June 1, Saturday, 8AM. An army of college students from SUP – Sacramento Urban Plunge – descended on our urban farm and worked some magic with shovels, a few wheelbarrows, and the good humor and energy only a group of college students can offer. It’s humbling, really, how much good will and enthusiasm they brought to the tasks we set up for them.
SUP is the group Rachel knows through Intervarsity and our good friend Heather who leads Urban Plunges each summer with these college students who sign up. They spend the week learning about God’s Word and what that looks like in terms of His justice with regards a host of issues – social and environmental included. The latter is where we come in, explaining how we take our calling to steward land and water, grow food, raise animals as a means of trying to live out our faith. Rachel and I believe that we have been called to grow, to take care of this patch of ground we are blessed to call home. Sharing that with a group of young people is a blessing itself. Moreso that they are so willing to help us with that stewardship.
Arriving at 8AM to beat the forecast high of 102 degrees, the students began the day with us hearing about what we do at thecoohousegarden and why, toured them around what the last few SUP groups have done around here last year, and what we had on deck today: garden bed preparation in the backyard, new garden bed installation in the front yard, digging out more of the pond, and building our first-ever hoogle. An ambitious agenda, but with 25 students with strong backs and a readiness and willingness to move soil, we set to work.
We already have created two new gardening beds in the front yard. They added a third today though not double dug due to lack of manure or compost to add to the mid-layer of the double dig, we opted instead to focus on vegetative removal, especially of Bermuda grass. The group at this station did an excellent job of getting the Bermuda removed. Sure, some will come back, but with diligence on my part this summer, I expect it to be no longer with us by next year. It wasn’t particularly thick, instead rather loosely located within patches of leaves, holdover wheat, and other weedy vegetation. A SUP group last year spent four hours hand digging Bermuda grass last summer. I was happy to report to this year’s group that Bermuda grass has only appeared in in and around those beds in six tiny outbursts that were easily removed. The potatoes, raspberries, and blueberries planted in beds that were formerly a Bermuda haven are thriving.
In the backyard, Rachel led a crew of three in digging deeper and fine-tuning the pond. The last dregs of the pond had soaked into the soil so we sought to take advantage of easier digging of the soft clay before the summer sun turns it into pottery-hard rock. The students managed to give us another foot of depth in the pond for even greater storage capacity. We are working to finish the pond in terms of depth and width to then line the whole thing with a special clay for ponds, which will increase the amount of time the water remains with us. Ultimately, we would like the pond to last longer into summer, so we can pump it back onto the garden for irrigation. We have more loose clay to remove, but the SUP student efforts grossly reduced what Rachel and I will have left to finish which we can strive to do over the next few weeks. The extracted clay will serve as a pathway from front garden gate to back garden gate, as well as a means to slow the path of water as it works its way from Neighbor Bill’s to Neighbor Paul’s.
Four students worked to loosen garden bed soil for a planting of bush beans and Connecticut Field Pumpkins. We’ve worked our soil for 5 years, so being able to show these students what soil can look like when it is a dark chocolate brown was a treat. They were finished in 30 minutes.
The remaining students built us our first hoogle. Using the remaining wood from the trees we downed last summer, as well as slash, tree trimmings and bark, we built a “skeleton” of wood which we covered with soil from the hill remaining from some of our earth moving from last year. The idea is that the wood will break down over time and act as a carbon sponge for the plants that we will plant in the hoogle itself. The first year, the hoogle will need some irrigation, but in subsequent years, it should need none. Additionally, the hoogle will act as a barrier to slow the progress of water from one end of the yard to the other. Instead of the more common – and recent – philosophy of getting water off one’s property as quickly as possible, we’re taking a more water-wise approach of slowing its progress to percolate into the soil, to remain in the soil longer for a reduction in the amount of city-water irrigation that we need. We’re not looking to create a series of ponds, just a series of slow-downs so the water moves down into the soil, not over and off of it. Soil can hold much more water than our rainwater storage could ever hold. Right now, the hoogle is a bit straighter than I mapped out, but with a little fine tuning, we’ll have a bit more “bend” to it that will help hold back more water.
Perhaps most exciting and encouraging about the day was the number of questions the students brought to us. Whether about butchering chickens, canning tomatoes, or how much food we grow in a year, the day afforded opportunity for the students to get hands-on experience as well as see how this all worked in practice. One young man actually took a class at Chico State about Backyard Agriculture. He liked the course, but only got a real vision for what it looked like through seeing it in our yard. All of it, truly rewarding to us.
In watching and working with them, a common theme was that they had a grandparent or great-grandparent that grew a garden, raised chickens, or farmed. I noted to them how interesting – if not a bit sad – that these skills seem to have skipped a generation, skipped in favor of life in the big city. But I also noted the optimism Rachel and I have that more and more young folks are not just asking questions but ready to take steps – and take up shovels – to actually begin re-learning some of these skills that go back to the days of Adam.
We are grateful, not only for the blessing of help we received today, but that we were able in our own small way, to share and perhaps inspire others to pursue, to re-think how they do food in their own lives, and what the production and consumption of that food says about us and our faith.
