Perhaps because of the heatwave that passed through the city this week, each day felt a bit slower than usual. Nevertheless, Kendra and I still managed to get a lot of important work done during her last week. Across the farms and gardens we worked at, there seemed to have been a large compost delivery from the Department of Sanitation during the past weekend, so much of our work this week focused on spreading compost on the raised beds at both Kelly Street Garden and New Roots Community Garden at Woodside.
As Kendra and I were able to get our hands dirty, I felt as if I finally understood the motto of Kelly Street for promoting “soil therapy,” or encouraging residents to reconnect with the Earth by working with and playing in the soil! As well, being able to work across all of the beds was a nice way to learn about all of the different plants and herbs being grown in the garden. I learned that in the farthest corner of the garden, there were such specialized herbs as Bolivian Coriander or Quilquina, Skullcap, and Lemon Sorrel, which looks almost like common clover! This quick tour reminded me of how wide the breadth of knowledge is in agriculture and how there will always be so much more to learn. While I was able to learn a bit about some of the medicinal remedies the herbs can provide such as Lemon Sorrel as a way to relieve dehydration, I am still so fascinated about the entire field of medicinal herbs and will undoubtedly continue my learning in the future.
Of course, like any other week at Kelly Street Garden, there is always a myriad of different activities occurring at the same time, so halfway through the day, Kendra, Rachel, and I were able to help Bruce with creating a basil pesto to use up the different varieties of basil growing in the garden. Besides being a nice way to break up the day, I also learned a lot about how to make pesto from Kendra, as I had only ever made pesto once using a mortar and pestle.
At Red Hook Community Farm this week, Kendra and I had the opportunity to attend a formal meeting with Brendan and Koron, the farm manager and farm assistant at Red Hook, along with our supervisors Jenny, Perl, Tapan, and Bryan to have an open conversation about the future of the VR project and what sorts of features the farm would like us to develop moving forward. While Kendra and I agreed that the meeting could have occurred a bit earlier in the summer, we were happy to have had the chance to hear from Brendan and Koron about what they see as important for the farm to present as well as what kinds of elements could be developed to support the farm and its missions in promoting social and environmental justice. This was an incredibly important conversation, and after debriefing a bit with Brendan after the meeting, I felt relieved that everyone was left feeling like they were on the same page for the first time in regards to this project.
As well, it was quite exciting for me to hear about some of the features Kendra and I could be working on developing over the next fall semester as we continue working on this project. According to Brendan and Koron, some educational content that we could develop included cooking demos, composting activities, tomato pruning, as well as lessons about chicken management! While we originally started entered this meeting with a bit of confusion and apprehension about what the project looked like at the end of the summer, I was left feeling especially optimistic about the possibilities of the VR model, and particularly because the future development was directly informed by the farm staff. Of course, while hearing from RHI staff is undeniably valuable in shaping this project, as Kendra and I had been able to discuss with both Perl and Brendan, hearing from other voices such as the youth interns at the farm is also necessary for ensuring that this project is able to benefit and support everyone at the farm. Thus, during my last week with the internship next week, I am looking forward to working with Perl in helping to facilitate a meeting with the youth interns to introduce them to this project and VR/AR technology, as well as giving them the space to talk about what they see as important to highlight at the farm and what gaps in resources this technology can provide.
This meeting solidified for me the importance of something I had been grappling with all summer: centering the voices and experiences of the community members first in all of the work that I do. This is especially crucial when working with agricultural extension and research, as it is all too easy to enter a community as an overbearing force and present an independently designed project or resource for the community, essentially assuming their needs and gaps in knowledge. Not only can this approach be harmful by damaging the relationships and perspectives of each other between farmers and extension agents, but this can also simply prove costly in time, effort, and funds, as providing resources that a community doesn’t need is ineffective at best and potentially damaging at worst. Therefore, I was beyond content that I was able to have a role in holding such a meeting this summer and assure that when Kendra and I continue to work on this project away from the physical farm space, the project is on a path that is well-aligned with the visions and goals of the urban farm and the community behind it.
Weekly Highlights:
