To Teach

In my time here in Davis,

I've learned that I can teach, that I love to teach, that I am challenged by it. It is, perhaps, one of the most difficult things I've ever attempted. Standing in front of a room of wide-eyes. Leading them into the complexities I am still untangling. I know that teaching is important because I wake up thinking about it, and go to bed wondering if it will go well. I know that it matters because my heart races when I begin to speak, to council, and to guide them.

Philosophically, I am attempting to democratize my classroom, using the ideas behind Popular Education as my beacons in the dark. I've had guides that lead in this direction, but as they're modest, they'll go unmentioned. Democracy in our public education system is, to be light, a challenge. As student- teacher ratios increase it's difficult to remain participatory and democratic. I struggle to simply grasp all eighty of their names. How can you have participation and democracy without names? What's in a name? Personality, life history, culture, background, belief, influence... and on and on. All that plays a role in how people learn, what the gravitate toward, what they value.

I'm learning by doing. Falling, faltering, getting up, trying again. Attempt, re-write. Breath, sigh. Wake up. Try again. True hands on learning. Learning about learning, learning how to facilitate and inspire and ultimately teach. Again, a challenge.

In short, my new understanding of the courage that teacher's possess is profound. As a student I am grateful for their daily leap into the unknown, a giant trust fall. As one of them, I am thankful for my ability to practice- and hope one day to be able to execute the feat gracefully.

A New Model of Urban Agriculture in NYC

Here is a little shout out for a new project in NYC started by one of my UCSC apprenticeship crew.

BK Farmyards is a new urban farming network in Brooklyn. Our mission is to increase access to healthy affordable food to Brooklyn residents through increasing urban food production and providing jobs for urban farmers. We started last year by turning backyards into farmyards, offering the first CSA with all produce grown in Brooklyn. We are building on last year’s success with new sites, more farmers and more CSAs. We are working with the High School for Public Service to create a new Youth Farm. We will be turning the school’s one acre lawn into a thriving, productive and educational farm. The Farm will provide fresh affordable food for the community through a CSA, while providing educational and employment opportunities for the students.

Urban farms across the country have been offering a glimpse of what is possible, but we want to push farther. We believe that cities have the capacity to grow more food and employ more people in agriculture. There are currently over 10,000 acres of vacant land in NYC, 1,500 in Brooklyn alone. If just 10 percent of the backyards in NYC were farmed we could grow enough food for 700,000 people. There is high demand for local and healthy food, all 26 Brooklyn CSAs have waiting lists, and farmers markets are becoming more and more popular. Additionally we have an abundance of people who are skilled and talented in growing food, and even more who are interested in learning how.

BK Farmyards is creating a new model for urban farms. Our goal is to create financially sustainable farms that serve the people and neighborhoods subjected to the worst systematic oppression from our current food system. Our model lowers the cost of farming by building relationships between existing assets in our community: an abundance of experienced and enthusiastic farmers, underutilized land, schools, homeowners, developers and government support for local farms and low income consumers. Our model allows for us to be independent of continuous grant funding, allowing us to expand our work as more land becomes available and more people want to farm.

Though we plan on becoming financially sustainable, we need a lot to get everything going. We are currently fundraising through grants, special events and online tools. We are using kicktarter.com as a fundraising tool and so we need to reach our $10,000 goal by February 26th to receive any of the money. Please consider giving us your financial support, even $5 will be of great help!

If you are interested in working with us please shoot us a line. There is a lot to do, a lot of land and a lot of food to grow!

www.BKFarmyards.com

bee (@) BKFarmyards.com

"Is Wal-Mart the future of local food?"- Grist

Author Tom Laskawy candidly writes about how Walmart is considering using it's huge distribution network to underpin some of the burgeoning local food movement. Recently published in Grist- click the title to link to the page.

A Tiny House on the Mind

So my mind has been wandering of late. Mom says that it's just a nesting instinct, but it feels stronger than that. I've been thinking about window and trim, about what to build the floors out of, about roofing material and skylights. A space, a small space to call my own.

I wrote a couple of years back about my growing interest in Tiny Houses. Studios on wheels. I figured that the obsession would soon pass, but as I'm a farmer graduate student in recovery from living in a very small tent at the top of the world, my mind has begun to wander. And where have I wandered in my finals week procrastinations you ask? Why google image of course.

Candyland for creativity, filled with a world wide movement of tinyhome pioneers, rife with photos.

I've begun to enroll my home building family members in my story. As one set of my parents sign the papers on a new house with thousands of square feet to decorate, I muse about the freedom of no furniture, little dusting, no frills. I aspire to park my house in the footprint of their garage. I never rebelled in my teenage years- perhaps this is my form of uprising. Except, in my mind I've designed the uprising to be one that brings me closer to my family- Oh yes, and it's very very tiny.

The photos are of the Martin-House-to-Go, a spin off of the popular Tumbleweed design.

Wordle of my whole Summer

I input all of my blog postings from the summer UCSC apprenticeship into Wordle-- the instant word cloud service online that accounts for words in the cloud by frequency, and here is the picture I got back. Pretty darn accurate to my experience. Fascinating way of seeing associative links.

Department of Justice Public Comment Period on Monopoly issues in Agriculture

This is the biggest opening in 30 years. The Department of Justice is on a fact finding mission about agribusiness and they need to hear from us!

Are you concerned about where your food comes from? Do you care about the working conditions of farmers and food workers? Is it inconvenient to get to the store? Do you have access to fresh produce in your neighborhood? Are you concerned about meat and poultry packing conditions that threaten your health and that of the workers? Are you worried that corporate giants like Monsanto control a large share of our seed supply?

The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are seeking our comments on consolidation in the food system by December 31, 2009. We have just five weeks to tell them what's wrong in our food system and make suggestions for how to fix it.

Please take the time to e-mail your comments to agriculturalworkshops@usdoj.gov.

Or you can submit two paper copies of your comments to Legal Policy Section, Antitrust Division, U.S. Department of Justice, 450 5th Street, NW, Suite 11700, Washington, D.C. 20001. All comments received will be publicly posted.

Please forward this e-mail to friends who may also like to submit comments. Thank you.

Five workshops will be held in 2010 in Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Washington, D.C. and Wisconsin. But the best way to get your concerns heard is to submit your written comments.

For specifics about the workshops:http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/workshops/ag2010/index.htm#overview

Thanks for sharing this message with others.

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Olive Oil!

Students for Sustainable agriculture hosted our annual olive pick this year. With permission from both the UCD Olive Center and Grounds, students, faculty, and alumni harvested olives on campus last Sunday in a joint effort to produce oil. This year the crew of over 50 people harvested a total of 3,326.5 pounds of olives. The organizers and volunteers carted the raw olives to Mike Madison's farm, Yolo Bulb, in Woodland, where he used his small scale industrial olive press to make the oil. Grand total: 47.5 gallons of oil, which was happily distributed via a serve yourself olive oil stand behind one organizers' house. And as we've picked up our share, and patiently wait for the oil to settle, we're already looking forward to next year!

UC Students Protest!

Last Thursday I was at home on my computer, still in my pajamas reading email, grading papers, checking the news. Feeling generally down about the state of the world, the privatization of the education system, and my current lack of involvement in political activism- or rather my lack of causing visible change instead of just theorizing about it. That's when I got the news.

Two of my Community Development peers emailed our group listserve saying something to the effect of; 'for all of you sitting on your --- reading your email, get over to Mrak Hall (UCD admin), there's a sit-in happening!' I mentioned it in my last post, but a quick recap- last Wednesday, the UC Regents voted to increase student tuition by 32% for next year, the largest increase ever in UC tuition. For the last 10 days, students all over the state have been protesting, yet UCD has been conspicuously absent from much of the ruckus. Thursday changed that.

I arrived at Mrak at 2pm. Hundreds of students lined the main entrance hall, the stairs, and the elevator lobby. Sitters were littered amongst backpacks, computers, and posters. Organizers were urging people to text and email their friends, to send the word out virally for a flash mob. A few cops were milling about, and school administrators had to step over clumps of students as they made their way towards their business.

Over the next few hours, hundreds of students came and went. Top level administrators came down from their offices and encouraged us to leave, news crews wandered through with cameras interviewing people, and police warned that the building would eventually close and students would have to leave. For those hours the sit-in shifted between students chatting amongst themselves and spirited waves of cheering, jeering and chanting.

By 6pm it was a different scene. Having officially 'closed' the building at five, the number of police officers and TV cameras had quintupled. No-one was being allowed in the building, and officers had begun to read the remaining protestors their rights. The first person was arrested around 6:30 and cops in riot gear led them out to a patty wagon stationed outside. The building was slowly emptied of protesters, as one by one, folks willing to participate in civil disobedience were cuffed and escorted through the double glass doors, past the hundreds of supporting students, faculty, and staff who had amassed themselves outside. Paraded into a police escort, the arrestees- totaling 52- walked through a gauntlet of heavily armed police in riot gear, lit up by TV lighting crews and helicopters with spot lights flying overhead.

It was a sight to be seen. UC Davis, long lauded as the campus with the least amount of politically outspoken students, had more arrested students than all of the other campuses to date. UCD represent.

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Education for the Masses?

While I sit comfortably in my TA office, debating whether or not to pick up cookies for my students this class, the UC Regents are passing and unprecedented increase in student tuition. Student tuition UC wide have just been increased 32%- The largest jump in student fees since the beginning of the institution.

My great grand parents would be outraged-- as my father once said- "Your great grandfather moved to California to get an education!" Now what dad?! Now that UC tuition will out-price all but the upper middle class kids. What are we waiting for? Do I actually expect Arnold is going to increase public education funding- flying in in the face of his great republican forefathers?! No.

I encourage my readers who are voters in this great state of California to write Arnold. Join with the chorus of students who protested today at Berkeley, and the faculty who held classes off campus. Say no to the increasing public disinvestment of public education.

Here is an article detailing the fee increases:

http://www.sacbee.com/education/story/2332774.html?mi_rss=Education

Here is a website you can log onto to send a letter to our state legislature, nothing too radical- it's even endorsed by the president of the UC Regents!!!:

http://www.ucforcalifornia.org/uc4ca/home/

All together. Now. Save one of our nations last public education systems!

Education in Flight

Sitting in my new kitchen making breakfast for a new friend.

He is another former farm & garden apprentice, also on a quest for knowledge. We mainly discuss what it's like to search for meaningful educational experiences in a world dominated by positivist paradigms and bubble test quantifications of knowledge.

There is much to know in this world, so much to learn. My new question- 'how do we access that information, in a joyful, meaningful, lasting way?' is now prevalent, having transitioned so quickly from the apprenticeship world to Davis.

I'm positive now that humans are social creatures with a drive to work, and as such, one of the most productive and positive learning environments is in a situation that encourages both. A social working environment, where people with common interests come together to accomplish some task. The learning is therefore on several levels; first in the doing of the task where the learning is a product of the social negotiation that takes place. Secondly learning occurs within the social interaction itself (read experience and skill sharing) and happens as the work is done. Add to the experience the shear joy and excitement that happens when you're surrounded by an enthusiastic, smart, charismatic group of people- and you've got the perfect environment for learning. Peer to peer education, building the plane while flying it, in it for the love of it.

As I wind my way around the bowls of UCD, I'm looking to replicate that experience. Finding a cohort, support, inspiration, real learning. And again, I repeat, it's hard.