Today we went to Youth Grow in Worcester! This is an urban agriculture focused youth development and employment program for low income teens. They employ 32-40 high school teens. Today we got to work alongside some of them! Today was also an open volunteer day where anyone who wanted to volunteer could come by and help out- we met two women through this too.
The first thing we did for the organization today was to clean out the basement. This did not seem very fun at first, but we saw that it was a task that really needed to be done, and they were very appreciative of our help at the end of the day. It was also cool to see the difference before and after cleaning it! See picture below!
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| This was before we cleaned the basement! The tomato wiring protectors were jumbled up and the floors were very dusty! |
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| Priyal sweeping up the floor! |
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| This was after we cleaned up, swept, and organized the tomato wiring. It was so much neater, cleaner, and it was definitely necessary! |
The majority of our work was done actually on the farms. The first thing we did was to move the seedlings off the farm beds onto the side, so we could do work on one of the farms. We sorted the different seedlings by type which was kind of fun. We must have sorted about 20 different types of seedlings.
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| Moving the seedlings off the other farm bed! These seedlings were the ones left after their seedling sale. We organized them based on what kind of plants they were. |
Next, we began to do work on the high tunnel. This is basically a green house where the plants grow. They recently got a grant to do work. Originally in the space where this high tunnel was, there was a house and that house was painted with lead paint, so no one could really touch that area. After the grant, they were able to build this amazing greenhouse to grow plants. Some of us set up irrigation, which is basically tubing that waters the plants. The tube has little holes that water comes out of, and the plants are right in front of the holes. Some of us began to dig holes where we could plant the seedlings. Priyal poured water into these holes, since it is good to do the planting in wet soil. And then some started to place the plants in the holes! We took a before and after pic of this too so see below!
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| Before planting anything in the High Tunnel! |
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| After planting the seedlings and setting up the irrigation! It was so amazing to see the end product. |
The last work we did with Youth Grow was on their other little farm bed. We weeded and then placed a black weed blocking cloth down. We then cut little square holes where someone could then place a plant into to grow. During work on this farm bed, we got to talk to a lot of the youth growers involved in the program. A lot of bonding went on and it was interesting to hear more about some of the students. One of the girls actually had just came from Ghana 2 years ago. Priyal talked to her and learned that she wants to be a Biochemistry major when she goes to college- she took AP chem this year and enjoyed it. Dina also got to talk a lot with one of the guys there, and they exchanged snapchats!
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| Taking out weeds! |
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| Taking out more weeds |
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| Covering the bed with the weed blocking cloth. We cut squares in to make room to plant plants. |
After all our hard work on the farm, we got to enjoy ourselves a little and went on a brief hike to cascading falls. It was really nice to be a part of nature in another way! The cascading small waterfalls were really pretty and I'm glad we all got to see a little more of Worcester!
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| Group pic at Cascading Falls! |
Some more pics from today!
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