Green Gal

The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program through Green Gal's Garden is in full swing--we are already in week four of the twenty-week program! CSA boxes in the past month have contained a variety of veggies, such as chard, kale, summer squash, cauliflower, scallions, basil, dill, oregano, mint, rosemary, lemon balm, eggplant, spinach, cilantro, rhubarb, peas, flowers, blueberries, and more! The tomatoes are still green on their vines but there are hundreds of them, the corn is nearly ready, and the peppers are tempting me with their size but haven't started coloring up yet. So much deliciousness still to come! (See the latest photos from the garden on Instagram .) I'm grateful for so much these days--the potential contained within seeds, the land I am able to farm this summer thanks to the generosity of soon-to-be-family, the encouragement and support from those who believe in my dream and have helped the garden grow.  On harvest days like today, I am

Happy Earth Week! I was invited to speak at my high school, Amador Valley High School, in celebration of Earth Week today. It's been awhile since I visited the place where I spent four years of my life learning and exploring my identity as an environmentalist. I actually started this blog while attending Amador Valley High School! Below is the text of my speech that I used as a reference this afternoon. What I actually said varied slightly, but here's the gist: Hello, my name is Melissa Ott, and I graduated from Amador in 2010. I’d like to thank the organizers of Earth Week for inviting me to speak to you all today. Before I begin, I would like to a take a moment to acknowledge that we are standing on indigenous land and honor the Muwekma-Ohlone people who cared for this beautiful valley for generations before it was settled and renamed Pleasanton. The descendants of the Ohlone are still alive today, some of them in the Bay Area working to gain recognition and access to their

Who else is ready for the weather to warm up the soil for our spring gardens? I've spent so many hours looking at seed catalogs and seed packets lately, I just can't wait for tomatoes and peppers! Despite the cool temperatures lately, the 2018 growing season has officially begun for Green Gal's Garden! We sowed our first round of seeds on February 18, including three varieties of basil and one variety of cauliflower. The first seedlings sprouted up out of the soil on February 24, and more continue to sprout and grow happily in their little cells of potting soil. I'm planting another round of seeds this week, and I finally finished my crop plan (just yesterday actually!) so now I have a schedule of what's getting planted when and how much and when it'll eventually get transplanted and then harvested. I printed it out to have a physical copy to refer to (see below), but it will be a living document on the computer that will get updated and changed as the

It's been almost 3 months since I said goodbye to my beautiful farm-ily and graduated from the UC Santa Cruz Farm Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture. Life since then has been a whirlwind of organizing to-do lists and timelines, adjusting to more screen time, balancing new responsibilities and projects without the structure of a 9-5 job, and reflecting on this past growing season of learning, growth, and community. Since October when I packed up my tent cabin overlooking Monterey Bay and closed a profound chapter of my life, the ideas that had sprouted into dreams and were woven into goals during my time at the UCSC Farm soon became integral to the fabric of my daily life. The vision I crafted as I dug potatoes and planted ranunculus and cooked meals for 45 of my favorite people has begun manifesting as tangible stepping stones into the future, each leading to deeper understanding of the purpose and potential of those dreams. No doubt, I have days when fear makes m