Green Gal

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...

Happy Giving Tuesday! If you haven't already, I invite you to please support an important cause led by four of my dear friends from the UCSC Farm Apprenticeship! They are raising funds to support a more sustainable food system in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. They have raised 75% of their $17,500 goal; help them get to 100% ! They write, "After learning that 80% of crop value has been wiped out, we think supporting our agroecological family in Puerto Rico is the best way we can contribute. We want to contribute to farmers, seed savers, and food justice organizers who believe in growing methods that do not use pesticides, that rebuild the soil, that attract beneficial insects, that grow healthy food, that believe that access to locally grown food is a RIGHT that everyone should have on the island (and around the world.)" Please watch this video to learn more and hear directly from my four inspiring friends and fellow members of the Center for Agroecology ...

Yesterday afternoon, I led a workshop about sourdough bread at the UC Santa Cruz Farm & Garden's Annual Harvest Festival. (Fun fact: Green Guy and I met at this same event five years ago when we were tabling for student sustainability organizations!) A whole lot of people showed up to the workshop, and nearly everyone was able to take some 150-year-old Yukon sourdough starter home with them. I received the starter from a coworker's mother-in-law a couple years ago after baking with my own homegrown starter for a few months.  It's resilient and amazing to bake with! If you're particularly intrigued by sourdough and live in the Santa Cruz area, you're invited to sign up for another workshop that I'm leading October 11 at UCSC. It's $5, and it's limited to 12 participants; sign up here ! By signing up for the workshop, you can join me on a journey into the wild world of sourdough, an ancient and delicious fermentation art that is easy and fun for ...

An apprenticeship update & an exploration of what our treatment of weeds perhaps reveals about the limits we place on compassion It's already week eight of the Apprenticeship; time has truly flown by here at the farm and gardens! This evening in the Farm Center I'm surrounded by apprentices playing charades, others prepping for tomorrow's meals, and bouquets of fragrant and enticing flowers from our flower and bouquet class yesterday. Earlier today, I learned a bit about how to grow peppers as well as the many different kinds of peppers in the world. (The article we read and reviewed this morning is available online here .) We will be growing 67 different varieties of peppers in the Chadwick Garden alone this season, totaling more than 1500 individual plants throughout the garden! These will all be planted by hand. Sometime next week, we've been promised a dried and smoked pepper tasting session, as well as a potato and garlic varieties taste t...

The weeks pass by so quickly here, each day filled with learning the "why" behind the "how," engaging in interesting discussions with new friends, working, and getting "schooled up" (as Orin Martin would say) in how to be effective and skilled technicians in the art of gardening and farming. Each day could become its own blog post with the story of what was learned, practiced, discovered, and enjoyed. Today's update is a series of quotes, thoughts, and tidbits, a somewhat brief glimpse into my daily life here.   The Cultivation of the Gardener Each week, we have readings due on Wednesday that relate to the topic of our class for that day. One of our readings recently was titled "The Cultivation of the Gardener," written by a few CASFS (Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems) staff a number of years ago. The article describes the biodynamic French Intensive horticulture system brought to UCSC by Alan Chadwick in 1967...

My legs are sore, my vertebrae crack when I stand up straight or stretch, my hands are scraped and blistered, but I've got the biggest smile on my face--kinda like the grin on my childhood face below! It's been two and a half weeks since I moved onto the UCSC Farm, and I am in love with life, this land, the view, the many plants we tend, and the community of ~50 people that I spend nearly all of my time with when I'm not sleeping in my canvas tent cabin overlooking the Bay. Since my last blog update, I've done all of this and more: learned a bit about temperate zone deciduous fruit trees from Orin Martin transplanted flowers into beds in the Chadwick Garden/Up Garden labeled many plants for the plant sale this weekend weeded and added more roses to a perennial rose garden learned about Alternative to Violence Program and practiced nonviolent communication during a workshop got to know new friends better  read about and heard lectures and saw demos on both cove...

Woah, an entire week of the UC Santa Cruz Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture has already come and gone! It was a full week of meeting new people (40 apprentices plus the staff!), learning all of their names, getting used to group meals three times a day, enduring the cold of my tent cabin, and enjoying the beautiful view. Since last week was the first week and here in Santa Cruz we had rainy skies and saturated soils almost every day, we spent a lot of time inside the Village A3 building meeting everyone, learning about the program and policies, and getting trained on food safety and how to avoid ticks, mosquitos, bee stings, and black widow bites. Oh my! One of the many perks of living on a farm--abundant flowers to decorate your tent cabin! Early in the week, we prepared our spade and fork. They come with a plasticky shellac on the wood, which we removed and sanded down so that we could apply linseed oil instead. This should make the wood last longer than the sh...

The newest chapter in the adventures of Green Gal has officially begun! Yesterday, I moved into a tent cabin at the UC Santa Cruz Farm, where I'll live, work, and learn for the next six months. I'm participating in the Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture, a program hosted by the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems that is celebrating its 50th year. Back in December when I received my acceptance letter, I shared a post about why I applied to this program . I can't believe it all starts tomorrow and that I will be waking up this unbelievable from my tent cabin door view every morning from now until October! If you can't tell in this photo, you can see Monterey Bay glimmering in the sun. I've met a few other apprentices so far, and I look forward to meeting the rest of the folks tonight for our welcome dinner and tomorrow for our first day! There are 39 of us this year, and we come from all different backgrounds and places around the st...

"Every issue that's out there is your opportunity to step up," shared Amigo Bob Cantisano, one of the founders of the EcoFarm Conference, in his welcome address at EcoFarm 2017 on Wednesday evening. I was in the audience as a first-time attendee of EcoFarm, an annual conference celebrating its 37th year this past week at the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, across the road from the glorious Pacific Ocean. The Ecological Farming Association that hosts this conference has a mission "to nurture healthy, just, and ecologically sustainable farms, food systems, and communities by bringing people together for education, alliance building, advocacy, and celebration." I am so grateful I had the opportunity to participate in the conference this year! I was able to do so with the help of my good friend David Shaw , who recently started a permaculture business called Santa Cruz Permaculture . He invited me to table with him for his business in the exhibit...

Last Friday, at my final UCSC Sustainability Inter-Organizational Retreat as a planning co-coordinator, I facilitated a world cafe -style dialogue with a room full of students, staff, faculty, and alumni affiliated with sustainability and social justice organizations. We had just heard from UCSC alum mark! Lopez of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice about what it means to decolonize sustainability and focus a critical lens on the environmental movement in support of equity for those who have been most impacted by not only environmental issues, but also the conservation movement itself. It was a powerful talk that left some in tears, others stunned by what they had just learned, and many grateful for an honest presentation that was critical and real without any attempt to sugarcoat. The world cafe consisted of two questions, which had been crafted by our planning team of students and staff. People at tables throughout the Colleges 9&10 Multipurpose Room had 20 minute...