Last Saturday, community members in Frogtown, master gardeners, youth from the Wilder Foundation’s Youth Leadership Initiative, and staff from Jackson Preparatory Magnet built a new garden in the neighborhood. Volunteers worked hard to build eight new 4′x12′ raised beds at the school. Jackson students will plant the new garden this spring with a variety of crops including collard greens, herbs, corn, tomatoes, and peppers.
Frogtown youth fill a garden bed with dirt.
The Frogtown neighborhood has a brand new shed! Students, staff, and AmeriCorps members from the YouthBuild program at Guadalupe Alternative Programs have been working hard to build the shed this spring in Frogtown. The shed was custom-made for Youth Farm, including the beautiful doors with an inlaid Y and F! Thanks for your hard work, students and staff at GAP!
David (left) and a fellow AmeriCorps member stand in front of the new shed in Frogtown. David's talent for carpentry is shown in the custom-built doors to the shed.
Last Friday, Project LEAD from Hawthorne and the West Side participated in the Community Partners Bike Library (CPBL) orientation, organized by Cycles For Change. The CPBL loans bikes to community members to use during the spring, summer, and early fall. Project LEAD learned about how to ride in traffic, how to lock a bike, and how to put a bike on a Metro Transit bus rack during the orientation.
Teshaun, one of the Project LEAD from the Hawthorne neighborhood, received a bike last week from the CPBL.
Today at Lyndale school our cupcakes set off the fire alarm. It didn’t stop the fun or the kids from loving their delicious cupcakes. Most were saved and all the kids were happy.
Ward 5 Minneapolis City Council Member Don Samuels poses with Hawthorne Project LEAD and All Stars on our April 21st farm work day at Saint Olaf Community Campus (SOCC) Farm.
If there is one thing I’ll take away from my first year as Hawthorne Program director it is that springtime at Youth Farm is synonymous with busy! This spring has been jam packed with farm work days, cooking classes, Project LEAD meetings and community events. And despite the business, I’m reminded so often how grateful I am to have the opportunity to work with such amazing young people. I don’t like to brag about myself, but I have no reservations boasting about all of the thing our youth have been working on this spring to prepare for our first full summer of Youth Farm programming in Hawthorne.
This spring we have spent some considerable time moving into our newest farm location located at Saint Olaf Community Campus. Hired in January, Hawthorne LEAD helped turn beds and plant the hoop house in early March with lettuce, carrots, spinach, peas,broccoli, radishes, beets, and cilantro.
Lot's of green! A picture of the hoop house taken on May 7, 2012.
Hawthorne All-Stars have also been working to help package and sell seeds in what we hope to establish as a yearly All Stars project. This summer we will save seeds from several crops to use in our own farms next year and to repackage and sell.
Some of the seed packets designed, packaged, and sold by Hawthorne All-Stars.
And as we move into the summer season, I continue to be grateful for the existing partnerships Youth Farm has in Hawthorne. Working closely with Nellie Stone Johnson Community School and the YMCA Beacon’s after school program, Youth Farm has been able to offer in class and after school programming to over 200 youth at NSJ alone. In these partnerships, Youth Farm helps set up grow labs in the school, start seedlings with youth ages 6 – 13, and incorporate hands on learning and outdoor experiential education into the classroom curriculum. With all of this momentum coming out of the school year, I’m truly looking forward to an incredible first summer of Youth Farm programming in Hawthorne!
NSJ Youth Farmers planting cabbage and collards on a windy, but sunny day in April.
2 fun filled hours. 13 amazing restaurants & local food biz. 1 great brewery.
CHOW DOWN. HAVE FUN.
Youth Farm Spring Fest will feature food from Alex Roberts and the Twin Cities’ best chefs. General Admission Tickets are $50 (all food & Summit beer included) and can be purchased at http://youthfarmspringfest2012.eventbrite.com
UPDATE: SpringFest is now SOLD OUT!
Participating Restaurants & Businesses:
Brasa Premium Rotisserie/Restaurant Alma • Salty Tart • Bryant Lake Bowl • Barbette • Birchwood Cafe • Bar La Grassa/112 Eatery • Bachelor Farmer • Meritage • Common Roots Café • The Produce Exchange • Joia Soda • Summit Brewery
600 kids. 5 neighborhoods. 15 farm sites. 17 years.
100% of ticket sales support Youth Farm and Market Project’s efforts to build young leaders, promote healthy bodies and minds, contribute to the positive identity of children and youth, create neighborhood connectedness and develop and nurture healthy relationships.
We are excited to be participating in a dinner on the farm this summer June 17th at Living The Dream Farm in Clayton, Wisconsin. Enjoy locally brewed beer, live music, al fresco dining, and a lovely Sunday afternoon on the farm! A portion of each ticket goes to support YFMP and our summer lunch program. These events sell out very quickly so if you’d like to come, please purchase a ticket as soon as possible. Click here for more information and to buy tickets.
Youth in Frogtown participate in cooking class
YFMP is honored to be one of only 27 organizations nation-wide to be awarded a 2011 Community Foods Project grant through the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). While we alluded to it in our winter fundraising appeal, YFMP’s proposal focuses on Creating a youth led food movement in the Twin Cities by increasing food production and neighborhood capacity in low income neighborhoods. The majority of this movement building focuses on YFMP’s expansion efforts in the Hawthorne Neighborhood in N. Minneapolis and the Frogtown Neighborhood in St. Paul, as well as supporting the creation of our next stage of our progressive programming model, Farm Stewards.
Youth in Hawthorne work in Hoop House in spring 2012
YFMP’s expansion efforts in Hawthorne and Frogtown aim to reach an additional 300 youth and double our produce output by 2014. But a food movement is more than just numbers of youth and pounds of local produce, it’s about culture change; something that does not happen overnight and does not happen by inserting oneself into the food conversation. YFMP’s progress in Lyndale, Powderhorn, and the West Side over the last decade has been successful by putting youth in positions to have tangible impact on their neighborhood through food. That impact happens not just through the thousands of pounds of food distributed in each neighborhood, but through neighborhood level planning and leadership both in and outside of YFMP. We look forward to engaging the youths of the Frogtown and Hawthorne neighborhoods in a way that puts their ideas, solutions, creativity and hard work at the forefront of their neighborhood.
Spring crops planted by Farm Stewards
YFMP’s Farm Stewards Program started in October 2011 and is a natural extension of our progressive programming model, providing YFMP “graduates” ages 19-24 with employment and professional development opportunities after high school focusing on leadership and food justice. Farm Stewards work year-round, growing and distributing food via greenhouses, hoop houses, and eventually on the farms in all five neighborhoods, although right now they are focused on West Side and Lyndale. Additionally, Farm Stewards teach weekly classes allowing YFMP to serve more youth. Not only are Farm Stewards entrepreneurs who engage in food systems directly through the business of growing and selling commercially viable specialty crops, they are advocates for food access and justice in each neighborhood by honing community organizing and leadership skills.
The full press release from the USDA can be found here.
The Hawthorne All-Stars have spent a lot of time this year exploring different components of the food system. We’ve talked about the food system as being comprised of six different parts: 1. Plant growth and harvest, 2. Processing and Packaging, 3. Transportation, 4. Distribution, 5. Food Access, & 6. Consumption & Waste. By looking at each of these parts, the Hawthorne All-Stars are working towards assembling a neighborhood food distribution plan for the fruits and veggies grown in Hawthorne.
Most recently, we visited the Coop Partners Warehouse in St. Paul. Coop Partners is a wholesale food distributor servicing retail food coops, natural food stores, and restaurants with fresh (and mostly organic) food, much of which is grown locally (defined by Coop Partners as grown in Minnesota or one of the bordering states: North & South Dakota, Iowa, or Wisconsin. Coop Partners supports Youth Farm’s year round programming by making produce nearing the end of its retail shelf life available to Youth Farm through its food bank program.
Last Tuesday, eight Hawthorne All-Stars traveled out to the Coop Partners, and spent over an hour touring the warehouse and hearing first hand about the food distribution phase of the food system. Among other things, youth learned more about what makes fruit and veggies “organic,” that Mangoes are the most distributed fruit worldwide (NOT bananas, although bananas are the most distributed in the U.S.), and that it is possible to distribute “local” produce year round (even in Minnesota) by storing root vegetables at the proper temperature and humidity.
By the end of the school year, the All-Stars will have put together a food distribution plan based on their own experiences and interaction with the food system, and will answer the questions: where do we want our food to go? and how are we going to get it there? We are excited to see what they come up with!
The Youth Farm and Market Project is accepting applications for summer staff and summer chef positions. Youth Farm is looking for energetic, organized, and punctual individuals who enjoy working with youth. Detailed job descriptions and applications are available in the employment section of Youth Farm’s website. Applications will be accepted until Friday, March 30 at 5pm.
Youth Farm's Frogtown Farm
