Woolman Blog

Farm Update

Malaika Bishop, Farm Manager
August 6, 2012

The Woolman Farm is becoming more and more of an active “heart” of campus with our two main goals coming to fruition; growing a large of amount of the produce for all the people who live or visit here to enjoy, and becoming an educational center. We are also making some headway on a third goal of generating income from produce, herbs and seeds that we don’t have immediate use for on campus.

We now have a full acre of land cultivated with vegetables. Last fall, for the first time we produced 98% of all the produce used for the fall semester and grew enough carrots and beets to store some for the winter. Now our challenge is to grow enough for the spring semester. To that end, we just received a grant for a 30x80 hoop house where we will cultivate fall, winter and spring vegetables to extend our growing season.

On the education side, we have had lots of activity lately. During the school year, we had classes for both the Woolman students and for the community interns. In addition we had a Waldorf home study group in the garden 2 days a week. We also partnered with Yuba River Charter to host farm field trips for their 1st-8th grade classes throughout the year. This summer we have had both Sierra Friends and teen campers join us for activities and look forward to more of that in the coming years. This fall we will be the farm partner for a local school through a collaboration with Live Healthy Nevada County.

In terms of income generation, we are just entering our second year of our Woolman Farm CSA. It has been a fun challenge to come up with diverse delicious boxes of produce each week for our members. This year we also sold a small amount of our saved seed to a local seed cooperative and sold our first dried herbs to another local business.

With our garden fully planted now, including our new edible forest garden, we are looking forward to doing each element of our production and education even better this coming year, from our biodynamic compost, to seed saving, to hoop house production and garden classes.

As always, the garden is in need of a few crucial tools! Here’s what’s at the top of our Garden Wish List:  Eye hoe, manure pitch fork (2), kids gloves (15 pair), sturdy trowels (15), a broad fork, Spear & Jackson digging fork (spade), solar energizer for the electric chicken fence, Glaser wheel hoe, Compostex 72x12ft, overhead sprinkler system

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Welcome New Staff!

John Palmer, Volunteer
August 6, 2012

 

In the first week of August, Bonnie Madden started at Woolman as our new Operations Manager; handling the day to day nuts and bolts of the school office.

Bonnie's formative years were spent moving throughout the United States.  She spent a number of those years in Hawaii where her mother's family has deep roots. Her college years were spent at UC Long Beach, studying social welfare and dietetics.  She feels she has finally found a home in Nevada City when she moved here 13 years ago. She owned and operated a documentary/educational film business which produced films for public and private organizations for 30 years.  Inspired by the birth of her second son, she started the non-profit Touch the Future with the goal of changing the way adults view and relate to the developmental needs of children.  For the past eight years she has worked closely in her husband’s finish carpentry business, Redwing Woodworks.

Bonnie is looking forward to becoming a part of the Woolman family. Welcome aboard Bonnie!

 

Emily Wheeler has returned to Woolman to become the new Outreach Director. She arrived here in June from her home outside of Burlington, Vermont. She is a 2007 graduate of Middlebury College, also in Vermont, where she studied sociology and anthropology. Now, Emily is enrolled in a Masters program at Goddard College where she studies Community Education with a focus on Youth Programs—Woolman is a perfect place to base her studies in youth development and community transformation.

Emily’s no stranger to Woolman; in 2010 she was a Community Intern and has been figuring out a way to come back ever since.  She has a goal to one day start a Woolman-like school in Vermont; one that teaches similar values of peace, justice and sustainability. Welcome back, Emily!

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The Sierra Friends Camps are in Full Swing!

John Palmer, Volunteer
August 6, 2012

 

Twenty-five excited, enthusiastic youngsters are living, learning and playing at the Woolman School for two weeks at a time, led by an equally enthusiastic group of counselors.  I sat down with Brian Loo and Gavin Edgarton, two of the nine counselors, to get a sense of what the program was like.  Once they got started, they couldn’t say enough about it. The kids live in the cabins on campus and get an early start on the day after being awakened by the counselors serenading them with songs like “Good Morning  Sunshine”, which they admitted was quite a bit off key.  Every day is full of activities, from hiking to swimming, to working to playing. 

They went hiking and camping at the Sierra Buttes near Downieville for three days and two nights.  They had a “Theme Day” where the theme was “Time Travel”, and everyone had to stay in character all day, either as a cave man or a samurai.  They went swimming in the pond and then covered themselves with mud like elephants for the walk back to campus.  They went to the “Independence Trail” on the Yuba River (the first wheel-chair accessible trail in the United States) and hacked away at the brush that was encroaching on the trail. 

I sat with Woolman campers Gabe, Nina and Didi at lunch and asked them what they liked about camp.  Their replies:  “The food is Awesome.”  “I love the counselors.”  “We learned how to swing dance.”  “We got to see tadpoles in the pond in every stage of development.”  “I’ve made six new, wonderful friends.” Mark Runyan, another counselor, who came to Woolman with his parents to a work camp at the ripe old age of two, was a camper for two summers, and a semester student in 2009, told me being a camp counselor wasn’t really a job, it was more like playing. 

All in all camp has been a rousing success and a lot of fun for both campers and counselors.   All of them have acquired memories that will be with them for a lifetime.

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Letters: Respond and Reconnect

John Palmer, Volunteer
August 6, 2012

I was a student at John Woolman School from 1974-1976. My experience at JWS enriched me, brought out the shy young woman, encouraged a nurturing side. My first love of plants came from the beauty of campus and the surrounding Sierras. We got to sleep under the stars in the meadow. We swam in the Yuba River and baked in the sun in one of the most lovely places I know.The friendships that I made at Woolman are like no other. Sometimes they ebb and flow, but there is always a special pocket in my heart for my old pals. With the advent of Facebook and a reunion of folks from the late 70s, many friendships have been restored. I regard these as precious and irreplaceable friendships. Some of my first friendships with adults occurred at Woolman; the teacher that recognized something and encouraged me to think about a career in health care. I have taught childbirth education, health education and am now a neurodiagnostic technologist. I also felt a sense of respect from some of the staff. I was honored when then principle, Ted, asked if I would serve on a group that traveled to let people know about the school. And Meeting for Worship, a precious quiet, shared by students and staff, rounding the week out, evening the play. It was 2 years of life, but full of richness. 

 –Blair Gardner, '76

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Community Happenings...

Emily Wheeler, Outreach
August 6, 2012

 

A new baby boy! In May, Elizabeth and Coleman Watts-De Sa gave birth to Calum, making him the youngest community member on campus. ‘Calum’ is an Irish name meaning ‘Little Dove’, which is ironic because Elizabeth says he is quite big and heavy. He loves songs and funny noises. He and Althea are very sweet together!

 

 

 

Brylie is heading to Evergreen! For almost three years, Brylie Oxley has been at Woolman as a technology specialist and more recently as a Friend in Residence. He has made countless contributions to the campus and community, not only with his knowledge and skills in technology, but in music, media, philosophy, and his love of nature, people and animals. Brylie will be studying Ecology and Media at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. He will be missed greatly and can be reached at brylie@gnumedia.org. We wish you well, Brylie! 

 

 

Lynne turned 90! On July 7th, our beloved campus elder, Lynne Henderson, celebrated her birthday in the company of many Woolman friends and family with a potluck dinner, singing, a gorgeous cake made by Amy Cooke, Manzanita tree climbing (by the youngsters), and general merriment from all. Thank you Sandy and Don Kewman for hosting this fabulous party!

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Social Justice in our Food Systems

Devin Cruz, student Spring 2012
August 2, 2012

In my 17 years of being alive on the earth I’ve been on a lot of trips, but the Food Intensive was one of the best trips ever. It opened my eyes to so much and being able to go on this trip with The Woolman Semester made it even better.

First off, I knew bees were really important, but after being on this trip and seeing the work that bees do, I have so much more respect for them. I understand them a lot better now.

Also on the trip we met this guy named Bear. He was a manager at a strawberry farm and his farm, Swanton berry farm, was great. I personally don’t like farm work, but after being there I really wanted to work there. His workers get treated so great, his farm was a perfect example of The Great Turning. His farm was turning in the right direction. The fact that his pickers (the people who pick the crops and berries) had health benefits which was a shocker: most pickers don’t get health benefits at all. His workers also got paid overtime and that never happens in this industry ever. Every morning they take time out to stretch and warm up in order for the workers to not hurt themselves in the field. The workers are part of a union. He really cares about his workers, which made me happy. Someone that cares for their workers, their workers will care for them. It builds community and working in a happy place is great. Why would you want to work in a sad place? You should want to work in a place where the people and the things you do bring you joy. This trip opened my eyes so much and I’m really happy I was able to do this.  

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The Nature of Natural

Jenny Davis, Student
August 1, 2012

 

We are surrounded by natural, only it doesn’t always look like kale and wildflowers. Instead, the word “natural” has become commodified: it’s printed on boxes of makeup, stamped on casings of food products, and designed on bottles of cleaning supplies. As nature has become linked to products, the distance between the human and the natural has become greater and greater. On the food intensive I, a self-professed lover of definitions, set out to define natural once and for all, if only to puzzle out whether or not there was still a natural world to define. Tired of vagueness and uncertainty, I was determined to clarify for myself this term that seems to have inundated all modern industries. Armed with my trusty notebook and pen, I was ready to take on the challenge.

Kent Bradford, a GMO expert, was quick to dismiss the definition of natural, condemning it “vague.” Genetic engineering may not be “natural” by some definitions, he countered, but neither are any other domesticated crops, for that matter.

At the Regenerative Design Institute, our host was James, a permaculture expert who defined “natural” as life sustaining; in other words, anything that is life-positive, or prolongs and promotes life, is natural.

Bear at the Swanton Berry Farm defined “natural” as “what nature would do by itself,” claiming that the organic movement was devoted to natural agriculture—in effect, organic means farming as nature would farm if it could farm itself.

And then it happened: my “Eureka Moment.” It was hardly Archimedean, but it awarded me an important thought.

“Naturalness is contingent on how we see ourselves and our relationship to nature,” I scribbled in my journal at the Swanton Berry Farm. “When we see ourselves as inherently wedded to the natural world, everything we do is unavoidably natural: after all, if we are nature, anything and everything we do is what nature would do. On the other hand, if we see ourselves as tangential to nature, everything we do alters nature’s ‘natural’ composition. The human race functions as an alien species that limits the ‘natural’ world.”

Moreover, when we see ourselves as divorced from the natural complex of systems, we are in danger of making choices, from our safe distance, that harm both the natural world and ourselves. In other words, when we disconnect, everything we do is disconnected and disjointed: people who embrace the “natural” are though to sacrifice their hygiene and social standing. On the other hand, people who put themselves first are though to exploit nature, stripping the land of resources in the name of human comfort.

When we see ourselves as connected to nature, though, we make choices that benefit nature and us. Harmony prevails. A motive to nourish nature emerges when to protect nature is to protect humankind. Perhaps in defining “natural” as a separate entity I was embodying the problem with the world: in seeing “natural” as a thing to be defined, an area with borders and a neat meaning, I was subconsciously separating myself from the bees and the grass. Just as the world boxes nature up into tidy packages, maybe so had I. I resolved to change my ways, placed my pen in my notebook, and took a look around.

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Food for Thought

Jane Davis, Woolman Semester Student Spring 2012
August 1, 2012

 

During the magnificent and positively perplexing week of tours that comprised the Food Intensive, it felt almost impossible to link all of the excursions into one story of Food. Somehow though as the week drew to a close I felt a story emerging that was shaking my beliefs about food to the very roots. The story starts a hot Monday on a tour of an educational feed lot. From there we followed the steers to an educational slaughter house and traced their steps up the ramp onto the kill floor. Kaleb led us through the phases of turning animal to meat. The third stop of the day was at a GMO biotechnology lab where a professor used his astounding public speaking skills to prod all of us to question what we knew about GMOs.   

Tuesday was a day long trip to the Regenerative Design Institute where we explored one very cool house, climbed a towering tree, and got a completely different view on GMOs. Wednesday was one of my favorite days; we started it off with a trip to Swanton Berry farm that ended with a pint of the most delicious strawberries I have ever tasted. A trip to the tide pools that didn’t last nearly long enough gave us a taste of the ocean – we saw star fish, urchins, and anemones. Thursday morning we got a glimpse of an entirely different part of the story of Food on a tour through Veritable Vegetable where we watched  fruits and vegetables on their way to CSAs and stores in California, Nevada, and Colorado. Friday started off with a barrage of colors and sugary beans on a tour of the Jelly Belly Factory. The last stop of our trip was perhaps my favorite - Full Belly Farm was a wonderful look into a big farm doing things very differently. There was a great sense of belonging at Full Belly Farm.

All of these visits, despite the variety, left me with the roughest of sketches of the story of Food. The most important theme within this story is the truth that we must re-forge our connections with food. How could we have let it happen that we are so far removed from something so integral to our lives? Throughout the trip I realized that I was having trouble connecting the food that we were seeing grown to the food that was on my plate at lunch. This is a symptom of our detachment from food that we suffer from. In order to heal ourselves and perhaps even our nation we must remind ourselves of how vital food is to us. 

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On a ROLL with the Bike Library Restoration

Lucy Labadie, Spring '12 Student
August 1, 2012

 

Looking back, we began the bike library restoration project with an inventory of the bikes to assess any needed repairs or missing parts. This inventory took the form of an excel spreadsheet document. For organization we gave each bike a number and roughly assessed and recorded its basic repair needs in terms of air, brakes, and chains, as well as any missing parts.

Every bike we discovered was in need of some work – and we organized many of them before choosing which ones would be worthwhile to fix. The bike rack behind the shop is less visible but we found it holding a number of needy bikes in a shamble. We picked them up and repaired the back wall rack with some help from Doug. Any bike beyond fixing we dubbed a ‘cannibal bike’ and moved it to a pile in the back truck yard. Those have now been moved up the storage barn near Jacob and Grace’s house. All usable bikes are available at the front rack or in the back and a printed inventory of the working bikes is available by the front rack and inside posted on the bike cabinet door.

Upon arriving we had to organize the bike shop a bit to get to know it better. We labeled boxes, shelves, and drawers, used rags to clean up, and got a general grasp on where to find the parts and tools we would need. Now though, so many sustainability projects have come through the shop that the original state of clutter has reassembled itself.

We realized that we had most of the materials necessary to do the needed repairs. We have plenty of grease and wrenches, and all kinds of salvageable bike parts. We have a pile of tubes that we are patching and re-using for a further life, an array of tires, and a good supply of patches, sandpaper, and glue to get the job done. Our original plan was to restore 33 bikes. We have solidly completed 24 bikes with one week to go. 

Our work has included many things. Early on, we researched and wrote a paper exploring the basic components of bike anatomy and repair, the benefits of bike culture vs. other modes of transportation, and the function of community bike cooperatives, which work on making bikes accessible to the larger public regardless of economic, social, or other status. Then we got started fixing bikes. This included making sure that all bikes had the necessary components (seats, tire rims, tubes that hold air, tires, brakes, working chain and gears, sometimes grips).

We broke our work down into the basic ABCs of bike repair: Air, Brakes, and Chains. Air repair often entails removing the rim from the bike frame, disassembling the wheel, looking for the hole that caused the flat, and then patchwork on the inner tube before putting it all back together. We did not work with many new inner tubes, so patching has been a frequent task. Some rim work was done, which involved using a truing stand and spoke wrenches to adjust spoke tension and get the rim to run ‘true’, otherwise rolling straight without an uneven revolution. Brake work included the general adjustment of brake pads and some brake line replacement. The latter involved removing an old cable line from the brake housing and rethreading it with a replacement line. Chain work varied from general chain lubrication to derailleur adjustment to ensure smooth shifting and riding.

In the final stages, we have been redoing an inventory of the restored bikes to even further organize them and make them accessible to the community. Some bikes need a little revisiting with air, and the shop needs a little organizing, but otherwise the restoration is nigh complete. We created a sign-out sheet for the bike library to further ensure the sustainability of the project once we leave and keep the bikes in good care and condition. Wahooo!

 

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Dish Crews and The Great Turning: A Woolman-Style Graduation Speech

Lulu Dewey, student
August 1, 2012

 

I did a lot of dish crews here at Woolman.  I started out with two per week, one on Wednesday night and one on Friday after lunch.  When I did a trade with Lucy, I ended up with a dish crew Thursday after lunch too.   I thought I had stumbled upon a genius bargaining currency and I didn’t hesitate to trade with Daniel so that he took my bathroom cleaning and I took his lunch cleanup on Tuesdays and his Sunday night dish crew.  Then I started doing spur of the moment trades when I needed some free time.  My token line was “if you do my dish crew today, I’ll do two of yours next week.” 

Soon my life was in shambles.  I was doing up to nine dish crews every week... that sounds hard. 

Somehow, though, I managed to scrape by.  I realized the value of each task on dish crew.  When I wanted to be out and about I was on general tidiness patrol, putting away leftovers and wiping down counters and tables.  When I wanted to be fully immersed in my work I was at the sink, washing an endless stream of pans and trays and ladles.  When I wanted solitude I worked the sanitizer.  I’m going to miss the kitchen and the endless drudgery of cleaning up, and our group high fives at the end and how we sang as we worked.  I am profoundly grateful for all of these dish crews.

As Joanna Macy describes, we have reached a great turning— the shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization.   Now is when we choose to sit and watch the world unravel, dirty pots in the sinks, or whether it is time for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work.  Woolman has given me the tools, the knowledge, helped me to explore my interests and explore my beliefs and question everything. The world needs all of us: the countertop scrubbers, the pot scrapers, the sanitizers, the moppers and sweepers.  We can sing while we work, we can be joyful in the knowledge that when it comes time for us to eat that we are reaping the fruits of our labour.  

We are not invincible by any means, but here we have learned to know and embrace our innate potential to create a better world.  We are beautiful people precisely because we care so deeply.

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Drying Racks Update

Brooke Lyons-Justus, spring 2012 student
July 30, 2012

 

This week I finished the prototype that a previous student had made. I added more wires to hang the clothes on. Then I tested the drying rack by hanging it up in the dining hall with wet clothing on it. Now we can be sure that it is sturdy enough to hold the weight of the clothing. 

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Facing Agricultural Issues with Natural Solutions

Daniel Freehling, Student
July 19, 2012

 I learn through observation based on imagery and physical experience the best. So when it came to learning about our food system in the United States, it served me best to go to the locations where agriculture and food processing were actually taking place. Bear from Swanton Berry farms was one of the first presenters that caught my full attention because of the animated way he spoke and how passionate he was concerning strawberries. I had no idea that pathogenic science would play such a big role in my consumption of strawberries. Not only did I learn about fumigation and the 4 year cycle of migrant workers having broken backs, but that these problems were solvable in natural ways.

The first evidence that there were natural solutions to these problems came through my imaginative abilities to see that if strawberries were raised high enough, the workers wouldn't break themselves over harvesting. I was encouraged by the fact that the workers at Swanton Berry Farm were supported with being part of a union and the farm had paid services and paid vacations for all their workers, even the undocumented ones which Bear explained to us that they didn't check anyway. I enjoyed conversing with my fellow peers on the issues that were brought up during the trip because it allowed me to recollect what I had learned into something more collective and solution based. I found it most useful for me to hear solutions so that I didn't feel hopeless.

 

 

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Can agriculture be natural?

Brooke Lyons-Justus, spring 2012 student
July 19, 2012

 

I left the food intensive feeling confused, but also enlightened. Our food system is extremely complicated and I am not sure exactly what the ideal solution would be.  One thing that came up very often on the trip was what natural meant to each person that we visited. Each person had very different definitions of what natural was.  When we visited Full Belly farm and started talking about what natural meant I realized that nothing about our food system is natural. The whole idea of agricultural is unnatural, organic or not. I really enjoyed visiting the Regenerative Design Institute in Point Reyes. The Regenerative Design Institute is a permaculture center. James, who lives at the center, gave us a tour and we discussed a lot of things about permaculture. The more we talked about it the more I liked the ideas. I think having things like an edible forest garden are a great way to produce food in a more natural and sustainable way. An edible forest garden really utilizes all the space to produce food.  There are a lot of other permaculture concepts that seems more sustainable and mimic natural cycles. I think trying to mimic those cycles in nature will help make less of an impact on the land. 

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Teaching for the Election from a Social Change Perspective

Emily Zionts, Peace Studies and Global Issues teacher
July 19, 2012

Wow, do I love my "Teacher Summer"! Sometimes I feel like teachers get the summers off to make up for all of those weekend days during the school year that we spend planning and correcting. It has been a great one this time around, but alas, here we are at the second half of the season--which means: it's time to start planning again! Good thing that coming up with cool ideas for trips and classes is one of my favorite things to do.

Each semester, the classes changes according to what's happening in the world and one massive event that is happening this Fall is a national election for president. I have been pondering how I might bring this into my classroom. In deciding what and how to teach in my classes, I often aim to present new angles or issues that would often be skipped in traditional high schools. It excites me to think about how to tie the election into both my Peace Studies and Global Issues classes. I intend to push the kids to think critically on how to connect it with their Environmental Studies course, too. Identifying interconnectedness is one of the ongoing themes of our semester!

In the spirit of sharing, I decided to post this blog entry to offer these ideas to other educators headed to the classroom this fall! Although I am lucky enough to have full curricular control, it would be fairly simple to match these lessons with state standards. Also, with a little tweaking they could be adjusted for different age levels, too!

Lesson Ideas:

For my first election lesson, I will direct the students towards iSideWith.com. This website has an online quiz that you can take to state your political views on the various issues and rate them in importance. At the end, they show you which candidate you match up with most and in what areas. I will ask the students to take the quiz and note which issues they feel most strongly about and discuss the results in class. Then, I think that it would be neat to have them create their own candidate, party, and platform. I will ask them use both current issues that are already being discussed, as well as have them add issues that they would like to see in these election discussions.

In the following week, I would like to facilitate some kind of dialogue/debate on the perceived importance (or lack thereof) of voting, too. This fits well with a lesson that I already do in my Global Citizenship unit about what it means to be a citizen at various levels (in your school, community, country, and world). It could potentially be an essay, too. Someone directed me towards a movie that is coming out this fall called, "Electoral Dysfunction". One of my former students (who I still collaborate with on curriculum ideas!) made the point that it is difficult to even understand how it all works--with the electoral college, etc.--- and therefore difficult to know if voting really matters. There are a couple of good YouTube videos out there explaining and then critiquing the electoral college that we could watch and discuss.

I also have a local friend who has come into class to workshop on Transpartisan work in the past and I would like to ask her back. As our country seems to be moving in more radical directions on both ends, learning how to work with each other and move past party lines to get to work on what is important seems like one of the most important skill sets we could gain. Here is an overview of Transpartisan Alliance work, and their website is transpartisan.net. Students could at least read the description of Transpartisan work, but there are also possibilities for activities where we could choose some dividing issue within the group and utilize empathetic listening to find common ground to work towards.

Finally, I will use Newseum.org for facilitating Critical Media Literacy for the election coverage. They post hundreds of front pages from around the world everyday and offer a free lesson plan on how to compare front pages to identify ideological slants. I use that lesson plan every semester and it is always successful! It will be so interesting to compare how headlines, photos, and text are placed to make us feel differently about the candidates based on each paper and where it is from!  

Resources listed: Let me know if you have any questions! Enjoy!
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Woolman Spring 2012 Slideshow

Cece, community intern
May 30, 2012

 

Check out the slideshow from this semester:  Woolman Spring 2012 Slideshow

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Sustainability Project: from 2 by 4s to drying racks

Brooke Lyons-Justus, spring 2012 student
May 23, 2012

 

For my sustainability project I built drying racks for the A frame cabins.  The drying racks replace the need for dryers in the colder months. I redesigned the prototype to make it more sturdy and stable. Then I got to work on building the racks. I started by splitting the wood and then cutting it to length using the table saw. Using the table saw was kind of intimidating at first but Doug taught me how to use it confidently. Once all the wood was split and cut to its appropriate length I sanded all of it using an electric sander.  I had to make some very complicated cuts in the wood to make the correct angles. These cuts were difficult and took quite a while to make. This was one change from the original prototype. Once the angular cuts were made I could almost start putting together the racks. But materials were a bit of a problem. I needed lots of clothesline wire, rope, screws, eyelets and many, many pulleys! My mentor Kristin had to make multiple trips to the hardware store to get all the items. Once most of the materials were present. I started building the racks by first drilling the holes that the clothesline wire would go through. Then with the help of Kristin they came together, we constructed them and then put the clothesline wire in, now they started to look like drying racks. Then I attached the eyelets and pulleys to the racks. Once the racks were complete it was time for installation. To install the racks we first needed to attach eyelets and pulleys to the ceiling of the A frame we then attached the cleat that would hold the rope when the rack was suspended. Then we put the rope through the pulleys to suspend the rack. We used a cleat knot on the cleat to secure the rope. This weekend I will present my project to the community. I am excited to present my project and I feel like I have learned a lot about managing a project and the time I have to do it as well as some carpentry skills. 

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Vermicompost Tumbler Ready for Action!

Lulu Dewey, student
May 22, 2012

 

The term “vermicompost” comes from the Latin word “vermi,” meaning worms.  It refers to the practice of raising worms to use to convert organic matter to extremely nutrient-rich compost.  For my sustainability project I built a vermicompost tumbler to maximize efficiency in our recently installed vermicompost system.  The tumbler separates our Red Wiggler worms from the fertilizer—their castings.  Because the worms won’t be lost when we spread the castings over the garden, we won’t need to purchase more and the worm pile will essentially maintain itself. 

A vermicompost tumbler works fairly straightforwardly: worms and castings are deposited into the tumbler and the tumbler is spun so that the castings are sifted out through a grate in the side.  The worms remain inside the tumbler and can be reintroduced into our vermicompost pile.

Worm castings are odorless, water soluble, and rich in nitrogen, potash, potassium, magnesium, micronutrients, trace elements, enzymes, and multitudes of microorganisms.  They are known as the purest and most perfect form of plant food because of their ability to aerate soil, release nutrients slowly over time, and retain high moisture levels.

 

Our garden will certainly reap the benefits of the newly installed tumbler!

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Old Project, New Plants

Chelsi Torres, Woolman Semester Student Spring '12
May 22, 2012

The end of the semester is almost here, but the native plant garden will still remain long after all the students have left. This semester has been a great start to a gigantic project of creating a whole new section of the Woolman garden. The native plant garden has been a rocky project for me to keep working on, because of all the trouble I've had finding plants. However, plants are a hard medium to work with, because they aren't always in the perfect state to plant, dig up, or propagate.
There are three beds containing native plants and many potted propagations and one transplant. Bed number one contains miner's lettuce that has now sprouted! The bed next to it has some oregon grape that will hopefully spread to create a nice groundcover. Lastly, there are three bush lupine plants that will fix nitrogen into the for other forest garden plants. The potted plants include Sierra gooseberries, redbuds, and monkey flower.
I'm sad to see my sustainability project come to an end, because I really loved happening upon a beautiful native plant and taking a cutting or digging it up to be put into a new home. On the other hand, I'm proud of all the work I've done, because I've never done anything like this and I feel like I've started something big. Lastly, I want to thank all of the people who encouraged my project and helped make it happen, especially Jacob Holzberg-Pill, Ryan Sennett, and Malaika Bishop.

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Questioning Beliefs on the Food Intensive Trip

Lulu Dewey, student Spring 12
May 21, 2012

 

I didn’t expect to gain clarity from the food intensive trip, or even any sort of concrete convictions about our national food system and the ways that we view food.  A week before the trip whilst reading Omnivore’s Dilemma, I pondered the question of “America’s national eating disorder”.  This concept was one that I initially scoffed at.  I knew that our food system was far from flawless but I hardly saw it as an eating disorder.  If anything, I blamed it purely on subsidized commodities and thus on our increasingly less reliable government.  Perhaps the government is too big for its own good, I found myself thinking.  And yet the food intensive clearly revealed to me that the way our nation eats truly is an eating disorder.  Everywhere we went we were given wildly different opinions on the way that food should be grown, raised, prepared, and sold.  It was easy to latch on to what each person was saying— they all spoke with the same sort of conviction and the same matter-of fact fieriness about their beliefs. 

At Woolman we often hear the phrase “Live what you believe.”  I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that the GM seed lab man was living what he believed just as much as James from the Regenerative Design Institute or the friendly people at Swanton Berry Farm and Full Belly.  During our visit to the feedlot, every bone in my body screamed out to me that what I was seeing was cruel and unusual.  I was shocked to realize that the way our tour guide explained the system soon had me wondering whether the cows even noticed.  I came back to Woolman on Friday evening and went almost instantly to the cow pasture.  I lay next to Sally Jane and rested my head against Mary, who was lying down in the field as the last rays of sunlight cast a glow over the world. In that moment came a valuable but confusing realization: it isn’t enough to live what you believe.  To truly be dreamers, activists, advocates, and peacemakers—to create a just and sustainable and peaceful world— we must learn to question our assumptions and challenge what we are told when it becomes clear that the truth, or however close to truth we can come, is not immediately evident.  

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Exploring Controversal Opinions on Food

Maria Doerr, Student
May 21, 2012

            During the Food Intensive last week, our class explored farms and food-focused organizations throughout the Central Valley, Bay Area and central coast of California. We went from feed lots and seeds genetics labs to intentional living centers, organic farms and candy factories. It was interesting to be exposed to such a diversity of places and to hear what each tour guide and representative had to say about the way they viewed food. They all had an opinion about the “right” way to grow, distribute and eat food. I was somewhat surprised by how emotionally and personally charged these views and this topic can be.

            At the feed lot we spoke with an individual who had gotten involved with beef as a youth on his family farm. Though only on a small scale, the feed lot could fit a thousand head of steer and heifer (I can’t imagine just how big the large scale systems must be!). Meat, on the scale we saw, had been a part of his life from an early age; it provided him with a living and was one of his foods of choice. He also spoke about a few of the issues people who work in meat must deal with: a single, finished steer brings a profit of only 25 dollars on average. Despite this, our tour guide seemed fairly satisfied with the food system in place—people need meat, he provides it in this way to meet the demand.

            Further along in the trip we spoke to an individual at an intentional, permaculture-focused farm on the California coast. Their home, garden and classroom were nestled in a valley from which there was a lovely view of the nearby ocean. He spoke about how the current food system feeds the mind but not the body—how could this GMO-ed, trans fatty, processed food provide good nourishment? A wholesome future meant reconnecting with life and humanity and changing our relationship with food—a possible reality he was creating at his farm. He was not satisfied with the current system but empowered by the potential of a new world food order.

            These two men, with their radically different approaches to how to grow and provide food, both felt that they had the right system. From their backgrounds in farm work and learning from the land they developed solutions that fit their morals and present needs. I found it interesting to see the connection between food and the rest of life and the human experience. Talking about food can be so emotionally and personally charged because food is tied so closely to where we come from, where we are and where we hope to go. I hope to further explore these connections and opinions related to food in the near future.

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