Mount Union...the end!

Hi everyone! Our booklet outline is 11 pages long so we'll just post a link to it

http://borlankc.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/americorpsvista-summer-associate-booklet-outline/

This includes everything except our numbers chart. Believe it or not, we reached over 3000 people this summer! This is counting each day as a new day. We've already posted many action shots so I won't post any more since our last three posts were just pictures!

We've had a really great time with AmeriCorps*VISTA and the Ohio Campus Compact! Congratulations to everyone else on an outstanding summer and let's hope they offer this to OCC again next year!

EDIT: I lied, you can post charts too so our chart is the second actual post and the outline is the first one. :)

End of the Year BOOKlet OutLine

Name:
Joshua Michael Aeh

Institution:
Shawnee State University

Community Partner:
Portsmouth Pantry Garden

What did you do in 8 weeks?
In 8 weeks, we managed to raise a Garden, donate nearly a ton of food from the Garden to multiple Pantries, and raise money to insure the Future of the Garden.

What did you learn?
I learned that I in particular am no fan of Gardening, but that there are people out there who are grateful for us having done so because of what we were able to provide to them, and that can go quite a long way.

What was your biggest impact?
Our biggest impact may have to be the awareness we were able to raise within our community of the importance of helping and informing those who may be less fortunate and/or educated. By raising awareness we not only managed to have a reasonably successful summer of help but have hopefully encouraged others throughout the community to continue on where we left off…

How has the experience changed you and the community you served?
The Experience has provided me with a better understanding and respect of the work that goes into serving a community in need. I may not be as critical of it as I was once before.

Quotes from the community partner and from a community member about the services you were able to bring to the community:
I suppose quote from most would be "Thank You."

Action photo!!

Booklet Outline

Name: Mason Bradbury

Institution: Shawnee State University

Community Partner: Portsmouth Pantry Garden


What did you do in 8 weeks?
My colleagues and I grew over 20 different vegetable crops and distributed over 1800 lbs (1857.75 lbs is the latest count) of food to local pantries. I also led a canning demonstration and helped plan a fundraiser dinner with garden produce to support next year’s community garden. In order to make the whole process accessible to those who will continue the garden next year, I have kept a careful log of everything done, grown and produced.


What did you learn?
Two things: first, it is surprisingly easy to mobilize people if you present them with something in which they can believe; second, good leadership, more than goals, mission statements or ideals, is the key to successful projects.

What was your biggest impact?

Without a doubt, the 1850 lbs of healthy, fresh food we provided to pantry users affected the community. Hopefully, however, the establishment of a foundation of engaged community members will carry the garden on to next year and have a more lasting impact.

How has the experience changed you and the community you served?

I have gained a better and more nuanced understanding of the role that community service and charity plays and should play in our society. The community, meanwhile, has gained a valuable asset in the pantry garden and the people who have committed themselves to it.


Quotes from the community partner and from a community member about the services you were able to bring to the community:

Sorry, I have only one quote. This comes from the Pantry Garden facebook page we created.

Portsmouth... For the first time in my life, you have made me proud to call you home [in reference to the pantry garden].



Action photo!!

Sarah @ Shawnee - Booklette

Name:
Sarah Bachman

Institution:
Shawnee State University

Community Partner:
Portsmouth Pantry Garden

What did you do in 8 weeks?
Over the past 8 weeks I worked at the Portsmouth Pantry Garden growing produce to distribute to local pantries. I helped to educate students who volunteered in the garden about the importance of sustainable agriculture, local food movements (as opposed to shipping in food from far-away locations) and tried to instill in them a sense of pride for the work they were doing. I also helped to oversee court-appointed volunteers when they came to work in the garden. My fellow VISTA's and I helped to raise awareness about the garden by having a booth at the Farmer's Market each week where we accepted donations and handed out information on the garden. We also organized a canning demonstration and and hosted a fundraiser dinner to benefit the future of the garden.

What did you learn?
I learned how to grow food on a large scale with limited resources.

What was your biggest impact?
The biggest impact that the garden had was feeding dozens of families who had little access to fresh produce.

How has the experience changed you and the community you served?
The community has really rallied around the garden and many people feel they have a stake in its future. It has given sore residents a sense of pride in their community as well. A lot of people have opened their hearts and their pocketbooks to help their fellow townspeople. It has also inspired some people to start their own gardens and to think more about what they are feeding themselves and their families. As for how the garden has changed me, it has given me hope when it comes to helping others in knowing that it can be accomplished. Sometimes it seems like a daunting task to feed the masses but I know now that with a little sweat and time, we can feed everyone who has a need. the experience has made me want to devote more of my life to helping others.

Quotes from the community partner of a community member about the services you were able to bring to the community:
We had a facebook page for the Pantry Garden (search Portsmouth Pantry Garden). We mostly used the page to update people on our work, when we would be in the garden, when we were distributing food and so on. But on occasion, people would leave comments for us and one post in particular really stuck with me and my fellow VISTA's. A man by the name of Kyle Rooney posted the following: "Portsmouth, for the first time in my life, you have made me proud to call you home." that really touched us because a lot of people in Portsmouth don't feel proud of their community anymore and it was nice that we were able to change that for someone.

Wrapping things up @ Shawnee State

Sarah here. I can't believe the summer is almost over. The garden has been doing great these past few weeks. With the exception of our green peppers, all the plants are doing well and we have been having big harvests. Mason (he's been in charge of the tally) will have to post the final weight later today for you.
Our Garden Party fundraiser dinner was a success. We held the dinner in an outdoor courtyard at a local garden shop called Boneyfiddle Home and Garden. Dinner started at 7 as the heat of the day began to fade. The food was served in 4 courses. The first course was a salad of cucumbers and tomatoes with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. There was homemade bread too! The second course was a choice of two soups; onion soup with swiss cheese or vegetable soup. the third course was the entree, a vegetable lasagna with a side of green beans. The fourth course was desert, a homemade mint gelato. It was so GOOD! We had 30 guests in attendance and after subtracting the overhead costs, we raised just shy of $300 for the future of the garden. With this money, we plan to sponsor plots in the community garden for interested families that use the food pantry. The money will also be used to purchase seeds and plants and possibly tools for these families to use. The people in charge of the community garden have agreed to hold onto the money until next spring.

The last week of camp

This is Brenna once again with a slightly belated post from Hiram House Camp. The camp actually ended this week, so next week I'll be cleaning and tying up some loose ends.
Our last week was a lot of fun. For the classes with campers-I had 3-5 each day- we cooked stew over a fire using quinoa and adding chives, basil, lettuce, zucchini and squash blossoms from the garden. Some groups were also totally resourceful and picked wild ramps and mint to add to the stew. Although it wasn't always the finest tasting dish it was really enjoyable to watch the kids engage themselves and get excited about the stew; most likely it was the first time a lot of them have cooked for themselves.

We also visited the animals at the farmstead with a few classes, and the last day, I tried playing a game with some classes that is meant to help them understand how wealth is distributed in the world. Playing the game involves setting up a mock banquet and distributing some kind of food, I used pretzels, proportionately to the distribution in of wealth in the world. In other words, one kid gets a fat stack of pretzels and most of the others recieve crumbs. Typically the kids react confused and angry at first, but after a small conversation and some thoughtful remarks they start to see the intended purpose of the game.

This is what we do in our free time...break wagons and create box creatures haha!

Pics (as promised)

Reaction to Barbara Kingsolver

This is Autumn and Laura coming to you live from Marietta College. We had some interesting views on the Barbara Kingsolver video. We understood many of the points she was making about the benefits of local eating. However, we felt her approach wasn't very realistic in that it is only feasible for certain groups, such as the upper class. For example, two working parents, or even one single parent, could not likely afford to maintain a garden while also caring for their children. A single parent, especially, may be to exhausted at the end of a long shift to even cook. Her approach was very elitist in this way.
From a political standpoint, Kingsolver suggests that the Farm Bill needs to be changed, but she does not provide suggestions for this change. Also, she mentions China and Argentina as sources of our food. China owns the majority of U.S. debt so putting tariffs or other protection measures against Chinese food products would likely be infeasible at this time. (Laura).

Week 7 at Mount!

I can't believe we only have one week of this left. It feels like we've been doing this for a year but that we still have lots more to go. We told the kids at Maple Beach Park this week that next thursday is our last official day and they seemed pretty sad about that. Cali and I said we'd visit though a couple times before school starts up again!

This was actually a pretty eventful week. We've had the most number of kids everyday at lunch this week than we ever have before! I believe our numbers went something like 29, 41, 28, 38 and 44! (I may be wrong about monday's number) I can't believe we had 44 kids today! Yesterday we had the bug nets again and the kids went crazy catching butterflies and dragonflies. Today we made our own stickers which turned out to be pretty fun.

Yesterday was our lovely site visit from the OCC supervisors. We showed them all around the Alliance Homeless Shelter, Maple Beach Park, and Feed My Sheep Ministries. We had a wild time at FMSM last night. We ended up losing the van keys (which we later found on top of the van). Then Cali took me for a wild ride in Glenna's wagon and I skinned my toe. Then Glenna pulled me in the wagon again and a wheel broke off so we bought a replacement for her and while dropping our home supervisor off at her car, we were flipped off by some angry people.

We finished the gardens at the Homeless Shelter with the help of the OCC supervisors. We were also able to drop off about a dozen cucumbers and a bucket full of peppers and tomatoes there today. We're so happy because one of the residents said she goes out and waters the gardens! We were so afraid that no one was taking intiative with them but it seems they are.

I've been slacking with posting pictures so I will try and do that later tonight. But for now, that's pretty much it. I'm still in awe that we only have a week left! We've accomplished so much however and I hope next year's VISTAs will pick up where we left off!

Branden and Nicole from Springfield

We have been busy this week planning our Garden Celebration on August 21st. We have a new VISTA that will be coming in to work with the garden. The celebration will be a great way for him to meet everyone in the neighborhood and to end the summer on a great note! We have food, music, a salsa contest, a raffle, and kids crafts planned as well as representatives from the Health district, OBB, and police department. This is going to be a great party and thanks to the OSU extension office, we have plenty of prizes to raffle off and a great gift for the winner of the salsa contest!

Over our 8 weeks working at the garden we have accomplished much more than we imagined......

Over 100 pounds donated to the food bank and food pantry
Formed a Neighborhood Association
Formed a Neighborhood Watch
Formed a Garden Committee
Planned a Garden/Harvest Celebration
Additions to the garden: picnic table umbrella, 300 feet of hose, rain barrels, 4 beautiful flower beds, lavender flowers around the fence, and a compost pile (soon to be compost bin)
Feature on the Wittenberg University Website
Article in the Habitat for Humanity newsletter
Set up a garden website
Participated in the America in Bloom Contest


The biggest impact that the garden has had is bringing the community together. We had two neighbors that mentioned that they had never spoken to any of the other neighbors around besides each other. Now they have met many of their community members and are much more connected. One woman said that the garden was the best thing she seen happen to the neighbor and loves to enjoy the beautiful view now across the street. The Neighborhood Association is also an integral impact the project has had on the neighborhood. It can now reach out to the city in a positive light to get the assistance and support the neighborhood so desperately needs.

The garden project has changed the community out here in such a positive way. There is definitely more hope for the future and belief that change can actually happen. A true community has formed in a neighborhood were transitional families are the extreme majority. A new sense of security and safety has begun and the changes are just beginning. There is great hope for this community.

Mike in Cleveland

This week was the biggest harvest so far by a long shot at the farm. We had a lot of herbs, squash, and lettuce. The next few weeks should really see a rise in production of pumpkins, squash and zucchini. At the farm I have helped to increase capacity for next year and beyond by tilling new land, building fences, and helping to improve the soil. I also have helped with volunteer programs to get more students involved at the farm to learn about local food production. I want to visit next year to see how my efforts from this year have taken hold.

I was at the farm this morning and we had visitors from Oberlin. They came to check out our progress and give us their thoughts on our new food program. They have been growing food for a decade already so they had some good tips to offer. It was nice to share what we have been doing all summer and talk to people that had the same interest. The occ students from Oberlin did not come but there were about 8 students that did so it was a nice break from the daily gardening work.

We are going to start harvesting collard greens and peppers tomorrow at NuGarden so the kids will get to see the outcome of their hard work over the past month. They have become better workers and picked up job skills for the future at NuGarden which was part of the goal of the program. They complain less and work harder. Hopefully this experience will stay with them in their future and make them more successful adults.

Ethics of Eating - Catherine at JCU

I really enjoyed listening to Barbara Kingsolver discuss her book and her year of growing her own food with her family. She had some really good insights about nutrition, cooking, and the importance of buying locally if you are going to buy at all. I liked how she said that they stopped thinking about what food they were giving up and started thinking about what food they had available. Also, in order to truly eat nutritional food, one must be willing to cook. However, many people don't have time to cook or don't enjoy it. Therefore, as Kingsolver mentioned, thinking about cooking as family time and as entertainment makes it a much more enjoyable and a seemingly less time consuming activity.

Ethics of Eating

This is Brenna from Hiram House Camp. I had a few thoughts after listening to Barbara Kingsolver's conversation on "the Ethics of Eating." I think it was very ambitious and pretty brave for her to take on the task of feeding her family solely from what they could produce, in a year, by hand. Her ambitions and views seem to center on the idea that, as a culture, we have no sense of how wasteful our consumption is and that "if we can afford it it's ok to buy it" and the solution to this is to become aware of what we do, what it really costs, and to change how we, on a small scale, live.
I agree with her on a lot of counts; that we've "forgotten" to ask where our food comes from, and that food production is better, ideally, on a local scale, and thus less wasteful. She seemed to remark that it's also a cultural affliction (no regional sense of food culture, like India, Italy, Mexico. Is that so?) However I often find myself caught in a debate over whether systemic change can truly be affected by individual lifestyle choice; in other words, is growing your own food going to substitute for direct political action? I think what we as VISTAS are doing certainly goes into a larger than individual scale, and into the political sphere, so this is an interesting read. From Orion magazine: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801/.

End of week 6 at Mount!

Cali and Bonnie and I just finished listening to the podcast about Barbara's year of life eating locally grown and homegrown food.

The author and interviewer bring up some good points about people's mentality about farmers' market and organic products. A lot of people think this is reserved for the elite. This mentality is true and we even see it in Alliance. They moved the farmers' market downtown so that the folks on that side of town could also have access to locally grown produce. Instead, the normal frequenters of the old location have just adapted to coming down to the other side of town.

I guess a lot of this podcast had a lot to do with human mentality and how it affects what and how they eat and consume products.

In one part she talks about "harvesting" the animals on her farm and how that term has become less harsh for her. Harvesting, slaughtering, butchering...it doesn't matter what term you use, it means the same thing. A majority of the animals on this planet are meant to be consumed in some way. All three of us agree with the whole dignity part of an animal's life. However, she cannot know for a fact that a turkey doesn't want to live til 100 and know its grandchilden. Perhaps its not their mentality, but its not really her place to decide what an animal is thinking.

Another good idea she mentions is the vegetable bookmobile that goes around low income neighborhoods. This would be a good idea to implement in more urban communities.

She talks about government and its involvement in this whole food buying and selling process. She says that we are the government and that we have the laws in this country that we allow. Without making this too political, I personally don't agree with that. The way this voting system works...yeah the minority hardly has any say in anything.

Also, there is no way we could just turn to locally grown food alone and not also buy food grown overseas. If we would do that then should other countries do the same with us and tur away food we send to underprivileged areas? Perhaps there should be more of a balance between locally grown food and imported products, but we cannot just not buy any imports at all.

This county does pride itself in wastefulness, its true. Its been a long process of getting to this point however. The development of bigger and better things turned the world into a material place. Everyone wants bigger and better and doesn't think about the little person any more. This includes the local farmers and business owners.

The main thing to remember about this book is that it is a story. She even says it herself. She picked and chose what she put into the book, so therefore we aren't getting a whole picture of what life would be like with this lifestyle. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate if she kept a year-long journal.

Nicole - Springfield

Today we listened to "The Ethics of Eating" which I found to really interesting. It was great to hear that the author spent a year eating only locally grown food, some of which she grew in her own backyard. It's very inspiring for those interested in making similar life changes. I was very surprised at how easy she found the transition. She said that they didn't actually miss anything. They switched from thinking about what foods they were losing, to what foods they had available. It's great to see that changing to local foods is possible if you change the way you think about food.

This week we spent alot of time in the office creating manuals for the next generation of leaders when we leave. We also sent out some much deserved thankyou notes and compiled alot of the contacts we have made for the new VISTA that will be taking over soon. It's been great to see how much we've accomplished and how much we've learned.

Hi Everyone! Sorry I'm a little late in responding to the blogs. I found some of the information in this article to be interesting as it expounded a lot on what has seemed to be a large topic of conversation between the other two vistas that are working at the college and I. Before this summer, I wouldn't of have thought that efforts to produce mass amounts of industrial food was a major problem, but I read an article this past week that two researchers from John Hopkins University predicted some time ago that by 2015 75% of Americans would be either obese or overweight. Also, another article in the New York Times said that this up and coming generation is the first generation that they're expected to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents because of the food that they're eating. Unfortunately, I think it might take something this impactful to lead us to pay more attention to what we're putting into our bodies.

War and Peas

Thanks to everyone who shared their "Activities for Kids" ideas. We will certainly be putting them to use.

Bad News this morning. We recently advertised "Free Produce" on a flyer for a community meeting at the garden. What we meant was 'free produce at the meeting.' However, many members of the community have interpreted this as 'free produce anytime' and have been harvesting from the garden as they please.

Aside from the relatively insignificant concern of having undocumented harvests, much of the food is being plundered from personal plots. We know that a similar problem sealed the fate of a previous community garden not far from our own. We are currently working on a way to assure the community that their plots are safe without becoming fascists e.g., barbwire, guard dogs, etc.

Anyhow, I found the article fascinating. It addresses the perhaps unforeseen problem of liking one's president too much. Part of the problem facing organic farmers right now is their reluctance to be too critical of a president that they ostensibly support. This makes them an even smaller pea on the president's already crowded plate. If Washington is going to lend an ear, liberal-minded farmers have to realize that Obama is not their personal friend. He doesn't have the time or the resources to do favors. They have to grow their teeth back.