Veggielution

Veggielution… if every non-profit had such a name perhaps the generalization that keeping a non-profit afloat is difficult would be done away with.  All I can say is that once I saw the name I knew I had to look into it further.

What do you think when you hear urban gardening?  I tend to think downtown, small plots surrounded by infrastructure and commerce.  Veggielution is in the center of infrastructure alright, right under a freeway, and yet they have enough land to be a regular urban farm.  About 3 acres at the moment.  Veggielution is unique in that they are a community run farm, which to them means anyone who is willing to come and work can take away food in exchange for their labor.  Talk about shortening food miles and eliminating monetary transactions!  In addition to the main farm program, there is a high school youth program, in which students come and learn about a variety of

aspects of food and how to grow it during a fall or spring course.  In the summer students who have completed the academic year program can return as paid staff people working on the farm as a summer job while learning still more about the operation of a working urban agriculture project.

We had the good fortune to speak with two of the main people involved with Veggielution’s youth program, Tommy and Jessie.  One of our goals for t

he trip was to and speak with people about our project and gain ideas from them that would be applicable to City Secret, logistical, structural, and also just fun ideas to make things more interesting.  Another goal was to find curriculum and resources which we could use parts of for our workshops and educational component.   When we asked about curriculum for teaching high schoolers about agriculture, they immediately directed us towards a program based around Boston, called The Food Project, later we were able to meet and speak with people involved with The Food Project.  Sure enough, when we looked them up, it was clear that they had an amazing amount of well developed curriculum available for use by projects just such as ours.  Veggielution was the first location we visited on our bay area urban agriculture tour, definitely a great start to our trip!