To visit the Homeless Garden Project\u2019s Natural Bridges Farm is to step into a simpler world. Just blocks away from the unending flow of traffic on Mission Street and the chaos of downtown Santa Cruz, the farm sits away from it all. Bursting with life, it\u2019s a collage of colors, scents and sounds. Dogs are sunbathing in the dirt; the farm staff and volunteers are bustling around harvesting and weeding, two people are putting together flower bouquets and the wind is coming off the bay at a steady 40 mph. The rows of vegetables, herbs, fruits and flowers seem unaffected by the wind. The humans look windblown, sun-kissed and happy.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m at the farm to meet Zac, a lanky 19-year-old with a shy smile and a thoughtful disposition. Part of the Independent Living Program (ILP), a local project that helps young people transition out of foster care into self-sufficiency, Zac is at the farm to pick up the boxes of freshly harvested food that ILP receives on a weekly basis. This week\u2019s share contains fava beans, green garlic, strawberries, red and green leaf lettuce, winter bore kale, atomic red carrots and fresh rosemary. Some of the food will be prepared at the ILP Resource Center. The rest will be given to the young people to take home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never been too much on the organic side until I came here and saw what they were doing,\u201d says Zac, who has also volunteered at the farm. \u201cWhen you go to other farms you don\u2019t see people walking around and you don\u2019t see the variety of plants. It\u2019s beautiful here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Susan Paradise, program manager of the Transition Age Youth Programs, of which ILP is a part, says that when the outfit first started receiving and preparing food from the farm, a lot of the kids didn\u2019t know what the various vegetables even were. But the staff kept serving it, and the kids grew to love it.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrowing up in foster care, they have so little control over what ends up on their plate,\u201d Paradise says, noting that rates of malnutrition are high in the foster care community. \u201cMore often than not, it\u2019s not fresh organic produce. But we have a lot of kids eating kale now. I think that our youth sense that this is special food,\u201d she continues. \u201cThere\u2019s a really positive energy around this whole process.\u201d<\/p>\n
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ILP is one of four local nonprofits that receive donated Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares from the Homeless Garden Project. The others are the Beach Flats Community Center, Women\u2019s Crisis Support and the Santa Cruz AIDS Project. The flowers from each share are donated to Hospice of Santa Cruz County.<\/p>\n
The Homeless Garden Project offers transitional employment and job training through its trainee program. An important part of the program is then distributing the food grown by the trainees to underserved community members. Darrie Ganzhorn, executive director of the Homeless Garden Project, calls it feeding two birds with one worm. (She also calls it feeding two birds with one seed, but admits that dividing one seed sounds a bit like malnourishment.)<\/p>\n
Ganzhorn emphasizes the importance of the relationship between CSA members, the farm and the farmers. \u201cIt isn\u2019t just a connection to the food,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a connection to the garden.\u201d<\/p>\n
A CSA share, which costs $650, comes out to approximately $20 per week. For boxes of fresh organic fruits and vegetables, this is a good price, but for someone who has to choose between rent and food, it may be out of reach.<\/p>\n
For many low-income families, high-calorie, low-cost, low-nutritional-value foods become dietary staples, which contributes to our current national health crisis. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 35.7 percent of American adults and 17 percent of American children are obese.<\/p>\n
For Ganzhorn, the solution-oriented way of addressing this crisis is to make fresh foods accessible and help people find ways to incorporate them into their diet. Through its donation program, the Homeless Garden Project gets healthy food into communities that may not have access to it otherwise.<\/p>\n
But that costs money, so the Homeless Garden Project relies on donations from the community. From $5 to $1,000 and up, donations go directly to support the trainee and CSA donation programs. A U-Pick farm stand, open every day from 10am to 4pm at the Natural Bridges Farm, also benefits the programs.<\/p>\n
With a goal of 15 donated shares this year, the Homeless Garden Project staff would eventually like to have the majority of the farm\u2019s CSA shares going to community organizations.<\/p>\n
\u201cFresh food shouldn’t just be for the wealthy,\u201d says farm supervisor David Stockhausen. \u201cThe more the community at large continues to support us, the more we can do for the community. We\u2019re recycling good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before he leaves, Zac points out how much the farm does for everyone involved with it. \u201cI\u2019m just another person who\u2019s affected by it, like so many others,\u201d he says. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to give thanks for that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Cat Johnson SC Weekly Jun 20, 2012 To visit the Homeless Garden Project\u2019s Natural Bridges Farm is to step into a simpler world. Just blocks away from the unending flow of traffic on Mission Street and the chaos of … Continue reading