. “Farm City” described a situation experienced and maximized by Novella Carpenter, an urban farmer who aspired to become self-sufficient from sourcing her food solely from her 100-yard micro farm. The plot of Novella’s saga inspired me to experiment with the start-up of a garden, mostly by way of her emotions translated through the text as faced throughout her becoming an urban farmer. I saw how the author had started out with a simple interest in becoming a locavore and eating consciously (knowing where food eaten came from), and how she had ended end with GhostTown Farm set in her backyard within a very contained piece of land located within the the thicket of downtown Oakland. I was and still am empowered by the book. It gave me the momentum I needed to survive the red tape around the idea, and the momentum to follow the idea through - even with the added responsibility of collected company as I push forth. The emotions I faced in facing struggles and applying progress tested my passion for the concept of Urban Farming, and I can now relate to Novella when she says she “plants in the cracks of the city”.
The book “Grass, Soil, Hope” developed the scientific worth of my starting a garden and seeing it grow. As the text discussed the key to healthy soil and what healthy soil means to the success of organic farming and it’s more nutritious products, I learned how to correctly lay the groundwork for my garden. My garden would function as an organic one, I decided. To do so required creative techniques that acted as alternative to pesticides and heavily manufactured manure. Knowing the biology of my soil, I became aware of the markers for progress and struggle, and, moreover, how to treat each situation. Strawberry seedlings that sprouted flowers were healthy enough to do so and so had enough water and nutrients afforded to them. Seedlings with droopy leaves were dehydrated and needed immediate care in the form of shade and ample water. In addition to looking nice, mulch bolsters the soil’s water retention rate - the soil sacrificing less valuable water to the atmosphere through evaporation. Having the knowledge with which to successively farm meant knowing the science at work behind the scenes. Knowing the science meant adding an environmentally friendly, socially responsible, fully functioning organic farm to a setting of asphalt.
The last resource I want to pay credit to is the one that inspired me to persevere through the hard work that I had known was sure to come when establishing a school garden. The words Cathy Morrison, head of the Pasadena Community Gardens, offered me during my third interview summed up my want for school community garden into a “can-do” attitude towards the idea. She emailed me the by-laws and official constitution of the pasadena Community Gardens as written by her colleagues and her, in addition to providing me with a sample petition form - something I used to gather support for my garden. Cathy advised me how to pose the idea of administration, how to plan the school garden as though it were a small business, and gave me insight into how she helped start the Pasadena Community Gardens. I’d like to imagine the success her garden basked in transferred over to the mine through, like a hand rubbing the belly of Buddha for good luck. I am excited for the future of my garden, my legacy, in the same way Cathy was when the city of Pasadena recognized her grassroots initiative as policy and worthy of funding and legal status.
(c) Update your Independent Component 2 Log
- COMPLETED
(d) Explain what you completed.
Simply put, I planted a school community garden on my high school’s (iPoly’s) campus so that the school could venture towards becoming a model for food sustainability. In this way, the garden was a gesture of my senior project topic, urban farming, and what it is capable in providing to any community. The garden, I decided as President of Hope Club, would be a new project of Hope Club’s, and the Club would give the project the roots and backing it needed to survive administration judgement. Hope Club’s members became my fellow budding urban farmers. Once I met with the Principle and got the idea approved, the trajectory the garden would take was in my hands. Gathering my thoughts on research and experience up until this point, I convened a Hope Club meeting so that we could discuss plans for the garden’s establishment. Truly, administration’s approval came as a shock, and rendered useless a petition - basically a sign-in sheet in Pellegrini’;s room on Hope Club’s board - I was organizing to persuade administration with. I signed club members up to bring certain supplies by the time we work break ground on strip of dirt nearby the lunch tables now reserved for the garden, such as shovels, milk jugs, horse, manure, and banana peels. Brianna Estrada was tasked with purchasing the plants that would make our garden green. She later texted me asking which plants to adopt, and so we communicated extensively upon the matter. Excitement laced the plans. Plants and supplies were placed in the Cage. With planting possible, hope club and I tilled the hard, misused dirt we hoped to make a Garden of Eden. Hoep Club was continuously updated on the garden’s evolution and work that still needed to be slayed. Throughout, steps were patiently taken to ensure the garden was on-track toward becoming what it set out to be in the hopes of many.
To accomplish my Independent Component’s slight redesigning of the campus from its focus on concrete surroundings, I first drafted and sent an email to Flores explaining the short-term and long-term goals of The “gesture” the garden promised and has given to iPoly is one that sums up the both the environmental and social benefits of urban farming. By being organic in nature, the garden needed to function independently from human intervention. The garden was thus at the expense of its microbial universe. To ensure the soil’s microbes were enjoying and benefiting their environment, organics ranging from coffee grounds were planting in the plot under about 2 inches of soil. Buried, these mushy materials were decomposed by their neighboring microbes, who are then made happy in being providing so many nutrients ready for consumption. These nutrients digested by the microbes are released back into the soil, except in a form easier to digest for plants. In the end then, plants are able to find their nutrients easily by forming a dependency on microbes and their efficient, “dirty” work. This work carried out at the microscopic level has beneficial side-effect in addition to a virtuous goal in making way for more nutritious fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Such side-effects include the birth of various kinds of microbes performing multiple jobs for the well-being of their neighboring plants and more porous soil that is able to provide oxygen to anaerobic microorganisms. The soil becomes self-sufficient in staying healthy, with no need for human intervention (through pesticides and the like) to be productive.
With organic fertilizer added to the soil, water drenched the soil and easily entered the broken up ground. We then continued to till so that the clay so often found in the garden could be broken down into a finer consistency that would not interrupt root growth. Over the course of multiple Hope Club workdays (hand-on gardening workshops), the horse manure and bagged organic soil were amended to the garden plot and left to the use of the many worms we found and the many microbes we could not see. Nature took its course and we provided the help it needed to become independent of our existence - its own entity. By the time Hope Club began planting crops, the leveled garden was naked to the elements and bursting with underground activity. The soil felt alive as it fed on our investment of constant shoveling and consideration of its biological state. With respect to the biology they would partake in, our plants were incorporated into the food forest we had set up for them. Strawberry was planted first around a coned cage - one of 4 bought at Orchard Supply Hardware -, and then the cumber seedlings were lined in two rows extending a good ¼ of the plot between the second and third sprinklers. Finally, the sweet peas were set in two circles around two more coned cages, around which they could string vines and climb, and the jalapeno was made to stand alone between the sweet pea arrangements. Each plant was meticulously placed in a bowl-like depression that would capture what few drops of rain would fall from the atmosphere. Once sunk into the ground, Hope Club imagined the living soil welcoming its new guests.
The Club noticed the soil was drying up despite constant watering. My constant research into organic gardening tips suggested mulch as the solution. I picked up bags of mulch and spread these bark chips out on top of the topsoil like icing on a cake, before the soil’s still-prominent clay could transform into cumbersome rocks as it dried. The groundcover made the garden presentable and retained the water liberally pursed in the plant’s roots. Evaporation was no longer an enemy. Currently, the those signed up for watering shifts are informally informed on when to water the garden. To keep the care-taking operation lubricated until the garden can be truly self-sustaining, a shift schedule will be extensively relied upon for organization. Efficiency will be key in operating and monitoring the garden’s productivity. Through Hope Club’s efforts, the garden can be sustainable in that it has the makings for sustaining both the heaht of its ecosystem and its feeders. In this sense, our efforts were sustainable themselves.
(e) Defend your work and explain the component's significance and how it demonstrates 30 hours of work.
- Link to Hope Club’s Instagram page complete with posts regarding the garden’s evolution and effort invested in its vision: https://www.instagram.com/ipolyhopeclub/
- Link to the Garden’s Master Gardener Shift Schedule (the sign up sheet for those who wish to help out with the upkeep of the garden’s future health): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/126kOpE-DtBfKunxRX7JBHB8fFbSEHka46vXgteina8E/edit?usp=sharing
- Link to the GoogleDoc (“Campaign Compost”) Kyle Levin and I worked on to brainstorm our alliance that we had hoped to establish a garden from, in addition to its very own supply of school-grown soil that would be baked within a compost pile contained in a trash bin: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ILLH4EDsmoYihKqHGrtcmnI55MDlPI9DS_JzpR-kXJA/edit?usp=sharing
petition...
- email sent to Flores on behalf of Hope Club
- propelling the garden into reality...the process:
the guests...
the guests as bought by Brianne...
prepping the hearth...
mass humanity gathered on March 17...
furnishing...then planting...then furnishing again
today's flourishing...
tomorrow's hope (Pomona College's Organic Farm)...
manure (supplied by Kiley Moore's horses) appreciated...
(f) How did the component help you answer your EQ? Please include specific examples to illustrate how it helped.
Organization and proper planning are essential in the prosperous functioning of any small business. Since Urban Farming can be seen as a small business venture, and its gardens small business themselves, my Independent Component provided a way in which a school community urban farm can be made a reality through procrastination-free care and bounds of student support. The garden Hope Club established needed to be looked at as though it were a small business in order to have been taken seriously by administration and in order to command the respect it needs from its farmers to reach self-sufficiency and be a model of sustainability. My essential asks: How can urban farming redefine the way a community obtains and consumes food? My gardening rendezvous answered the question directly in saying that to become a change to our current food system and a continued practice with a religious following, urban farming needed to become a policy supported by the establishment - city governments, politicians, etc. By being mandated and officially recognized and made room for, urban farming can be easily accessed and used for the betterment of society as a whole. The struggle urban farming faces after all is being able to communicate its social and environmental benefits to persons of any community. Regulation of urban farming can allow it to adequately compete with industrial farming and the age of the supermarket, redefining our food system as one more conscious in its methodologies and provided products. Policy is the means by which urban farming can fully realize its potential, simply put.
The social benefits bottled within urban farming’s skeleton and philosophy were constantly faced when establishing Hope Club’s school community garden. When random iPoly-onians joined in on the tilling process, I was proud of how the incomplete, unassuming garden - then a patch of darker dirt - was able to unite students across the grade levels towards a common cause. They shared the red solo cups used for watering, and the shovels that separated worm from clay ball that was then hacked. They may have not even know what was to be made of the digging. They only cared for the outlet the exercise provided. Cathy Morrison defined her Community Garden, after which I modeled my school community garden, as one such outlet from the hustle and bustle of city-life. This reconnecting with our Earth, she had pointed out, was what made urban farming/community gardening so attractive and so much of an easily accessible habit. We humans are after all social creatures, and so are no stranger to the prospect of handing out with people we can talk to and learn from by being different from each other. To see such a previously idealistic philosophy exercised gave me hope for the persistence of urban farming throughout the foreseeable future. During my fourth interview, I spoke with Rozanne Adanto of the Villa-Parke Community Center/Garden. During our chat, I painted a clearer picture of the immediate relief urban farming offered tough social situations faced by many families. These situations are ones wherein people do not have access to healthier foods and thus live in food deserts. Food deserts are more and more defining themselves as having no marketplaces and only fast-food joints.
Buying the plants, I saw how such a simple move could mean so much to said challenged families. Planting a garden meant building a safe haven for them, a haven that provided for their children as much as they wanted to. Urban farms are city-centered for a reason: they combine environmental benefits with social health through being able to significantly benefit both environmental and social causes through a simple planting. Speaking with Mrs. Flores, I experienced firsthand what it meant to treat urban farming as a school policy: it meant giving the project a more promising future through harnessing the momentum/promise it holds in establishing it in a socially acceptable way. Mrs. Flores agreed to the project not because of its surreal goal in bettering man’s relationship with the Earth, but because it made sense for the school’s community. A small business thrives with common sense as an ally and its ability to deliver as a pillar. With a plan in mind and my goals set out for how I would make the garden exist, Mrs. Flores saw a business proposition that would deliver and that made sense in both the ecological and humanitarian senses. Now it can fulfill its promise.
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