Week 1: Meditational Weeding

2/1/08

Today was my first visit to the Noyo Food Forest. I met with Susan Lightfoot, a delightful woman who gave me a thorough orientation about the nonprofit organization and the organic food growing project. She founded Noyo Food Forest three years ago. There are seven people on the board of directors, and about 200 people are on their email list. Between 10 and 15 people volunteer to work there each week, and Fridays from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. are their community participation days. Their mission is to cultivate a healthy local food system by providing opportunities for education, enterprise and community involvement. They transform vacant land into gardens where they grow organic foods for sale at a reasonable price to the public. Currently, their Learning Garden near the Fort Bragg High School provides organic vegetables to the school cafeteria, which offers a great alternative to the "nachos and pizza" the school was previously offering students. The Noyo Food Forest has various programs that offer instruction in organic gardening to students and community members. They are starting a new Community Garden near the Thanksgiving Coffee Company in the Noyo Basin. This will be a communal garden that will also support the local food bank.

Today my afternoon was split into three sections: (1) Orientation; (2) Gardening; (3) Meeting. During the first session, I learned about the history of this nonprofit organization and got a sense of what the project was all about. During the second phase, I spent over an hour on my hands and knees weeding one of the garden beds in the hothouse. It was a pretty cold day outside, and I felt sorry for poor Crystal who was outside in the cold shoveling manure into the neatly organized garden beds, but I was nice and warm in the greenhouse, weeding away. It was very soothing and meditative. I enjoyed it very much. After the weeding was concluded, I joined a meeting in progress, where Susan, Sakina Bush (the organic gardening expert) and George (a member of the board of directors) met with students from the school to talk about planning their Earth Day festivities. When George reported that he was going to "try" to convince the people at the Fort Bragg City Council meeting that the Georgia-Pacific land should be turned into a "green" area for locals, Susan piped up with the mantra of the day: "Rid yourself of the word 'try'." She told us that we weren't "trying," we were "doing!" I offered a few suggestions about contacting the various groups at the College of the Redwoods to help with Earth Day (i.e., the Student Government, Grupo Latino, the Oceanography Class, etc.), and then it was time to call it a day.

All in all, I felt that my first day at the Noyo Food Forest was a very productive and informative experience and I look forward to next week.

My photos from today can be seen here: http://home-and-garden.webshots.com/slideshow/562341456uJTTGU