Sprouting workshop project with children! (video)

A project i am working on involving children and sprouting! I am attempting to introduce the topic of planting and sprouting to a diverse community within a spiritual setting. Relating the act of sprouting to that of spiritual awakening. The children are intrigued and excited to watch the seeds grow and learn more! Here is a video of their first day planting the seeds! enjoy :)


 
Sprouting (Part 1) from Moon Drop on Vimeo.

Urban Gardening Survey

Greetings!

I don’t know about you, but I like food. I like local, fresh, and organic food even more. And I’d like to reconnect with this food, start a garden of my own, and connect with others who share these interests. But where to start? How do you know what to grow? Who else is growing food in the city, in the urban foodshed?

This is where I need your input, your ideas, and your creativity to help design an open-sourced urban gardening toolbox to guide, grow, and inspire the city foodshed. This toolbox will take the form of a planter box, with planting guides, adaptive infrastructure, and online connectivity and resource sharing.

 All are welcome to fill out this short survey. (https://www.esurveycreator.com/s/5ba76eb) Feel free to share it with your friends, family, and community.

Thanks so much for your time,

Keenan Boliek-Poling

Urban Garden Toolbox Concept

Food Waste to Compost

An investigation into the local foodshed would not be complete without looking into opportunities for diverting food waste from ending up in the landfill. We began our journey at La Possada, the dinning facility for on-campus residents. We met with Barry Goldberg, Director of Dining Services. He gave us a 'behind-the-scenes' tour of the cooking facilities and gave us an overview of the food-waste collection initiative which has been in place since Chartwells took over Dining Services at UNM 5 years ago.

Next, we headed down to Soilutions which is the local company that collects UNM's food waste and transforms it into high quality compost. John Shaski kindly showed us around and helped demystify the composting process.

This platform is where food waste is initially received from UNM and other suppliers .

Students getting a good whiff of the finished, sweet smelling compost.

Planter-Blitz

On day 3, we were invited to lend a hand with building some raised-bed planters for the folks at Casa de Amigos halfway house. UNM Landscape Architecture professor Katya Crawford along with Noreen Richards from the Architecture Department, have been volunteering their services here and are develop plans to build on-site gardens and a greenhouse from re-claimed materials. These raised beds are just the beginning of what promises to be a wonderful and generative project.

Visit to Skarsgard Farm

Throughout the course of our first module, we are looking at the relationship between food and the city. As we visit various sites throughout the city, we hope to uncover, document, analyze and plot some of the hidden or overlooked environmental, social, economic and spatial relationships that make up the urban foodshed.

Students help farm interns consolidate pepper plants for transplanting.

Thanks to the cheerful interns and to Wesley James for showing us around and for giving us  a first-hand experience of life on the city's largest organic farm.