Planting seeds of change

Hera Community School students get their hands dirty and learn valuable lessons working on community supported agriculture project

By Ellen Spitaleri

The Clackamas Review, Jul 28, 2009, Updated Jul 28, 2009

Dylan Wagner gets ready to plant a tomato in the herb garden at Hera Community School in Oregon City. He will be a senior at the school this fall.

ellen spitaleri / clackamas review

Anna Meyrick, the director of Oregon City’s Hera Community School, is always on the lookout for new ways to educate and engage students at the alternative school, which seeks to encourage students to make positive changes through community involvement, education and art-based projects.

She found one such opportunity in the Singer Hill Gardens project, a collective of urban farmers around Oregon City with connections to a community supported agriculture program. Meyrick decided the lot next to the school would be the perfect spot for a large herb garden. She contacted Maureen McKenna, the board chair of Singer Hill Gardens, and the garden became a reality.

“Anna Meyrick approached us with interest in the project [and] it seemed like the perfect fit for our perennial herb garden since Hera School focuses on job skills, and herbs tend to be high-value crops as far as acres tilled are concerned. We installed the herb garden the first week of June and all of our farmers and the Hera students and teachers participated. We prepared beds, spaced the plants, spread soil amendments and planted everything in about six hours,” McKenna said.

People pay $500 to get into the CSA program, Meyrick said, and for that they receive a bucket of produce a week from six gardens located in Oregon City, including herbs from the Hera School garden.

Some of the herbs go to the Singer Hill Café, on John Adams Street, where they are incorporated into salads and other dishes, Meyrick noted.

Students, staff and members of Singer Hill Gardens show up at least once a week to weed the garden, plant, and tend the herbs, which include basil, cilantro, dill, sage and rosemary.

“We hope that as we work with the students from Hera Community School that they begin to view farming as a viable and possible occupation. We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to work with Hera because a large part of our mission is education and this is the most direct contact we currently have in that area.

“We believe it is important for students to become involved because gardening offers a lot of life lessons and skills building. We hope that they build skills that help them in whatever career path they choose,” McKenna said.

Learning experience

“Students need to be connected to the process” of where their food comes from, Meyrick said, adding, “They need to get their hands dirty and support their local community, instead of going to a convenience store and buying something that was flown in from 2,000 miles away.”

Gardening not only teaches students sustainable practices, but it fits nicely into the curriculum as well, she said.

The students read about Victory Gardens as they learned about World War I, and then they learned about the Depression and how farming practices led to the Dust Bowl.

Finally, students and staff rototilled, made the raised beds and planted the herbs, all before school ended in June.

“The kids liked it – some really got into the rototilling, and some are coming and weeding and planting even during the summer,” Myrick said.

She knows that most students will not become farmers, but her hope is that the knowledge will lead to the young people gardening in their own homes.

“I want them to learn that food tastes better fresh and I want them to think about where their food comes from. I want them to support sustainable products and go to the farmers market,” she added.

Student interest

A year ago, Chierey Hupp and Dylan Wagner would never have foreseen that they would be spending the summer before their senior year weeding, planting, raking and hoeing – and yet that is exactly what they are doing.

The two 17 year olds, who attend the Hera Community School, are among the volunteers who show up even on steaming hot days to care for the herb garden.

Hupp said students should learn how to garden, so that when they get older they can make their own gardens.

Wagner, who said he “likes to play in the dirt,” also said it makes him happy “to help plant, so other people can eat.”

Singer Hill CSA

Singer Hill Gardens is part of a Community Supported Agriculture program.

“We are a collective of farmers that sustainably grow, harvest, and deliver veggies to about 25 families in the South Portland metro area. We have numerous backyard gardens in Oregon City, Milwaukie and Gladstone,” said Maureen McKenna, the board chair of Singer Hill Gardens.

“The six farmers that comprise the collective all joined the organization with a desire to become a new generation of farmers working in a new model of agriculture. Due to the industrialization of agriculture, which allowed fewer laborers to farm more acres and the subsequent rural exodus in this country, we have largely lost a generation of farmers,” she said, noting that the average age of a farmer in the U.S. today is 65 years old.

“Singer Hill Gardens seeks to answer the question of how to create a new generation of farmers when we have no land, no capital and no generational knowledge of farming passed down to us. In other words, what does farming look like in 2009 and how can we assure that locally grown food is and continues to be an option for consumers in Oregon?”

Board member Jess Dean is helping out with the Hera Community School herb garden, and noted that it is important to get students “passionate about something.”

“It is important to learn how to feed our community and our family, and help the community become more sustainable,” she said, noting that even planting a couple of fruit trees in a parking strip is helpful.