Green Gal

Nine months ago, I harvested my first vegetables from Green Gal's Garden. That initial harvest on May 20 consisted of nine heads of bok choy. Although the harvest that day was small and too early for my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, it was a momentous occasion. Planting the bok choy transplants  Momentous because, with a little bit of my help, some living beings had rooted themselves in the garden soil and gathered sunlight and nutrients and grown from tiny seeds in my small greenhouse to edible vegetables. The miracle of seeds growing into plants has been happening for a really long time on this planet, but observing and supporting this process continues to be magical and profound. The process of photosynthesis is intimately tied to the lives of every human on earth. Bok choy seedlings in the greenhouse Nine months later, I look back on all of the vegetables and herbs that I harvested in the garden from May 20 until November 8, 2018, and ...

It's been almost 3 months since I said goodbye to my beautiful farm-ily and graduated from the UC Santa Cruz Farm Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture. Life since then has been a whirlwind of organizing to-do lists and timelines, adjusting to more screen time, balancing new responsibilities and projects without the structure of a 9-5 job, and reflecting on this past growing season of learning, growth, and community. Since October when I packed up my tent cabin overlooking Monterey Bay and closed a profound chapter of my life, the ideas that had sprouted into dreams and were woven into goals during my time at the UCSC Farm soon became integral to the fabric of my daily life. The vision I crafted as I dug potatoes and planted ranunculus and cooked meals for 45 of my favorite people has begun manifesting as tangible stepping stones into the future, each leading to deeper understanding of the purpose and potential of those dreams. No doubt, I have days when fear makes m...

Yesterday afternoon, I led a workshop about sourdough bread at the UC Santa Cruz Farm & Garden's Annual Harvest Festival. (Fun fact: Green Guy and I met at this same event five years ago when we were tabling for student sustainability organizations!) A whole lot of people showed up to the workshop, and nearly everyone was able to take some 150-year-old Yukon sourdough starter home with them. I received the starter from a coworker's mother-in-law a couple years ago after baking with my own homegrown starter for a few months.  It's resilient and amazing to bake with! If you're particularly intrigued by sourdough and live in the Santa Cruz area, you're invited to sign up for another workshop that I'm leading October 11 at UCSC. It's $5, and it's limited to 12 participants; sign up here ! By signing up for the workshop, you can join me on a journey into the wild world of sourdough, an ancient and delicious fermentation art that is easy and fun for ...

My legs are sore, my vertebrae crack when I stand up straight or stretch, my hands are scraped and blistered, but I've got the biggest smile on my face--kinda like the grin on my childhood face below! It's been two and a half weeks since I moved onto the UCSC Farm, and I am in love with life, this land, the view, the many plants we tend, and the community of ~50 people that I spend nearly all of my time with when I'm not sleeping in my canvas tent cabin overlooking the Bay. Since my last blog update, I've done all of this and more: learned a bit about temperate zone deciduous fruit trees from Orin Martin transplanted flowers into beds in the Chadwick Garden/Up Garden labeled many plants for the plant sale this weekend weeded and added more roses to a perennial rose garden learned about Alternative to Violence Program and practiced nonviolent communication during a workshop got to know new friends better  read about and heard lectures and saw demos on both cove...

"We can become creators of a better world, of better and more sustainable food choices, of greater awareness of resources, and of community based upon sharing. For culture to be strong and resilient, it must be a creative realm in which skills, information, and values are engaged and transmitted; culture cannot thrive as a consumer paradise or a spectator sport. Daily life offers constant opportunities for participatory action. Seize them." - Sandor Katz, The Art of Fermentation Last Monday evening, I combined equal parts flour and water into a bowl and mixed them into a thick paste. I knew they were equal parts because I weighed them on a small digital scale I recently purchased specifically for that purpose. I set the bowl's lid on top of its rim, slightly ajar so that air could get through, and placed it on the table near our home's central heater. The next evening, around the same time, I weighed out equal parts water and flour, added them to the mixture, a...