Guest blog post by Sommer Fanney, FoodCorps AmeriCorps Service Member
While Covid continues to bring challenges in work, school, and daily life, school gardens are growing and flourishing.
The Food Shuttle’s Urban Agriculture Education program partners with ten schools across Wake and Durham counties to promote garden-based education and establish gardens at school sites. As a FoodCorps AmeriCorps service member, I have been working closely with Bugg Elementary School’s faculty and staff through the Urban Agriculture Education program to help grow their garden classroom into an inviting space full of fresh fall vegetables.
Bugg’s garden classroom has been established for a few years now and is equipped with a whiteboard and seating so teachers and students can bring their lessons outside to incorporate the garden without forfeiting these standard classroom tools. But lockdowns earlier this year left many school gardens, including Bugg’s, inaccessible. By fall, there was a lot of work to do in the garden to restore it to a workable space.
Fortunately Bugg staff, including Pattie Marks who handles community partnerships, and head custodian Guy Polynice, have been working together with myself and the Food Shuttle to do some deep weeding, mulching, and fall planting. Our fall crops have grown enormously since their planting in October. As of mid-December, Pattie Marks has helped lead two large harvests and distributions of our fall crops to in-school students. In total about 90 Bugg families have received bags of Bugg’s own kale, arugula, lettuces, mustards, radishes, sweet potatoes, and other delicious vegetables.
As Bugg nears their winter break for students and staff, Pattie and I are hoping for some warm and sunny days during the holiday that will coax some more growth out of the crops so we can do a last hurrah harvest in January before clearing and planting for spring. While it is still unclear if students and staff will be able to use the garden classroom this school year, we are looking forward to a growing garden throughout the year that will produce more successful harvests.