Turtles, Picnic Tables, & Summer Camp at the HON Urban Farm

By Josh Corlew, HON Urban Agriculture Program Manager -

We have a lot of visitors on the Farm, each one bringing their own special gifts. Volunteers bring their willing spirit and hard work, donors bring the resources needed to keep our program going, our apprentices bring leadership and education, and our campers bring a youthful enthusiasm and curiosity. But there are also several non-human visitors on the Farm. Here’s a picture of one of the more unique visitors that our apprentices found last week:

Hi, momma Shelly.

We named him Sheldon initially, welcomed him to our space, and went about our day. Later that afternoon we came back to find Sheldon is actually Shelly… she had dug a nest in our tomato row! We’re not sure if she’ll be back to lay eggs or raise some tiny turtles, but we’ll keep an eye out for her.

Another favorite visitor to the Farm is Sally the salamander, and she helps keep the pests at bay:

Isn’t he cute?!

Last Friday one of our corporate partners, Deloitte, joined us for a day of impact. They built five new compost bins and two beautiful picnic tables for us. Here’s one of the cedar picnic tables:

These picnic tables will provide a much-needed place to relax and take a breather for our Farm volunteers. Thank you, Deloitte!

This week was our first week of Summer Camp at the Farm. Every day we’ll have teens from area nonprofits coming out to learn and work on the Farm. Led by our apprentices, the campers learn about the food system, how to grow food, why it’s important to eat healthy food, and how to cook some simple recipes using farm fresh produce. Our schedules are booked from Mondays through Thursdays, but on Fridays we have room for other teens to come participate. If you’re 11 through 18 and would like to join us on the Farm on a Friday, just sign up here by clicking on one of the VolunTEEN opportunities. Learn more about the HON Urban Farm here.

Josh Corlew is Hands On Nashville’s Urban Agriculture Program Manager. He oversees the organization’s efforts to engage volunteers in service opportunities that empower them to gain gardening skills, learn about healthy eating choices, and help address our city’s food access issues. An AmeriCorps alumnus, Josh also has a secret past life as a Trekkie (he’s a big fan of the TV series Star Trek, for the uninitiated among us), and he has been known to participate in death-defying canoe trips.

Introducing the Urban Farm Summer Apprentices

By Josh Corlew, HON Urban Agriculture Program Manager -

This week brings a very exciting new addition to the farm: our apprentices! I’m so excited about the team of eight youth apprentices that we have training with us right now. They went through a rigorous application and interview process and I’m convinced that every one of them is up to the challenging and fun season that we have ahead of us.

This summer HON Urban Farm apprentices will lead groups of up to 60 of their peers through a curriculum around agriculture, the food system, and healthy eating. They will be the leaders of our Youth Summer Camp held at the Urban Farm. I want to dedicate the rest of this post to introducing our awesome new team.

Meet the HON Urban Farm Apprentices (in alphabetical order):

Meet Ashley! She loves dance.

Ashley attends Glencliff High Schooland helps tutor math. She’s very active in dance classes and enjoys a wide variety of dance styles including tap, jazz, and ballet.

Chloe is captain of her varsity softball team.

Chloe attends MLK Academic Magnet High Schoolwhere she is active in Beta Club. A softball player, Chloe is on the varsity team where she also serves as captain.

Evie has been in several plays at her school and The Nashville Children’s Theater.

Evie attends Hume Fogg High School. She’s very interested in drama and has participated in many plays at her school as well as productions at The Nashville Children’s Theater. An active member of her church’s youth group, Evie also has helped to organize the CROP (Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty) walk for the past several years.

Jazmin aspires to be a professional chef.

Jazmin attends Glencliff High School and is all about the extracurriculars. Her resume is chocked full of participation in service and cultural groups including Latinas Unidas, Rise Above Hate, Jump Study Foundation, and United Nations, just to name a few. She offers her bilingual talents as a translator for after-school tutoring programs, and aspires to be a professional chef!

Maria is an active member of the Glencliff High garden club.

Maria attends Glencliff High school where she is very active in many clubs including the Garden Club (yay!), ITOP, Beta Club, Teens United, and United Nations. Maria has also worked with the Oasis Center and hopes to continue to grow in her leadership abilities this summer.

Maynan’s name means “shining moon.”

Maynan attends McGavock High School and has been in the U.S. for about seven years. She enjoys helping out with a Bantu summer camp in her free time. In her native country, Kenya, her name means “shining of the moon”.

Saida enjoys tutoring kids in Nashville’s Bantu community.

Saida is a student at McGavock High School. She likes to tutor kids in the Bantu community in after-school programs and is also actively involved with Catholic Charities. Saida has experience growing food from her days in Africa, and we’re excited to learn from her this summer!

TJ has experience in designing and building garden beds out of cob.

TJ has just graduated from Glencliff High School. While he was there he was a part ofthe Garden Club and an Engineering class in which he helped design and build garden beds out of cob. While TJ has many talents, one of his favorite activities is parkour.

It has been a pleasure getting to know these remarkable young people over the past week, and we are really looking forward to a rich summer of learning, growing, and teaching.

A New Urban Garden for Nashville

By Josh Corlew, Hands On Nashville Urban Agriculture Program Manager -

[This Saturday, Hands On Nashville will officially launch its new Urban Farm as part of Global Youth Service Day Presented by Starbucks. Join us and volunteer. Read more about the Urban Farm here.]

The first time I saw the property along Mill Creek in Southeast Nashville, I felt a rush of anticipation. It seemed to be almost bursting with raw, untapped potential. Soon my head was swimming with possibilities: gardens with perfect sets of companion plants; fruit and nut trees surrounded by veggies; beautiful flowers providing a place for good bugs to live; rain gardens to keep the ground from flooding; composting systems; a worm farm; a little cove filled with mushrooms; walking paths and gathering areas for neighbors, volunteers, and young people.

Hands On Nashville volunteers working hard to create the first of two 70' x 70' row gardens that will grow tasty things like tomatoes, squash, and salad greens. All produce will be given to local nonprofits that serve low-income communities.

And then I started to feel a little overwhelmed by how much work needed to happen to get the HON Urban Farm off the ground. But soon I remembered the past year, working with volunteers to put in a new urban garden in partnership with Trevecca University. There were a lot of good lessons learned: double digging is hard work but worth the effort; cover the garden paths because the weeds creep in fastest from there; basil and tomatoes love growing close to each other. But the most important lesson that the garden taught me was that plants are designed to grow and survive.

This lesson is a huge relief. It makes my job so much easier to know that all plants that I want to grow are trying just as hard to stay alive as I am trying to keep them alive. In fact, they’re probably trying even harder, and they certainly have more experience at it than I do. My job is simply to provide an environment that gives each plant what it needs to thrive. While this can be a big job, it’s comforting to know that the plants I put into the ground are designed to live and produce food.

A happy, tired group of volunteers after a recent hard day of work at the Urban Farm.

It’s much like what we’ve been doing at HON for over 20 years now. Instead of working ourselves into a frenzy about meeting all the needs in our community, we know volunteers are out there every day doing that work; many of them not even through Hands On Nashville. It’s like the way that flowers, fruits, and vegetables don’t require a formal garden to grow. Wild flowers, onions, and asparagus can be readily found all over an empty field. Apples, figs, cherries, and mullberries are all over the streets and parks of Nashville. But like the gardener creating a healthy space for plants to grow, HON simply tries to make volunteering as accessible as possible by using the organization’s infrastructure and network to capitalize on existing community resources.

 

So when I look at HON’s new Urban Farm that is just budding, it’s re-energizing for me. I’m challenged to be the best steward possible of the ground, working with volunteers to create a place that can produce as much healthy food as possible in a sustainable way. At the same time, I’m relieved that I’m not working at this alone and am reminded that I’m a part of a network that includes tens of thousands of volunteers working to make Nashville a better place to live, work, and play. With that kind of momentum, I know we’re going to succeed at whatever we set our minds to. [Interested in volunteering at the Urban Farm this summer? Check out upcoming opportunities.]

Josh Corlew is Hands On Nashville’s Urban Agriculture Program Manager. He oversees the organization’s efforts to engage volunteers in service opportunities that empower them to gain gardening skills, learn about healthy eating choices, and help address our city’s food access issues. In 2011, Josh developed and implemented an urban garden program at PERK Urban Farm, in partnership with Trevecca University, that engaged 1,000+ volunteers and produced 700+ pounds of food on a 2.5-acre plot of land. An AmeriCorps alumnus, Josh also has a secret past life as a Trekkie (he’s a big fan of the TV series Star Trek, for the uninitiated among us), and he has been known to participate in death-defying canoe trips.