Our wee lambs grew over the summer. ​Moving the lamb fencing and shepherding the flock to fresh grass every week was every crew's Favorite Chore!

​GIAC's Skate Camp came to lend a hand every Thursday morning. In the end of July they helped the Teen Summer Crew harvest that delicious YFP Garlic! 

This last week was a chance for everyone to say goodbye and reflect on our summer together, finding hope in what we have experienced. Tuesday and Wednesday were especially fun.

            On Tuesday, we had a dinner for our families. All day, we cooked. We made grilled corn and bok choy, salad and homemade salad dressing, tibs (a traditional Ethiopian beef and vegetable dish), thai stir fry with vegetables and chicken, pesto pasta, cucumber mint water, and currant soda. For dessert we prepared delicious zucchini chocolate chip muffins and shortcake with peaches and whipped cream. Each crew took on a dish or two, and cooked up a storm! Most of the ingredients were fresh from the farm, so the meal was grown, cooked, and eaten at the Youth Farm Project. Food tastes so much better when you have a hand in making it. The barn was decorated with fairy lights and flowers, and everyone went home to wait for dinnertime.

            The time came, and we all came back with our families. First, there was a tour of the farm, during which each crew presented their field and crew members described what we had been doing in them all summer. Our parents finally got to see what we had been up to. Then, once everyone was hungry from the walk around the farm, we went back to the barn to eat. It was satisfying to share the culmination of all our efforts with friends and family.

            On Wednesday, we had a tour of the Good Life Farm and drove down to Taughannock Park for a barbecue. The Good Life Farm is horse powered, and has two cute dogs, turkeys, fruit trees, grass fed beef, and greenhouses full of ginger. When we went on this tour last year, there was a cider house under construction. This year, the cider house is fully fledged and looks beautiful. At the end of the tour, we found doughnut peaches on the windshields of the cars. Yum! At Taughannock Park, Frank, head chef at North Star came down and grilled chicken and vegetables with us.  We also made Panzanella, a dish with bread, tomatoes, basil, vinegar and oil. My favorite part of the day, though, was a barefoot soccer game on the grass.

            Thursday was a regular workday. Friday, we worked in the fields in the morning and after lunch we filled out an evaluation reflecting on the summer. Finally, we ended the day with the tunnel of love. Two lines face each other, and create a tunnel by meeting hands in the middle. Then, people walk through one at a time and everyone says nice things about them.  

            It gives me hope to think of the long term effects of our activities this summer. Maybe some of the other young people will grow up and start local farms, inspired by the farms we visited over the summer. Maybe some of the young people will major in sustainable agriculture, inspired by what we learned about food deserts. Maybe some of the kids will spread the love that they felt in the tunnel of love. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” The work we did this summer pushed that curve towards food justice, and I have hope that we will continue to head in that direction.

-Thea Clarkberg, 2015 Crew Leader

This week marked the beginning of a summer of new experiences for 25 teenagers who set out to find a job. Here at the Youth Farm Project they ended up with something different than they might have expected. From endless beds of weeding, to bagels with cilantro pesto, to running through the Tunnel of Love, a summer at the Youth Farm is an experience you won’t find anywhere else.
This summer was my first time leading a crew, bringing me more challenges and rewards than my summer here last year. In this first week I watched everyone meet the farm and learn about what their next seven weeks would look like. Monday and Tuesday were crew leader training days. The other crew leaders and I refreshed our bean planting and carrot weeding skills, and we discussed the responsibilities and goals involved in leading a crew. I learned a lot of new things about the workings of the farm during these two days that had been mysteries to me last summer. Being a crew leader comes with a lot of responsibility, but it also is a lot of fun; sometimes you get to be in on what game you’re about to play, when it’s a big secret to everyone else.
On Wednesday all the young people arrived for their first day. Wednesday and Thursday were orientation days, we gave a tour of the farm, met the chickens, discussed work expectations, and played a bunch of name games. One of the biggest surprises, in my opinion, of working on the Youth Farm is all the game playing we do. Games are one of my favorite parts of the work day, something I don’t think most people can say about their job. Another surprise of the Youth Farm is how quickly you can get to know your co-workers. For me meeting people on the farm is different from meeting people at school or another job; I think it’s easier to connect with people when you have to work together to untangle the “human knot”, or to pound a field of tomato-trellising stakes into the ground. In addition to games and orientation on the first two days, everyone was also introduced to farm work, we jumped right in to weeding all of the garlic so it would soon be ready for a big harvest.

Week one was a busy start to a busy summer, and I think all of us can say we learned something new.

-Corrine Hill-James, 2015 Crew Leader

This Spring, Carrie Koplinka-Loehr, an environmental journalist, approached the YFP staff with the idea to produce a more-detailed article for the Youth Farm Project. You can read the article in Green Teacher, a publication that promotes sustainability education. Here are some of my favorite excerpts: 

- "Crew leaders gain leadership skills by being responsible for the physical and emotional safety of their crew. As a part of this, they model positive communication. Rayna Joyce and Noa Wesley, both of whom have been involved in YFP since the beginning, say YFP encourages “Straight Talk,” a process developed by The Food Project (a non-profit in Boston that hires teens with the goal of creating personal and social change through sustainable agriculture). Straight Talk is communicating honestly about how you are feeling, making eye contact, listening, and learning how to receive feedback. Crew members frame comments into positives (“When we were trellising tomatoes and I needed extra twine, and you jumped and got it”) and deltas, or attributes that could be changed (“While we were weeding carrots this afternoon, you seemed to lack energy when we really needed you. It would be awesome for our crew if you could...”). Wesley, now a student at Cornell University, says, “We’re never really taught interpersonal communication anywhere in our system. That piece is a large part of what we do...and adds another level of depth.”"

- “My best day of being a teacher,” says Flerlage, “using activities, writings, whatever else I could think of, doesn’t hold a candle to a bunch of folks working with common purpose in a field. You’re totally together, and differences dissipate.”

-"But in the same breath, Flerlage waxes philosophical: “The tendency to underestimate young people is profound. A high percentage of the kids sent to us would have a hard time elsewhere. The Farm is the antithesis of one-size-fits-all. Part of it is the staff and a culture that values things broadly and provides experiences that allow people to shine.”"

This article appeared in the 8/21 Ithaca Journal Paper, titled "Youth Farm Project teaches students to grow." "This summer about 22 Ithaca area high school students worked on the farm, growing onions, kale, collards, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, winter squash, turnips and more".

A summer farming program has high school students planting, picking, eating and earning green.

The Youth Farm Project started five years ago as a collaboration between Three Swallows Farm, the Full Plate Farm Collective CSA, Lehman Alternative Community School and the Southside Community Center. Students are paid through local youth employment agencies to work on a 3.5-acre organic vegetable farm on Nelson Road, and the food they grow and harvest makes its way into Ithaca city school lunch and snack programs.

This summer, about 22 high school students worked on the farm, which sits on land adjacent to the Ithaca Waldorf School. The farm hosts a diverse slate of crops; onions, kale, collards, tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, winter squash, turnips and more.

Students work 20 hours a week and in the process they learn farming, cooking and teamwork skills while also developing a deeper awareness of sustainability and food justice issues, according to Joseph Amsili, who is a coordinator of the summer program and co-manages the farm with Ann Piombino.

"Some kids come with a lot of gardening experience from home, but for a lot of kids it's completely new to them. So we teach kids how to learn to work hard and use their bodies. We show them they can be powerful and create something pretty meaningful," Amsili said. "One big part of our program is that we depend on having five or six kids returning from previous years that can be role models and leaders for the people who have just arrived on the farm."

The food the students harvest is used in lunch programs in the Ithaca City School District, New Roots Charter School, the Full Plate Farm Collective CSA's u-pick garden, plus initiatives such as Beverly J. Martin Elementary School's Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program, GIAC's Market Box and Hot Meals programs, the Congo Square Market at Southside Community Center, and at a number of local food establishments.

The Youth Farm Project, which is supported by funding from the Park Foundation as well as local businesses and individuals, is an offshoot of the not-for-profit Social Ventures, Inc.

This was the second summer that Zoe Larson, 17, of Newfield, worked at the farm. The New Roots student said she was initially drawn to the program because she wanted to find a job that would keep her in shape over the summer.

"I found that. It definitely keeps us in shape," Larson said. "It's a great environment and the people are awesome, and it's work that you can be proud of."

Larson is serving as a crew leader with the program. She's long had an interest in how food is grown and the ways that society has become detached from that process, and she appreciates the boomerang effect of growing the same food that she and her peers consume at school.

"My school gets some of the food and I can always tell," she said. "The potatoes are extra sweet, the lettuce is extra crispy. It's really cool."

In addition to the summer program, the youth farm project also employs a handful of students during the school year. Larson hopes she can continue to work for the program several days a week, most likely storing food as well as prepping and canning jam, if her schedule allows it. Either way, she plans on returning to the farm for next summer before she ages out of the program, which hires teens between 14 and 18 years old.

"Every single person that's come to the farm so far, even if they've been really skeptical about it, the people that I've seen have all absolutely loved it," Larson said. "They can be from totally different backgrounds...The group of people all work together so well in the environment. It's awesome."

The seven-week summer program officially ended last week but there are still about about eight youths working on the farm, Amsili said.

"Growing food is such a powerful teaching tool so far as empowering young people to see (the process) from a seed to a big plant to something that you're harvesting to something you're maybe selling at a farmers market or maybe seeing in your school lunch," Amsili said. "I think there's a lot of power in being able to see that we're all able to make that happen."

Thanks to David Nutt and Simon Wheeler for a great article.
Link to digital article:
http://www.ithacajournal.com/story/news/local/2014/08/21/ithaca-youth-farm-project/14407819/

            This was an eventful week as we prepared for our annual community dinner! On Monday all crews were assigned to organize, harvest, weed, and make other various decisions involving their respective fields in order to present these fields and to show families all the hard work that went into their cultivation. Both Monday and Tuesday my crew (the Thunderberrys) worked strenuously, planting row after row of kale in Field Four. Despite the blaring sun and heavy humidity, we persevered through this task, listening to music, talking, laughing, and having an overall surprisingly good time. It’s in moments like these that I remind myself how meaningful this work is. I’m sure that come fall, I will see the kale that we planted on my plate as a part of my school lunch and that the broccoli and cabbage also growing in field four, will be distributed throughout the community ending up at places like the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Snack Program at BJM. I am grateful to know that the work I am doing on the farm is helping so many people.

     On Wednesday, we met at LACS and began the morning with an educational game led by Jeff Beem-Miller, who is a staff member in a lab at Cornell that focuses on the effects of climate change on agriculture. In the game, Cropopoly, each crew was assigned to a hypothetical farm in the future where extreme weather events have become more common and the government is both incentivizing and taxing agricultural activities that either mitigate man-made climate change or promote it. The crews had to make numerous decisions involving what to plant, how many fields to cultivate, how many kilograms of nitrogen fertilizer to add to crops, and how to invest money on the farm. The goal of the game was to make the most amount of money in a given amount of time. It was obviously evident that the crews planting only the typical industrial crops of corn and soybeans, made the most amount of money for the theoretical five years of farming. The crews that attempted to abide by more sustainable practices and plant more environmentally friendly crops ended up making a significantly less amount money. The point of this activity was to get us thinking about the various economic, ecological, and cultural trade-offs that farmers make and thinking how a climate change lens may influence these choices. In the short term, it is easier for farmers to profit more from solely corn and soybeans. While in the long term, a farmer who plants the same two crops over and over again will deplete soils of their organic matter, rely on external inputs: fertilizer, pesticides, seeds, which are costly, contribute to climate change, and overall create an agricultural system that is not resilient to climate change. In the long run, sustainable agriculture is more beneficial not only economically, but also environmentally, because soils will remain healthy year after year as a result of not being subjected to monoculture, intensive disturbance, pesticides/herbicides and the farmer will gradually gain a greater profit because they have reduced their need on off-farm inputs. After the fun
           
     On Thursday, all crews worked hard to prepare specific meals for that night’s dinner. My crew made pesto, a lot of pesto, using 6 pounds of freshly harvested basil from the farm. We ended up making a delicious pasta dish that seemed to be a big hit among the pesto lovers. Thursday’s dinner was an enjoyable success.  It was fantastic seeing how well all the crews presented their fields and the meal was delicious. It is wonderful to see how food can foster connection, not only between people, but also between people and the environment. I am so grateful to be apart of the Youth Farm community. 

Written by Adrienne Wooster, 2014 Crew Leader
Photo above: Adrienne presents field #4 with her crew members at the family dinner.