This Month in Photos

“Anina, have you watered the garden yet? Can we do it for you?” These are questions that I hear every day now, and fill me with joy! Summer has arrived to Lame Deer, which means it is hot out, and I’ve been dreading the tedious hauling of watering cans from the kitchen sink to the garden, over and over again. Now, however, the kids at the Boys & Girls Club have a personal interest in making sure that it is well-cared for. 

The last couple of weeks in the garden have been exciting, fun, and great for raising awareness about this project. Recently the Club was lucky enough to be visited by Tony West, the U.S. Associate Attorney General, who took a brief garden tour and recommended that I “send Michelle some pictures.” It was exciting and inspirational for us all to see the Club recognized for the amazing things that it does in the Lame Deer community, and has been doing for twenty years.

Last week, we planted a “pumpkin” patch. It is not strictly pumpkins, however. This garden includes watermelons, sunflowers, and seeds from a “mystery bag,” which was my sneaky way of getting them to plant zucchini. Everyone marked their plant with flags I made out of duct tape and coat-hangars, and every day since then the garden has been under close scrutiny. Our first watermelon sprouted yesterday. We have also lined one wall of the arts & crafts room with sunflowers which we hope will provide artistic inspiration.

This week we were lucky enough to have John Youngblood come and take some amazing photos of us working in the garden and of the first radish harvest!

The plants already growing in our beds are thriving. The first strawberry has started to turn pink, and others aren’t far behind, to the delight of all my little girls. The lettuce has fallen victim to daily snacking (which is great!!) and I need to get the trellis up ASAP for our rising peas and beans. I hardly need to even visit the garden any more, since throughout the day I receive daily reports from my fellow gardeners. “My plant needs water!” “Someone picked an onion!” "There's another strawberry growing!” "My pumpkin is going to be HUGE!"

Finally, I learned today that I got the FoodCorps position in North Powder, Oregon! Starting in August I will be working with the North Powder Charter School to expand many of the fantastic projects they already have going to promote healthy fool, and enjoying being back in my home state! I owe a great deal of thanks to everyone who helped me with this- from editing my application to acting as references to tolerating my constant FoodCorps-related conversation. Although I'm excited about this next step, I will be a little sad to leave all of my wonderful new friends and gardening-partners!

Getting in the Groove

Planting flowers

Ten months into my term of service and I’ve finally found my groove! It took me a while to find my place in the crush of kids that the Club receives every day, but once I made a couple of friends I’ve spent every day having all kinds of fun!

When kids are on the playground, I simply follow them outside and holler, “who wants to play in the garden?” and at least 7 or 8 come running. Our activities range from counting the flowers on our strawberry plants (we’re up to 8) to planting peas to a playground-wide hunt for bugs. We’ve examined the buds emerging on our newly-planted lilac bushes and learned about how the weather influences the growth of our plants. The first taste of lettuce was declared “scrumptious” by all. 

I consider these informal lessons ‘guerilla FoodCorps’ work- although I might have a general idea of what I want to teach, developing a lesson plan isn’t practical and I make it up on the spot. This is a challenge, but it has also been enormously fun. Not a day has gone by since I started working with the kids that a child has not come up to me and asked, “When can we go outside? I want to plant today!” At times I regret how small our garden is because it has little work to offer kids on a daily basis. But then I remember that we have to carry water from the kitchen to the garden, and the small size seems more practical. I’m doing a poor job of restraining my enthusiasm, however- a pumpkin patch has already expanded outside of our raised beds and the Club’s mentor program is putting in apple and pear trees. All of the kids have requested watermelons, so we’re going to give that a shot as well…

Working in the garden only takes up a portion of my time. The rest of my time I spend playing vampire robots, making games out of picking up garbage, and dodging basketballs to the head. 

Our thriving pallet garden

I’ve also been making enormous effort to get out of town on weekends and visit my fellow FoodCorps members. I’ve helped out at a garden work day and learned line-dancing at a fundraiser in Red Lodge, and ran my first 5k in support of Livingston’s Farm to School Program (and then spent the evening sitting next to John Mayer at the local bar! See the latest issue of People magazine for details, page 130-133! I’m not kidding!) My free weekends are spent in Wyoming, strolling through downtown Sheridan’s adorable boutiques, cafes and bookstores. 

As my end of term quickly approaches (July 21), I am spending an enormous amount of time thinking (and worrying about) what happens next year. I have interviewed for FoodCorps positions in both North Powder and Salem. Although North Powder was originally my first choice, my interview with the Salem-Keizer Education Foundation left me excited and eager to serve with them as well. I should be finding out in the next week or so, and I will gladly accept either position should it be offered.

 

All this activity leaves me exhausted with my head spinning every evening, but it is incredibly satisfying after having spent so much time sitting idle this year. I have work, lots of friends (who are all about three feet tall and wear ‘Dora the Explorer’ tee-shirts); all in this funny little community that has welcomed me with open arms.

Working with Enthusiasm!

One of the most troubling aspects about America’s food system is that so many people are unaware that it is broken. When food is easily accessible at the grocery store, there’s no need for people to think any further than checking off their shopping list.

In my time with Montana FoodCorps, I’ve encountered a great many people who aren’t interested in changing the system. When they can afford to pick up what they need at the grocery store every week, it becomes awfully hard to convince them that something’s wrong.

Lame Deer is an entirely different experience. For people living paycheck to paycheck, the flaws of the system become obvious. They can’t afford what they’d like at the grocery store. What the grocery store has is neither fresh nor affordable because of the distance it travels to get here. Transversely, people can rarely afford to drive the 100 miles it takes to reach quality food. And all of these challenges are readily acknowledged by everyone who lives here.

Honor Ceremony at the Pow-Wow

 Because Lame Deer fully recognizes these challenges, my gardening project has been embraced with enthusiasm by the community. The Extension Office here has become my best friend as well as the Club’s primary sponsor for the garden. Co-workers now stop by my office to chat about caring for their tomatoes or to share sunflower seeds, kids bring me daily reports of the number of flowers on our strawberry plants, and I give tours to kids of the garden at my house and get them to try arugula. The Club welcomed me to the community with an honor ceremony at their annual PowWow, following which I was engulfed by the town's gardening population.

This week I met with the Greenhouse manager for Little Big Horn College on the neighboring Crow Reservation, to learn that we have exactly the same agenda. Her program runs a demonstration garden, offers a goldmine of gardening information within the community, and promotes the health and economic benefits that local produce offers. She is developing community surveys, finding partners, and spreading the word. She left my office with a list of plants the greenhouse will donate to the Club, and left me thrilled and impressed that this community is so ready to work to address the many challenges of food insecurity here. I hope that we can develop a partnership to increase the reach of both our gardens and raise awareness about the feasibility of growing our own produce in this region.

For the first time this week I worked in the garden with Club kids. I had them help me mix soil in pallet- beds and then each child planted a seed of their choosing in a milk carton. By the end of the hour, there were seeds everywhere, milk cartons had already been spilled and everyone was elbow deep in the damp soil making mud pies.

Though I’ve yet to establish order in the garden, the enthusiasm I’m working with makes every step far more fun since I’m working to moderate energy instead of having to relentlessly build it myself. One of the most important lessons I’m taking away from this year is that change comes from energy, but if there isn’t energy then change can’t happen no matter how much cheer leading I’m willing to take on. I feel privileged that I get to experience and learn about both sides of this challenge!

How to Build a Garden

It’s hard not to admire a brand new garden. Freshly-built raised beds, evenly-coiled hoses and neatly stacked tools are an inspiring sight to gardeners and food enthusiasts alike. How can tomatoes not thrive when planted in raised beds out of newly-hewn wood? Don’t peas always grow better on carefully-crafted trellises? Being a FoodCorps volunteer means I’ve seen and helped out in numerous gardens this year built at nearby schools, for communities and in greenhouses.  

It would be easy to get the impression that this is the only way a garden should be; fresh, pristine and organized. But although they look inspiring, these beautiful gardens are intimidating. The cost of lumber, potting soil, tools and materials adds up, and keeping a garden site looking like new can seem an insurmountable task for a new gardener. 

This is why I am especially excited about the garden that we’ve started at the Boys & Girls Club in Lame Deer. Since I’m here for only a short time, I don’t have much access to grant money. The Club has limited funds, which means we are building this garden on the cheap- and through the wonderful generosity of the local Extension Office. 

Our garden is made out of recycled (untreated) shipping pallets we found in the backyard. There is nothing fancy about them. They are heavy, rugged and full of splinters. I've spent hours pulling rusty, bent nails from their boards. They are filled with a mix of potting soil and red clay scavenged from a nearby hillside. They are lined with landscaping cloth, cut with children’s scissors and attached with my office stapler and plundered staples. No fancy tools necessary here!

We have 30 strawberry plants growing in the pallets along with some garlic, lettuce and onions. I water them with a kitchen pot because there isn’t a working spigot outside, and no one in town sells appropriate watering cans. We’re starting tomatoes and sunflowers in used milk cartons donated by the school, as well as every feasible container I found in my house. There are marigolds growing in a coffee cup and thyme emerging from the salt shaker. Starts are crowded onto my windowsill and front porch since we have no greenhouse. We’ll fertilize with my homemade Bokashi compost and what we can afford to buy at the hardware store. 

There is nothing fancy about this garden. This setup means more work, no doubt about it. My hands are still healing from the splinters acquired from working on the pallets. My back aches at the thought of carrying that watering pot out to the plants. But all of these inefficiencies make this garden even more relevant. This is not a community where people are going to buy fresh lumber for beds, or nice hoses to water with, or bags of new soil. Gardens are pieced together out of whatever materials are available. The extra labor is worth it if it saves money and gardeners can get a couple of fresh vegetables for their efforts.

The Boys & Girls Club garden isn’t just about bringing fresh food to Lame Deer’s kids. It’s about demonstrating to this community that gardening doesn’t mean colorful pottery or shiny new shovels, smooth green hoses or sharp clippers. This garden says that gardens don’t have to be an expensive or fancy affair. The strawberries will grow just as well in the pallets as if they were in beds built by carpenters. Lettuce does just fine being watered out of the pot as long as it doesn't get flooded. Our rickety pallets probably won’t last more than two years, and the Club may not always have volunteers willing and able to carry that damn bucket of water. But if all this garden does is illustrate to Lame Deer how accessible gardening can be, than it will be effort well-spent.

What's Funny...

It’s been an interesting first month in Lame Deer, and I’ve learned a lot. The most important thing I’ve been working on is my sense of humor. My mantra has become “remember, this will be funny one day,” and I’m getting much better at keeping this in mind.

So this week, here is a list of things that are funny:

1.       My home phone only works when it is less than 50 degrees outside

2.       My snuggie is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I take back anything I ever said against snuggies

3.       I’m growing thyme in a salt shaker

4.       My oven is my main source of heat at home

5.       “Delight in the Lord” is written on my bathroom mirror and I can’t get it off

6.       People “park” their horses in parking spaces and at the gas station

  7.       I started a garden at the Boys & Girls Club after being here for only three weeks

 

   8.       I’ve named my trailer ‘the Hatch’ (in reference to the TV show ‘LOST’)

   9.       The Lame Deer Hardware store is also the movie rental place

  10.   Thanks to wonderful people thinking of me back home, I have more dark chocolate and Oregon coffee in my cupboard than any other type of food

  11.   My favorite part of the weekend is listening to ‘Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me’ while  doing a puzzle

12.   I am trying to figure out where to plant a hops vine at the Club

13.   My office desk is named the “time-out corner”

14.   I can play my guitar as loud as I want in the Hatch (which is way louder than I anticipated wanting to)

15.   Now that I have no access to it, I crave pop music

16.   A 200 mile round-trip drive made with joy to my favorite coffee shop in Miles City on the weekend 

17.   Upcoming TB vaccinations? 

18.   There are going to be 3 other volunteers living in the Hatch with me this summer.

19.   ‘Tub Thumping’ by Chumbawumba is my theme song (“I get knocked down/but I get up again/you’re never gonna keep me down)

20.   Time goes way faster here than in Forsyth

The Luxury of the Grocery Store...

It’s hard to recognize how much we take grocery stores for granted. Even growing up on my ‘isolated’ farm five miles from the nearest store, I was always within easy driving distance of whatever food I needed or craved.

Serving in Forsyth and working to bring the Hysham community a grocery store introduced me to the challenges of living in a food desert. Food can’t be spontaneous when it must be purchased thirty miles away which is a major obstacle to consistently eating fresh, healthy food. 

Even though I spent a great deal of time learning about the challenges that food desert communities face, it’s an issue which is hard to grasp unless you’re living with it. Although Lame Deer has a grocery store stocked with essentials, it doesn't have much in the way of quality fresh produce. If I were to do all of my shopping in Lame Deer, I would face real challenges preparing meals from fresh food that I wanted to eat. Like much of eastern Montana, it is very hard for grocery stores to procure fresh produce because of their small scale and the high transportation costs. As such, my weekends now tend to include a round trip of 40-200 miles to buy food for the coming week (40 miles for the basics, 200 if I’m craving kale or to treat myself to a white chocolate mocha and pastry).

The nearest grocery store outside of Lame Deer is in Colstrip, 22 miles away. Forsyth’s grocery store is 60 miles. Wal-Mart is 100 miles east in Miles City, and the Good Earth Market in Billings is 100 miles west. With gas costing about 20 cents more here on the Reservation than the rest of the region, there are high costs to accessing fresh produce. These can only be averted by bringing good quality food into town or producing our own. There are serious challenges to each, but it is going to take a combination of both to produce real change in how food is treated here. 

Businesses won’t stock a product unless they are confident that consumers will buy it. There are few people here willing or able to pay the high price it takes to ship fresh food here. I’ve had suggestions to bring in programs like Bountiful Baskets, which offers weekly or bi-monthly produce and is touted as a pseudo-CSA, although the food is not necessarily local, organic, in season, or purchased directly from the farmer. However, the main challenge to any of these suggestions is that this community is not ready to change their purchasing habits. How do they know that there are any advantages to buying fresh food, that it can fit into their budget or that their families will eat it? This is why education comes first. 

This week the Boys & Girls Club built a garden out of shipping pallets, and we already have over 30 strawberry plants coming to life. Along the fence line, the garden is easily visible to pedestrians and passing drivers. A brightly-painted sign will make it even more visible, along with sunflowers and other flowers. The opportunity for club members to eat fresh-off-the-vine cherry tomatoes or peas or strawberries will hopefully spread the word that fresh food is well worth the effort it takes.

Success in Rosebud!

Sometimes I’m not convinced that I’ve had any influence on the communities I’ve been working in. Tangible results have been few and far between, so I’ve tried to take on faith that the relationships and ideas I’m building are just as meaningful. The many obstacles I’ve dealt with haven’t always left me convinced. This Friday, however, marked my last day of teaching and acting as ‘Compost Lady’ at Rosebud School, and showed me how much of a difference I’ve actually made.

To celebrate our final lesson, I wrote a song on my guitar to review some of the lessons we’ve done this spring, and asked students to help me fill in the blanks, which they joyously did.

“We’ve been going to school for a long time so

I’m about ready for summer to let us go

But before we run out of here for break

Let’s take a minute to review what we ate

We saved leftover food to make into compost

Pieces of fruit, veggies and scraps of cold toast

It goes in a garden, for plants to grow strong

The one thing we don’t compost is meat ‘cause that’s wrong

We like to eat parts of plants and we share it

Broccoli’s a flower and a root is a carrot

We tried a new food; it was green and called kale

We ate it up raw, and cooked in a pail

So now we know how to eat healthy food at school

We know that eating this way is cool

Eat your veggies to grow up smart/strong

And food will be fun even after I’m gone!”

I watched one of my kindergarteners hold back tears as I explained that with the school year almost over, it’s time for me to move on to a new job and for them to take over composting and teaching each other about healthy eating. She took a deep breath, and reached for another piece of kale. They gobbled down all of the raw kale I brought, which has become an overwhelming favorite. Then they grudgingly moved on to the kale chips. I was chastised at full volume by a kindergartener when I said to throw any scraps in the garbage, who shrieked, “No! They go in the compost!” One student told me about how she got her own garden plot this year and that she intends to grow kale. Another actually got kale seeds in her Easter basket. Three weeks ago none of these students had ever eaten kale, and now it has become a school-wide phenomenon!

When I went out to fetch the compost bin from the greenhouse, I was shocked to see four beautiful raised garden beds laid out on our garden site. I’ve been working to get this garden built for months, and hadn’t expected it to ever happen. In the greenhouse, pepper sprouts peeked out of their pots, and everything was ready for tomato planting that afternoon. During composting at lunch, I was deluged by new helpers supervising their peers as they disposed of lunch trays. Older students were overwhelmed as first and second graders harassed them like a flock of crows when they dropped food scraps in the wrong bin. Their enthusiasm left me feeling like this project may very well continue into the next school year.

I worked in Rosebud for nearly 8 months, and in that time I struggled to tell if I was making a difference. On this final day, I realized that in less than a year the entire student body learned how to compost, the elementary kids became kale-eating fiends, and started a school garden. What a huge, unexpected success!

I’m suddenly vastly more confident of what awaits me in Lame Deer. We’re well on the way to getting a garden built, and I’ve already concocted a myriad of schemes for making healthy food accessible here. This will certainly be a challenging and frustrating experience, but I’m boosted by the knowledge that a healthy food movement can actually emerge in eastern Montana.