Raised Garden Beds at Berea Schools: Resilience for the Future
Zac Danneman, Samantha Cole, Michelle Crabtree, Jennifer Combs, and Anda Weaver, students in SENS 215: Sustainable Appalachian Communities class at Berea College, have started a project called “Raised Garden Beds at Berea Schools: Resilience for the Future”. Their goal is to increase the resilience of Berea’s food system by installing raised garden beds in three locations, while helping children to learn about growing food.
On December 1, the students installed raised beds at the Child Development Lab (CDL) and Berea Community School, and on December 5 the group installed raised beds at Silver Creek Elementary. They conducted training sessions for teachers, provided each school with two cedar raised beds, a gardening guide book, some heirloom bean and tomato seeds to get them started on their garden, and a Sustainable Berea Calendar. The first and second graders who participated in the project had a wonderful time getting dirty and helping put the soil in the beds. The group looks forward to getting pictures of the gardens once they are planted in the spring.
Considering the issue of Peak Oil and the fact that our food travels an average of 1,500 miles before it gets to our table, this group is working towards teaching the importance of growing your own food so that a sudden decrease in food deliveries to Berea would not result in a crisis. The group is focusing on young people because they are more open to absorbing information than some adults. If children learn from an early age to not be afraid of a little dirt on their food, they will value things that come from the ground rather than demand processed and store-bought canned food. By engaging the children in the process from start to finish this group hopes to instill in these children excitement about growing food for a more resilient tomorrow.
(author of this blog entry is Anda Weaver)
standing (L-R) Jennifer Combs, Samantha Cole, Michelle Crabtree; kneeling: Anda Weaver, Zac Danneman
Raised Beds Installed
