THE FORGE

Garden Program Coordinator: http://www.idealist.org/view/volop/9xdwHCf5PTBD/

Volunteer Management Coordinator: http://www.idealist.org/view/volop/7BgsPmxdMTnp/

Garden Education Coordinator: http://www.idealist.org/view/volop/GbBcPms4CJ74/

Hello, friends!

Happy Summer! Construction of the solar house is still underway. You can see that a few other fun things are happening at the garden:

1. We've allowed the artichoke plants to bloom and dang, aren't they amazing? 

2. We have two new chicks and are in the process of naming them. (If you have a good name, let us know!)

3. Sunflowers are sprouting up everywhere and they are soooo tall!

Clearing the site for the '07 Solar Decathlon house!

Local Efforts in Sustainable Agriculture!

Hello fellow farmers!  We’ve just discovered a local company called Pie Ranch.  Mind blown.  They grow ALL of the ingredients for the pies that they make.  Check out this cool video they have posted.    

Vertical Window Farm.

We've seen this in a documentary short called, Truck Farm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The Forge has a similar mission: to introduce kids and adults alike to their food...not on their plate nor from a packaged box from the freezer, but earlier...from the START. 

By Alice Gaber

Nestled in the middle of an urban neighborhood, the small garden with its clucking chickens and blossoming greenery invokes a peaceful rural atmosphere that belies its pulsing activism. The Forge Garden’s recent partnership with the Loaves and Fishes Family Kitchen in San Jose is helping to cultivate awareness about issues of food justice at the grassroots level – quite literally – with donations of vegetables, fruit, and eggs all grown and produced in the garden. “We’re not only here to create a new community of students and neighbors who really care about food, nature, and sustainability, and who like our cultural practices, but we also want to help the community,” said Cara Uy, a Santa Clara alumna and the garden’s Education and Outreach Coordinator. “We don’t want to just grow food and show it. The point is to reconnect people with food – so that they know what’s in their food,” she said. The partnership, which started in January, is only an emblem of a greater movement and a greater mission. The garden represents the efforts of nonprofit organizations, as well as University staff, students, and volunteers, to educate local communities about the benefits of urban gardening – both to themselves and for the environment.

Access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food is a problem for many people who live in low-socioeconomic neighborhoods in the Santa Clara and San Jose counties. In some of these neighborhoods, which are dubbed “food deserts,” liquor stores and fast food restaurants proliferate while an absence of fresh produce markets prevent people from making healthy eating choices. And food scarcity itself is an issue in some of these poorer neighborhoods. At the fourth annual Hunger Issues Forum this past September, Drew Starbird, the Dean of the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University, presented research from the Hunger Index Project, which he conducted along with his colleagues to determine whether families in the local Santa Clara and San Mateo counties had access to enough meals to sustain themselves. “Every year, we estimate the need for assistance based on the household income and compare it to the quantity of food assistance provided by agencies like the food bank and programs like Meals on Wheels,” said Starbird. “The index summarizes the need for assistance in the two counties.” According to the 2011 Hunger Index, the need for food grew by 24.4 percent in Santa Clara County and 19.5 percent in San Mateo County. Food assistance, however, grew by about 25 percent across the two counties. The gap is still daunting, however, as there were 184 million missing meals in 2010. The Loaves and Fishes Family Kitchen, with the help of donations from The Forge, is working to provide some of these missing meals. “I think we always wanted to kind of outreach to the larger Santa Clara community, because originally, the food that was being produced here was really being given, or offered to, those who worked here - and that’s students or community members, like the neighbors,” said Uy.  “There wasn’t a direct population that was getting the food, so we really wanted to create some kind of partnership,” she said.  

Staff and volunteers harvest the garden’s vegetables and gather eggs from the three hens each Monday and Thursday from 2-5 p.m. Donations to the kitchen fulfill the garden’s food justice commitment, but they are still just a byproduct of the garden’s overall mission: to educate local communities about environmental literacy – to nurture a deep respect and appreciation for the environment and our place in it. “In order to have a garden that can afford to donate all of its goods, it has to have another purpose to the garden that’s more important than the donation,” said Natalie Yoder, a program coordinator at the garden. “In order for this project to continue functioning, our primary goal has to be the education of university students and the education of community members,” she said. Educating university staff, students, community members, and local schools about the benefits of urban gardening is the first step in creating sustainable environments where people can have access to fresh and healthy foods, and where access to this food doesn’t pose a threat to the environment. “It benefits growing something close to where you live because sometimes transportation’s an issue, and with transportation you have pollution,” said Uy. Vanessa Bell, a sophomore student at Santa Clara University, agrees that there are benefits to growing food locally, and says she’s been volunteering in the garden every week for a whole quarter now. “I think it’s great just spreading awareness about growing your own garden, and growing your own vegetables - instead of just going to the supermarket, where that food could have come from who knows where,” she said. 

The Forge is currently a project of the Environmental Studies Institute (ESI) at Santa Clara University. The garden traces its beginning to 2009, when Joe Sugg, assistant vice president of University Operations, suggested turning the half-acre plot into a community garden instead of the parking lot it was intended to be. In 2009, ESI launched the Bronco Urban Gardens (BUG) Program in collaboration with eight nonprofit regional organizations, including Silicon Valley HealthCorps, a division of the national nonprofit organization AmeriCorps. The BUG Program serves urban schools and community centers around San Jose, especially the more marginalized Alma, Gardner, and Washington neighborhoods. The Forge is just one of four gardens in the BUG Program, and it serves especially as BUG’s lead training facility, providing local teachers, students, and volunteers with a solid foundation in urban gardening – a skill set they can later apply to start their own gardens. “The other way that we’re training educators is we’re planning teacher workshops,” Yoder said. “In the summer, teachers who are interested in having school gardens or running school gardens can come here and learn how to garden, learn the basics of the important parts of school gardening. It will be a curriculum for educators,” she said. It’s early days yet for the fledgling garden, but already, it’s facing a number of challenges. Just last summer, the garden’s previous director, Patrick Archie, left.

“The garden was still really only getting its feet under it when there was a transition in leadership. So we are still in that sense where we’re still beginning, and we’re still figuring ourselves out,” said Joanna Johnson, the garden’s new director. “Since we rely on AmeriCorps to staff our program, there’s a high rate of turnover – and they’re not usually here for more than a year or so,” she said.

Johnson, Uy, and Yoder are all working at The Forge as part of a contract with Silicon Valley HealthCorps. But the primary challenge is bringing the garden, located at 1051 Sherman Street, to the attention of students at the University - many of whom still don’t know about the garden’s existence. The garden’s staff, as well as several departments and students at the University, have been helping to advertise the garden’s mission in an effort to attract more volunteers. “We told some of our floor mates, and a lot of them came,” said Elizabeth Grishaw, a sophomore at the university who volunteers regularly. “It was really fun,” she said. One of the garden’s student outreach approaches occurs through collaboration with Bon Apétit, a dining service at the university. “Our idea was really to highlight the existence of The Forge, and to get the dining service just more well versed in serving local things,” said Johnson. “So we would have an accent. Maybe the cilantro in the dish that day would be coming from The Forge, and they would be advertising that this was grown across the street - it’s an awareness-raising tool as much as anything else,” she said. But while attracting attention to The Forge takes time and lots of creativity, the garden staff remain optimistic. “I think just that with students who are personally interested in urban gardening - they’ll tell a friend, and that friend will tell a friend, and eventually, we’ll get the word out,” said Uy. Sustainable living and food justice aside, the garden staff agrees that there is something intrinsically rewarding about cultivating a garden and producing your own food. “To be a locavore, and to know where your food comes from – even physically touching your own food from seed to when it’s on your plate - I think there’s a lot more emotional and spiritual benefits that way,” said Uy. “We’re kind of connected to something more fundamental.” And Johnson, who lives in one of the residential houses next door to the garden, enjoys every minute of The Forge experience. “I love that we have chickens,” she said. “I love that even though I can hear trains, and even though I can hear planes taking off at the airport – the first thing I do when I get up every morning, is come outside and let the chickens out.”

Rest in peace, Dr. Stanley.

While we are now down to 3 chickens, we are awaiting city approval for more than 6 chickens on the property!

Also, the orchard/chicken fence is almost done and will be completed this Thursday! So exciting! Then, the chickens can finally have more space to roam and will stop sneaking out...and if you've ever seen one of us trying to catch them (although it's mostly Phoenix who escapes), it is truly a bother.