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| Sara tends garden beds in the school's central courtyard. |
It’s 7:45 on a September morning at Yellville-Summit Middle
School. I’m putting the finishing touches on a cedar raised bed frame—leveling,
clearing rocks, and picking out stubborn Bermuda grass roots. As school busses
unload, the middle school students ask if I’m having fun. It’s about 90˚F
already (still only 7:45am), and I can’t decide whether or not I should smile
and lie. The kids ask if they can help move rocks, pull weeds, or water. I have
since learned not to ever give a student control of the hose—someone is going
to end up soaked.
When I signed up for FoodCorps, a nationwide team of leaders
that connects kids to real food and helps them grow up healthy, I did not
anticipate all the work and sweat that would come before the students and I
could enjoy the fruits of our garden. I guess I had envisioned garden fairies
(or better yet, gnomes), that would prepare a lush, productive garden where I
could then explore, learn, eat, and play in with my students. Those first few
weeks were tougher, physically, than I had anticipated.
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| Sara and her DGS Garden Program Specialist Katherine. |
Working with the Delta Garden Study* means my school receives
all the resources to build a school garden, as well as a curriculum to teach
everything from science to language arts utilizing the garden. Turns out, I’m
included as one of those resources to build the garden.
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| Sweet peas on the trellis flanked by rows of lettuce. |
Flash to now: lessons have started, sweet peas are on the
trellis, and we are harvesting greens like nobody’s business. One of the goals
of DGS is to see the effect of a school garden on school bonding—whether kids
feel connected to their schools, feel excited about coming to school, and feel
ownership over their garden. After only four weeks of Delta Garden Study
lessons, I know, unscientifically, that most kids are excited to go out in the
garden. Yellville has a population of around 1,200 people, and in this rural town everyone seems to know
everyone else. Naturally, everyone knew about me within a few days of my
arrival. I have taken a bit longer to meet everyone, and I’m still definitely
working on matching up faces to names. However, the kids frequently flag me
down in the hallway to ask if today is a garden day or if we’re going to taste
and recipes this week. Now that we have
produce to harvest, we’ve been cooking and preparing recipes, some familiar,
others new. This week, we made sautéed turnip greens. Most kids around here are
familiar with turnip greens; I had never tried them until now. One of the
seventh grade boys said, “I wish they served this in the cafeteria!” Hopefully,
that will happen in the next year.
People, from students to faculty to grandparents, ask us how
our garden looks so good. My response usually is that if you spent 40 hours a
week on your garden, and it rained every weekend, then your garden would look
amazing too! There is so much potential in school gardens, and I’m so fortunate
to be serving in a community that is as excited about the garden as I.
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| Basil soon to be transformed into a new student favorite - pesto. |
*The Delta Garden Study
is a $2 million research study funded by the USDA’s Agriculture Research
Service, designed to prevent childhood obesity and social risk behaviors, and
improve academic achievement, in middle school children in the Delta and
Central regions of Arkansas. Led by Dr. Judy Weber, Associate Professor in the
Department of Pediatrics in the College of Medicine at UAMS, the study’s
primary outcome variables are increased fruit and vegetable intake and
increased minutes of physical activity. Secondary variable include reduction in
body mass index (BMI) and body fat, reductions in social risk behaviors, and
increased school bonding, improved student grade point averages and benchmark
testing scores.
You can learn more about the Delta Garden Study at http://www.arteengarden.com/.
By Sara Fulton-Koerbling
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