Hi Friends,
Many of you already know about Seeds at San Diego City College; many
of you have been touched and enchanted by this program, as I have.
Please help our community thrive by doing what you can to keep this
vibrant resource alive and thriving, whether it's donating money,
time, materials, or just passing this on to others who can.
Regards,
Brook Sarson
H2OME
Smart Water Savings
619.964.4838
[email protected]
Downtown on the farm
It's been a little over 3 1/2 years since Julia, myself and our
amazing farm team started our brown revolution (brown compost is the
new green) by composting over the almost half acre lawn at City
College In Downtown San Diego. Since that time the challenges of
urban farming have been teaching us to grow personally as well as
vegetatively.
Growing farmers as well as vegetables
Something interesting you may not know is that as courses, staff
positions and entire programs are being eliminated throughout the
public education system, the Seeds@City sustainable agriculture
program is growing and yielding (in farming it's all about yields)
not only literally tons of organic vegetables and fruits for
students, local community and staff, but more importantly nearly one
hundred new urban farmers have completed the Seeds@City apprentaship
program.
Additionally, in the last year and a half, hundreds of students have
taken our newly accredited courses in sustainable agriculture. A
number of other community colleges with waining attendance have
inquired to why our program is attracting an over whelming interest
from students of all ages. It seems making a difference just might
require doing something different.
Filling a huge niche
The agriculture program at Seeds@City is surprisingly the first of
its kind at an institution of higher learning in San Diego County.
Surprising because agriculture is one of our biggest industries. The
fact is we lead the nation in small family farms practicing organic
methods in our county. When we started Seeds@City internship program
one of the first questions we were asked was "where will our
graduates get jobs?" We felt strongly that opportunities in this
fertile industry exist but they don't necessarily equate to jobs.
Our graduates have been putting their "farm sense" to practice. I'm
extremely proud to say a number of Seeds@City graduates have secured
employment in this rapidly growing field as farmers, educators,
edible landscape design/contractors, food growing consultants and a
number are now operating their own entrepreneurial enterprises.
Creating a need
Seeds@City is not immune to the stresses of the economic status we
all are experiencing. One way we can become more self sufficient is
to generate our own funding needed for offering additional courses
per semester (currently only two courses per semester are funded).
The sustainable agriculture program consists of 12 state approved
courses that make up one associates degree and five certificates.
Our plan is to grow seasonal organic heirloom vegetable, flower and
herb starts appropriate for our growing conditions and market them
to local home gardeners, family farms and operating a Starts CSA
program (community supported agriculture) where customers will get
fresh starts four times throughout the year.
So a greenhouse is needed; luckily we have the land already to put
it on. Also, by being resourceful farmers we have transformed the
original farm site from a standard resource demanding landscape, to
a teaming, biologically-rich, urban, food forest complete with over
sixty fruits trees (this summer we are expecting their first big
crop). And with this, we have created the need for a fence around
the farm. We have hesitated on fencing until we found one that did
not resemble a prison yard and we found a number of styles that are
commonly used on farms (wow! who would have thought?)
Give anything you can
The following link will take you to our Kickstarter page where you
will be asked to contribute. If we hit our financial goal we all
win. If we don't, we don't get any of the contributions people have
pledged. In the event we don't meet the goal I single handedly will
have to build a greenhouse and construct the farm fence and I'm cool
with this, heck! in fact it's already on my list of "things to do".
I do feel you'll enjoy the Kickstarter video and be inspired by the
words of our future farmers. If you feel the urge to pass this on,
please do.
Peace, Paul
Seeds@City farm manager/educator
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1243018777/seedscity-urban-farm-shoots-greenhouse
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