Rethinking Farm-to-Table

Rethinking Farm-to-Table

“Our team is tasked with something new and challenging every day, shaping us into sustainably-minded entrepreneurs.”

This post chronicles 2017 Summer Internship
Urban Agriculture Outreach team's efforts.
Written by: Luke Carlson, Wil Larson, Sarah Ziskin, Claire Hueg.

 
 
 

Here at Spark-Y we are constantly seeking new innovations to create more tightly-knit food systems. We, as the Urban Agriculture Lab Outreach Team, aim to increase Spark-Y’s public presence.

During the first half of our internship, we made new restaurant partnerships and proved that alternative agriculture systems can still grow delicious and competitively priced produce. Increasing our restaurant presence across the Twin Cities is an important step in creating a more sustainable community, as the average meal travels over 1,500 miles to get to your plate. Creating a locally sourced food system increases food security and reduces the emissions from lengthy shipping. Additionally, Our system uses 98% less water than traditional farming. Red Stag Supper Club and Seward Co-op are both current produce partners, and we are working with many other well known restaurants around the Twin Cities who will help us foster a local food system. Check back on our website soon to see which new local restaurants will be serving our produce!
 

Impact-Driven Action

With a broad reach and comprehensive mission, Spark-Y builds meaningful relationships with many local restaurants. Restaurants we partner with have mutual goals with Spark-Y, and it is fulfilling to engage in a network where our partners are also focused on sustainability, local food, and youth empowerment. Community engagement is critical to a healthy, local food system, and our team looks forward to moving out of the formative stages into lasting restaurant partnerships.

In addition, we are working to make our systems more accessible by offering an enhanced tour experience. There are plans for additional tour graphics, a microgreens sample flight to end the event, and dynamic advertising for tour times and dates.

Anyone is welcome to come meet our outreach team and see our Urban Agriculture Lab by registering at spark-y.org/events. Tours are available every Thursday evening.
 

Reaching Out

This past Thursday, we were able to attend Youth Science Day at the Science Museum of Minnesota. Each year, the event gathers Twin Cities youth and teaches them about a relevant STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) related topic. This year’s event focused on community health, offering us the chance to share sunflower microgreen samples and engage students in a vegetable sorting game. We believe that an important part of community health is exposing community members to more healthy food options and local food access.

Upon sampling the sunflower greens, many children exclaimed “I’ve never eaten a plant before!” and then in the same breath said their favorite food was a strawberry or some other fruit. Being able to show young students what healthy local food looks like and teaching them about where their food comes from was very rewarding. The number of children who liked our sunflower microgreens was astounding, since most of them said they disliked eating vegetables. One boy even came back for multiple handfuls, and decided that they were his new favorite food!

There are plans for additional tabling events in an effort to increase our adult outreach and tour capacity. Look for us at Seward Co-op or Nokomis Farmers Market for a chance to say “hi”, grab samples, and learn more about why we love Spark-Y.
 

Moving Forward

One of the best parts about being an intern at Spark-Y is the monumental development we undergo as a team and as individuals. Our team is tasked with something new and challenging every day, shaping us into sustainably-minded entrepreneurs. Specifically, reaching out to potential new clients allowed us to get out of our comfort zone and develop new marketing and networking skills. We were met with inspiring positivity and support for our mission by the many like-minded organizations and businesses. While not every connection turned into a sale, it was still a rewarding and educational experience for us. As we gain confidence in our communication skills, team building, and professional evolution, we begin to recognize all of the ways that Spark-Y is preparing us to make very real impacts on very real problems.

Cultivating the Holland Neighborhood Community Garden

Cultivating the Holland Neighborhood Community Garden

This post was created by Spark-Y 2017 interns, Holland Neighborhood project:
Simon Kluzak, Kelly Kidwell, Evan Schumacher and Judy Anne De Veyra

About the Holland Neighborhood

Located in Northeast Minneapolis, the Holland neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods originated as working-class settlements for European immigrants to seek employment and a stable community. In 1924, a comprehensive zoning plan was established by the city of Minneapolis, allowing industrial factories and housing units to emerge throughout the Holland neighborhood. This zoning plan became the basis for the development of the Holland community, which now encapsulates the Edison Senior High School, the Northeast Branch Library, Jackson Square Park, a commercial corridor along Central Ave NE, a vibrant community garden, and the “Tot Lot” playground for children. The flourishing neighborhood also takes pride in its growing diversity, and is home to many people of diverse ethnic backgrounds.

Community Garden Project Goals

As a team of interns coming from diverse backgrounds and interests, we are excited to represent Spark-Y and serve the needs of the Holland Neighborhood. Throughout the duration of the internship, we will accomplish a multitude of projects centered around the improvement and development of the garden and surrounding area. In collaboration with our client, we will tackle the specific projects of carrying out a community work day and potluck celebration, designing and completing builds to implement greater sustainability and safety, and improving community and gardener outreach. In the previous three weeks, our team has made great progress on the aforementioned goals. We have administered a full-scale garden renovation and beautified existing structures, such as a bench area and the garden signage. We have also finalized a budget and design proposal for the compost bin build, interacted with client relations to further define project goals, established feasibility goals, and initiated planning and marketing for our community potluck on August 9th.

The “Community Bridge Day” potluck will be held on August 9th, from 4-8 PM, at the Train Park Playground on 27th Ave and Monroe St. NE in Northeast Minneapolis. It will feature garden focused workshops hosted by a University of Minnesota Master Gardener and a group of interns from Edison High School. The Holland Neighborhood internship team will also host a workshop on composting and hold a panel for any gardener questions. People can also volunteer in the beutification of the community playground. Tours of the community garden will also be available during the event. All is welcome to this community building event, and all are encouraged to bring a dish to share!

Facebook Potluck Event: 

Spark-Y staff share their passions at CONvergence

Spark-Y staff share their passions at CONvergence

The following post was written by Michelle Chmura, Spark-Y Education Facilitator, on her experience at the CONvergence Convention.

Spark-Y had the opportunity this year to participate in CONvergence, a four day geek-a-thon where fans of all kind come together to share their passions. With just three workshops for the weekend, over 150 people stepped through to learn about vermicomposting, mycology and Ohm’s law. Each workshop included take home goodies, home instructions and an interactive lesson.

With vermicomposting, we spoke about our humble friend, the red wiggler worm, and how Mark Watney’s (from Andy Weir’s The Martian) version of composting doesn’t fit the bill with what we do on Earth. Each of the visitors for this panel left with a few worms and the knowledge to start and maintain their own vermicomposting bin.

Spark-Y’s mini mycology lesson “Preparing for the Fungal Invasion” was a riot with guests, where Dylan lead them through the importance of keeping a clean space for growing fungi, and a lesson about the fungal family. From athlete’s foot to shitake mushrooms, all fungi play an important role in our lives (even though some are tastier than others).

Dylan

Dressed as a spore.

Our last workshop at the end of the CON was about Ohm’s law. Visitors build a simple circuit with a color changing LED and showed their creativity by building origami creatures. While we provided instructions to build a rocket ship, many people incorporated the simple circuit in cranes, flowers and even dragons! It was amazing to see the creativity that everyone brought to this panel.

If you didn’t catch us at CONvergence among the many other amazing panels going on (or you couldn’t get enough of us), Spark-Y offers full blown workshops that you can sign up for! 

Upcoming events and workshops:

More details and information on the Urban Agriculture Lab and upcoming workshops can be found right here.

Roosevelt Urban Farm: A Garden-to-Cafeteria Success Story

Roosevelt Urban Farm: A Garden-to-Cafeteria Success Story

The following reflection was written by Rhiannon Dalrymple, Spark-Y Program Director, on the Roosevelt Urban Farm (RUF Squad) High School Program.

“I don’t have to scrutinize the data we have from those kids to know it was a success for them. I watched them grow, and I felt them shift”
— Rhiannon Dalrymple

Looking back at the 2016-17 school year, I am so proud of what our small and feisty team has achieved. Across our 13 partner schools we have served more than 1,400 students in 18 custom-designed daily, weekly, and monthly programs throughout the year.. Nine other schools had one-off experiences with our team, either through educational tours of the Urban Ag Lab, at STEM days, or through build-and-workshop events. We installed what is probably the nation’s biggest classroom aquaponics systems at Edison high school, we piloted novel core and elective program offerings, and saw January 13th deemed Spark-Y & Northeast Middle School Sustainability Day in the city of Minneapolis by Mayor Betsy Hodges. It was a wild ride.

At this time of year we take stock of the adventure that was the past 9 months, and we quantify the impact of our work. Right now we are crunching through the data, analyzing responses to surveys and assessing our measurable success. But more than that, we are taking time during the quiet between the school year and the internship program to reflect on our personal experiences, our interactions with our youth, the challenges we faced and - of course - the fun that we have had. So much of the impact of our programming is seen in the slow and subtle changes that accumulate in our students through the year, those almost intangible shifts in attitude and behavior day-to-day which are hard to nail down and record. This year I had the joy of delivering the Roosevelt Urban Farm (RUF) program at Roosevelt High School. I don’t have to scrutinize the data we have from those kids to know it was a success for them. I watched them grow, and I felt them shift.

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RUF Squad

Roosevelt Urban Farm Squad

This year the RUF squad grew and harvested an abundance of organic produce, 60lbs of which they sold directly to the cafeteria (other unmeasured amounts were prepared in the class to fuel the hungry farm squad or taken home  to their families to share the bounty). Roosevelt is a Minneapolis Public School garden-to-cafeteria success story. RUF students engage directly with cafeteria leaders and cooks, meeting about what should be grown, touring where the produce is prepared into the school lunches, and hand-delivering safely-harvested produce for weighing and preparation. The students earn between $1 and $2 a pound for their produce - which is below market price for locally grown and organic vegetables - but the experience of seeing their friends eat the food they harvested the day before is a powerful one. Excellent bragging rights! When their first check came through we had a financial meeting as a group to decide how best to use that hard-earned $58. Options included having a pizza party (initially a popular choice), investing in new seeds, setting up an experiment with crayfish in the sump tank of the aquaponics system, or buying a new school of tilapia fish. They voted on reinvesting their earnings into the farm, and we bought a school of fish that they themselves would never see grow enough to sell or to eat.

Indoor Aquaponics System

As the school year ended it was clear to me how far they had really come. For a class project in the fall, a few of the kids designed and led a school-wide recycling initiative in which students earned service learning credit for collecting and sorting recyclable waste from all classrooms. It continued weekly right up until the very last day of school, independent of my involvement. By the end of our year together it became clear how much they handled on their own - added water to the aquaponics system, fed the fish, pollinated the greenhouse crops, seeded, weeded and watered the garden themselves. Now that I’m taking care of it all myself until the internship begins, I can see how little I was actually doing by the end

….Well, I’m not doing it all myself - a RUF Squad fairy has been dropping by the farm during their summer holidays to water the greenhouse at nights! (I’m not sure which of you it is, but thank you!!)

The end of a school year can be such a bittersweet time. We are welcoming summer harvests, are looking excitedly to the next school year, and are in the final throws of preparing our jam-packed internship program. However, we are also celebrating and wrapping up programs which we have been living, breathing, and loving for the better part of a year, and are saying goodbye to many hundreds of fantastic youth. Me, I’m sad to say goodbye to a small group I have come to know, love and respect. Or, at least, goodbye for now… we know that we will see a number of these powerful young people in our internship, programs and job openings in the future!

For more information about Roosevelt High School visit their website, here.