Settling In

Hi!

My name is Kristen Whittington. I am the new Summer VISTA AmeriCorps Associate working in Walla Walla with the Agricultural Center of Excellence at the Walla Walla Community College. I am a rising junior at Whitman College so I have been in Walla Walla for two years. This is my first summer living here though. I am originally from Austin, Texas. I am so excited to have the opportunity to work with the Harvest Against Hunger program which promotes sustainable food practices by coordinating with local farmers and food banks. Excess food that farmers have is donated to local food banks then dispersed. 

The program I am working on here in the Wallas is with the local VA which has recently installed a therapy garden for the veterans to work in. Because the VA is a government institution its kitchens can't use the produce from the garden. Instead, the bounty the veterans tend to will go to the BMAC (Blue Mountain Action Council) food warehouse, be repackaged and distributed to local food banks. Its pretty exciting to be working on a program to help the community become self reliant and aide veterans in recovery as well! 

DAY 1

Yesterday was my first day at the Ag Center. I seemed to have come at a time when everyone went out of town to attend conferences. But, I got tours of the office and the college, filled out my paperwork and got to work brainstorming what I will be working on this summer. 

After lunch I met with Casi (pronounced KC) who is the year round VISTA member. She seems like a kind person and is so easy to talk to. I can't wait to get to know her better and feel lucky to be working with her. She took me to visit the VA garden. As we drove up to the garden I was surprised by how large it was! It was surrounded by a huge fence to keep out the deer and looked a little out of place. Hopefully, with time, love, and some good bean plants and deer resistant climbers it will blend in better. Casi told me that planting had started a little late so most of the plants were transplants and not grown from seeds. There were a few benches next to the gate and hoses snaking along the side of the fence. Right now here is what has been planted(at least what I remember. There will be pictures soon!!):

• Watermelon
• strawberries
• Cucumbers
• Basil
• Cilantro
• Peppers
• Corn
• Tomatoes

Now, I am very new to gardening. In fact, I have tried to garden maybe three times in my life. None of them worked out. I blame the sweltering Texas sun and clay soil. It probably had something to do with the fact that I tried to start planting in the middle of the summer too... Anyhow, this whole experience is going to be an incredible learning opportunity. In the past two days I have done so much research on caring for gardens in the Pacific Northwest. Everything from composting to cover crops to harvesting. I'd like to leave this project with the tools to have a successful fall and winter season and a good idea of what to do in the spring. 

After taking a look around the garden Casi took me out to Bob's farm. Bob is a sweet onion farmer. Walla Walla is famous for it's sweet onions. We were visiting Bob because he told Casi he had 6 bins of bad onions he needed to get rid of. Bob looked like he could have walked out of a chapter in The Grapes of Wrath. He was wearing flannel, jeans, round sunglasses, and a brown paper-boy hat. He was covered with a film of dust that looked like it has permanently settled into his pours. He had a sort of hardend charm about him. A loveable, slightly cranky old man who had spent his life growing onions.

When the onions are harvested the "bad" ones are taken out and the good ones are put in five (or ten I'm not sure) pound bags. The bins were probably 4 by 4 foot boxes filled with onions that were giving off a sweet, sour, cinnamony, oniony smell that was definitely not the way onions should smell when you buy them in the store. When we started sorting out the rotten ones I found that most of the onions were still good. True, a few felt hollow or were sickeningly mushy but, a lot of them were good enough to use. We had probably 15 cartons of "good" bad onions and 3 really bad ones. We loaded them up in the truck and took them back to the BMAC warehouse where we piled them onto a palette and left them to be weighed. 

My first day ended on a high note despite the confusion that had started the day. 

DAY 2

This morning I went in to the Ag Center with a game plan:

1. Research vegetables and plants that flourish in Zone 5 and took full sun well.
2. Research winter crops so the garden doesn't become dormant when the vegetables aren't growing
3. Send an email to my supervisor at the VA to introduce myself and set up a meeting
4. Have the conference call with the rest of the Summer VISTA associates

I spent the whole morning doing research and discovered some great things about watering (it's best if you do it by hand so that the roots get adequately soaked. This will promote deeper roots which will help prevent droughts getting the better of your garden, composting (you want to keep compost moist and have about half brown waste half green), and complementary planting (in other words planting certain vegetables next to each other so that they work together to promote each other's health *sounds like some cheesy metaphor could be drawn from this). 

My site supervisor ended up calling me to let me know she was very excited to get things started with me but she was going out of town for a convention about therapy gardens and wouldn't be back until Thursday. I'll just have to wait until then to really start sinking my teeth in to the project.

After talking with my supervisor, I sent an email to Casi about another onion sorting party tomorrow night asking her if I could come. She said I was welcome. This one will be with volunteers who I am excited to meet! She also invited me to come cherry gleaning this coming Friday which sounds AWESOME!

During the conference call I had a came up with ideas about what to do while I am working this summer. I'd like to find out if the food bank offers cooking classes on seasonal cooking. With a program that offers fresh, seasonal produce it would be nice to have classes showing people what they can do with these new perhaps foreign (*cough cough* can you say Kohlrabi?) vegetables. Then, I wondered if the Organic Garden at Whitman would want to donate any of the produce from our garden or if there ever ended up being any waste that could be donated. Maybe that would promote people working in the garden? I also remembered that the CCY (Community Center for Youth) might want to help volunteer at these packaging parties like the one being thrown tomorrow. Or, they might even benefit from having their own garden to work in and then donate to BMAC. Lastly, I wondered if we could implement another garden in Assumption Catholic School. That would be a fantastic project for kids to learn about gardening, eating healthily, and giving back to the community. 

At the end of my second day I am looking forward to the rest of the week, especially meeting my supervisor and more community members involved in this effort.