OUR SCHOOL AT BLAIR GROCERY

Second Hoop House Goes Up!

2012-01-18T13:33:00.000-06:00

Maximizing Space in Hoop House #1, 50sq feet of more room!

Larry and Nathaniel re-built the shelves so the plants can get as much sun as possible.

We also re-arranged the water barrels to make them aisles.

Hoop House #2/Patches process:

Bending the metal poles to fit the outline of Hoop House #2/Patches.

First Weeks of January Images

2012-01-12T20:35:00.000-06:00

Here is a collection of images from what we have been working on this week!

Cabbage coming along nicely.

Rainbow Chard looking colorful.

Building a new soil sifter that proved to be very efficient.

Students from University of Montana visit for the week.

Derek and Jerimiah sifting soil

Carrots at St. Mary's where we have been working on some extra land given to us.

Meow-Mix!

Promo for "You Are God" with footage from OSBG!

2012-01-09T13:23:00.002-06:00

You Are God - Promo from You Are God on Vimeo.

Holiday Holidays! A quick update on our progress

2011-12-24T16:49:00.001-06:00

Whew! We made it through the fall filled with challenging but rewarding experiences for the afterschool folks, the Job1 and Cornerstone Ministries folks and our staff and interns. Finally, we are on break. Tis the night before Christmas and nothing is stirring except a few mice, the cats, the dogs, the chickens and us.
Here are some pictures of our progress and some more pictures of exciting things to come in the new year!

Our fall tomatoes are finally ripening up.

We have several varieties from yellow teardrops to celebrities.

And our hoophouse tomatoes are really taking off too! They seem to be growing about an inch a day. We hope to have tomatoes in year round production and available to market throughout 2012.

And seems like it never ends. We've already got about 2,000 starts seeded out of a total of 10,000 we will have ready for spring planting.

Our prickly pear love being in the hoophouse as do the green garlic in the background.

But one hoophouse isn't enough so we've started building another large hoophouse to replace our old ones. We are looking forward to an even better 2012 and wish you all the same!

some pics from this week

2011-12-16T18:54:00.000-06:00

Allen unloading coffee grounds

Cherry and Angel cleaned up the neighborhood

Fresh puts the finishing touches on the fence

Lawrence giving direction

Jeremiah and Derrick doing sprouts

Tomatoes in the big hoophouse

Stringing up the tomatoes in the hoophouse

Keeping the hoophouse warm with compost

A Parting Gift

2011-12-08T13:27:00.000-06:00

Hello All,
My six month internship with Our School at Blair Grocery is coming to a close. Fortunately, I'll be taking all the skills, relationships, and knowledge I've built over the months with me as I head back to California. OSBG consistently does a terrific job at exposing young people to the realities of New Orleans and the opportunities presented by food security projects. I feel lucky to have had this opportunity and I look forward to working with OSBG in the future as I continue work in community food security and youth empowerment. As a parting gift, I've compiled a list of the articles, projects and videos that have stimulated my learning in these past months. I'll keep adding to them in the weeks to come, and you should feel free to do the same.
Simply click the link and explore the resources available.
Food Regime Resource Guide

Best wishes in your relationships and pursuits,
Rio
RioEScharf@gmail.com

P.S. this artwork is by Oakland activist and printmaker, Favianna Rodriguez. Check out more of her profound and poetic work at www.Favianna.com.

Jesse Hardman's great TIME Magazine video about OSBG

2011-11-29T23:30:00.000-06:00

First Harvest at the Sisters' Garden

2011-11-15T16:29:00.001-06:00

Nathanael, production team leader, delivers radishes for the Sisters' salad

Coming soon in the Sisters' garden: tomatoes, beets, collard greens, peppers, cabbage, shallots, and green onions!

Some photos from a beautiful fall day

2011-11-10T12:51:00.000-06:00

Our tomatoes are ripening up!

Our mirliton plants are looking good!

And they are bearing fruit!

The littlest mirliton of them all!

The afterschool group is working on their own garden space. Stay tuned for more photos!

some after school pictures from today

2011-10-26T00:11:00.000-05:00

sorry we've been so busy we haven't been posting pictures and updates. lots going on around here. guess what? the daytime students are taking responsibility for running the after school program!

derrick and marquelle working on their scarecrow

nathanael, jeremiah, derrick and darnisha stuffing the other scarecrow. apparently his name is "pimp daddy" because he's gonna pimp our garden.

twig, nathanael, brandon, josh (everybody loves josh!) and derrick are starting an after school art program at OSBG. got art supplies?

the after school folks are ripping out some experimental planters that never really worked for us so they can plant their own 40x40 garden space, sell the produce and share the profits. we will keep you updated as they move forward.

our cornerstone ministries americorps member lawrence (the hardest working man in grow business) is an amazing mentor with the younger ones and team leader. the young cats just can't keep up with him!

Announcing a New and Exciting Partnership

2011-10-11T20:38:00.001-05:00

We're thrilled to officially announce our partnership with Cornerstone Ministries! Their commitment to seeing "the stone the builder refused" as the cornerstone is inspired and inspiring. We look forward to working with them along with their partners: Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, AmeriCorps, and Sisters of the Holy Family. With their support we've hired three new AmeriCorps staff members: Derrick, Jeremiah, and Lawrence!

The Crew from Left to Right:
Rob, Ronnie, Jamie, Derrick, Andrew, Jeremiah, Mat,
Lawrence, Mike, Brenda, Nathanael, and Greg

A month ago this was a lawn.
Now, a garden for the Sisters.

*For more pictures, check out our facebook page

A Big Step Forward!

2011-10-10T16:22:00.004-05:00

Our new t-shirt gives you a sense of where we're headed:
Chickens, Bees, Fish, and Goats!

Earlier today the Board of Zoning Adjustments for the city of New Orleans approved our variance application, which means we are now officially recognized as a farm! Watch for new farming projects over the coming months.

Thank you to all our friends and supporters: we are off to another exciting season!

2011-09-23T23:28:00.001-05:00

Sorry we haven't been updating our blog this month as often as usual but the summer program took a toll on us and, just as we were taking a deep breath in preparation for fall programs, a whole bunch of blessings have been bestowed upon us: awesome new institutional partners and collaborators far beyond what we could have anticipated, amazing opportunities to expand our farming practices locally on massive acreage, and greater resources to bring more young people on board to participate in our programs with direct financial, educational and social entrepreneurial rewards for the greater good!

We are truly blessed! We would like to acknowledge the many, many friends we have out there who have supported our development in large ways and small ways as well: THANK YOU!

This photo of our newest t-shirt design gives just a taste of our strategic plan over the next year including: increasing honeybee keeping, fish farming, increasing our stake in poultry (more laying hens and the addition of meat birds), and a larger scale soil building initiative (increasing our current production of 20 yards a season by at least 500%) for starters!

Look out for more updates soon.

Great Op-Ed by Cornel West: Martin Luther King Jr. Would Want a Revolution, Not a Memorial

2011-09-02T09:35:00.000-05:00

Dr. King Weeps From His Grave

THE Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was to be dedicated on the National Mall on Sunday — exactly 56 years after the murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi and 48 years after the historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. (Because of Hurricane Irene, the ceremony has been postponed.)

These events constitute major milestones in the turbulent history of race and democracy in America, and the undeniable success of the civil rights movement — culminating in the election of Barack Obama in 2008 — warrants our attention and elation. Yet the prophetic words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel still haunt us: “The whole future of America depends on the impact and influence of Dr. King.”

Rabbi Heschel spoke those words during the last years of King’s life, when 72 percent of whites and 55 percent of blacks disapproved of King’s opposition to the Vietnam War and his efforts to eradicate poverty in America. King’s dream of a more democratic America had become, in his words, “a nightmare,” owing to the persistence of “racism, poverty, militarism and materialism.” He called America a “sick society.” On the Sunday after his assassination, in 1968, he was to have preached a sermon titled “Why America May Go to Hell.”

King did not think that America ought to go to hell, but rather that it might go to hell owing to its economic injustice, cultural decay and political paralysis. He was not an American Gibbon, chronicling the decline and fall of the American empire, but a courageous and visionary Christian blues man, fighting with style and love in the face of the four catastrophes he identified.

Militarism is an imperial catastrophe that has produced a military-industrial complex and national security state and warped the country’s priorities and stature (as with the immoral drones, dropping bombs on innocent civilians). Materialism is a spiritual catastrophe, promoted by a corporate media multiplex and a culture industry that have hardened the hearts of hard-core consumers and coarsened the consciences of would-be citizens. Clever gimmicks of mass distraction yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists.

Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse. Arbitrary uses of the law — in the name of the “war” on drugs — have produced, in the legal scholar Michelle Alexander’s apt phrase, a new Jim Crow of mass incarceration. And poverty is an economic catastrophe, inseparable from the power of greedy oligarchs and avaricious plutocrats indifferent to the misery of poor children, elderly citizens and working people.

The age of Obama has fallen tragically short of fulfilling King’s prophetic legacy. Instead of articulating a radical democratic vision and fighting for homeowners, workers and poor people in the form of mortgage relief, jobs and investment in education, infrastructure and housing, the administration gave us bailouts for banks, record profits for Wall Street and giant budget cuts on the backs of the vulnerable.

As the talk show host Tavis Smiley and I have said in our national tour against poverty, the recent budget deal is only the latest phase of a 30-year, top-down, one-sided war against the poor and working people in the name of a morally bankrupt policy of deregulating markets, lowering taxes and cutting spending for those already socially neglected and economically abandoned. Our two main political parties, each beholden to big money, offer merely alternative versions of oligarchic rule.

The absence of a King-worthy narrative to reinvigorate poor and working people has enabled right-wing populists to seize the moment with credible claims about government corruption and ridiculous claims about tax cuts’ stimulating growth. This right-wing threat is a catastrophic response to King’s four catastrophes; its agenda would lead to hellish conditions for most Americans.

King weeps from his grave. He never confused substance with symbolism. He never conflated a flesh and blood sacrifice with a stone and mortar edifice. We rightly celebrate his substance and sacrifice because he loved us all so deeply. Let us not remain satisfied with symbolism because we too often fear the challenge he embraced. Our greatest writer, Herman Melville, who spent his life in love with America even as he was our most fierce critic of the myth of American exceptionalism, noted, “Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges; hence the conclusion of such a narration is apt to be less finished than an architectural finial.”

King’s response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a re-evaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.

In concrete terms, this means support for progressive politicians like Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont and Mark Ridley-Thomas, a Los Angeles County supervisor; extensive community and media organizing; civil disobedience; and life and death confrontations with the powers that be. Like King, we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle.

Cornel West, a philosopher, is a professor at Princeton.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/opinion/martin-luther-king-jr-would-want-a-revolution-not-a-memorial.html

Down to Earth

2011-08-27T11:51:00.000-05:00

Thanks to our Kickstarter supporters and our friends at Laughing Buddha Nursery, we received a truck full of 58 cubic yards of organic soil yesterday. And we're getting another 20 yards on Monday! We'll be building rows all week so we can kick off fall planting in Mid-September. Stop by in October to pick up some fresh tomatoes, cabbage, chard, hot peppers, and more.

Great Article in the New York Times on our times

2011-08-24T22:57:00.000-05:00

The Dollar-Store Economy

Honest Reflections on a Difficult Job

2011-08-18T19:27:00.000-05:00

This article was just recently posted in The Lens. We think this piece is a great look at the challenges of doing complex work in a difficult environment. We'd like to thank Ariella for the time she's taken and for her integrity in doing her best to cover the whole story.

Pioneer of urban farm and school learns lessons of his own, hopes struggles lead to success

Support our partners at Sheaux Fresh Farms

2011-08-12T12:28:00.000-05:00

Thaddaeus and Tamara Prosper have long been our partners and a great source of inspiration for us. In the past years, they have turned a backyard garden into a blossoming community food center. Now, they are looking to raise at least $5,000 through Kickstarter, so they can double the size of their garden, supply more food to the Algiers community, and develop more educational projects.
Check out the video and click the link below to support another phenomenal food security project.

2011-08-11T16:49:00.000-05:00

Here are nine interviews with local youth on our last day of our summer program. After six weeks, these students have gained a grasp of food security, food justice, healthy eating habits, teamwork, and practical farm skills. We couldn't have asked for a better group of students. We hope your first weeks of school are positive and we look forward to seeing you all around the farm again soon!
All the best.

If you would like to see this video in full screen or see other OSBG videos, click here.

I See It Growing Beyond Imagination

2011-08-10T22:46:00.002-05:00

Take a look at these interviews and clips from our summer food security academy. For six weeks, students engaged in interdisciplinary learning on the farm and in the classroom. They gained an understanding about food security and food deserts, while also learning to respect farmers for their tough and undervalued work. Students entered the program as strangers and left as a family, having shared powerful classroom moments and challenging outdoor work. We simply could not have put together such a powerful, comprehensive program without the constant inspiration of Grower Power and institutional support from the Kellogg Foundation and the USDA Community Food Project. We look forward to expanding our project throughout the Lower Ninth Ward and into other neighborhoods. At the end of this video, our students discuss the impact that OSBG's expansion would have on the community.
ENJOY~

To watch it in full screen and to see other OSBG films, click here.

World Premier of OSBG Horror Film!

2011-08-08T10:09:00.001-05:00

Three days ago, our students held the world premier of their bone-chilling new horror film. The critics raved and the fans found it both terrifying and informative. Today, for the first time ever, it is available to the public. Enjoy!

Check out our YouTube page to watch the film in full screen- Click Here

Growing Power Anti-Racism Weekend

2011-08-04T15:25:00.000-05:00

This September 9-11, join Will Allen and the rest of the Growing Power staff for a three-day workshop on food and anti-racism in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The weekend is part of their Growing Food and Justice Initiative (GFJI), aimed at dismantling racism and empowering low-income and communities of color through sustainable and local agriculture. Essentially, just what we're working towards here at OSBG. Check out this link for more information and to register for the event.

Growing Food and Justice for All Gathering Sacred Soil: Cultivating Seeds of Community Transformation, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 9th - 11th, 2011

2011-08-04T15:05:00.004-05:00

Come to Milwaukee for the 4th Annual Gathering of the Growing Food and Justice for All Initiative (GFJI) sponsored by Growing Power, Inc.  

Growing Food and Justice for All Gathering Sacred Soil: Cultivating Seeds of Community Transformation  September 9th - 11th, 2011

Tommy G. Thompson Youth Center Wisconsin State Fair Grounds Milwaukee, WI

The gathering has several key goals:

• To build networks and alliances between GFJI members and affiliates

• To strengthen and support leadership prowess and confidence

• To facilitate anti-racism, dismantling racism and multicultural alliance

building workshops and trainings geared toward all levels of experience

• To share stories, engage in dialogues and build community

Come early for the Intensive Leadership Facilitator Training!

September 7th - 8th, 2011

(Day 1 includes hands-on training with Will Allen)

To Register: http://gfjigathering.eventbrite.com/

For More Information: https://www.growingfoodandjustice.org

What is GFJI?

GFJI is aimed at dismantling racism and empowering low-income and communities of color through sustainable and local agriculture. This comprehensive network views dismantling racism as a core principal which brings together social change agents from diverse sectors working to bring about new, healthy and sustainable food systems and supporting and building multicultural leadership in impoverished communities throughout the world.

The vision for this initiative is to establish a powerful network of individuals, organizations and community based entities all working toward a food secure and just world.

Introduction to the Kellogg Foundation

2011-07-28T18:33:00.000-05:00

We were looking for a way to introduce our students to all the good work the Kellogg Foundation is doing and ran across this video. It worked perfectly, so we thought we'd share it with y'all. Plus, we love Gail Christopher!

Update #3: We Did It! $10,000 in FIVE DAYS!!!

2011-07-27T16:18:00.002-05:00

Thanks to y'all in ONE WEEK we've raised over $10,000 for Empowered Youth creating a food secure New Orleans! We're humbled and amazed at the outpouring of support we've had. It's things like this that keep us going and renew out commitment to this work. Y'all are incredible!

That said, the reality is that expanding our farm is going to cost more than $10,000. So what we need now to keep spreading the word!:

Our Kickstarter

If you want to make a massive, immediate impact on our work and aren't able to support us financially, we need:

-25 new or lightly used Mac laptops with Laptop cart (like you had in school...maybe ask your school?)

-Bobcat for making, turning, and loading compost

-Woodworking and garden tools

-Sheetrock to finish renovating volunteer housing

-Seeds

Again, Thanks Y'all SOOO Much,

OSBG

Kickstarter Update

2011-07-26T22:40:00.001-05:00

We have 6 days to go until the end of our Kickstarter campaign. So far we have raised 92% of our minimum goal of $10,000 to provide our organization with more space to provide more food to our community. We are incredibly thankful for every donation that has come in so far. It is encouraging to feel this kind of support from so many people across the nation who feel as passionate about this work as we do. Please keep spreading the word about our work here in the Lower Ninth Ward and please keep encouraging your friends and family to be the change they wish to see in the world.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/riooo/food-security-academy-for-youth-in-the-lower-ninth/backers

What was the Civil Rights Movement really about?

2011-07-23T17:27:00.000-05:00

To what extent was it about freedom?

Did they actualize freedom?

What is freedom?

Amartya Sen:Freedom requires freedoms

-Political

-Economic

-Social

-Transparency

-Security

How did they work to actualize freedom?:

Malcolm X

Martin Luther King Jr.

Mississippi Freedom Summer

Ruby Bridges

A Change Is Gonna Come

We Shall Overcome

Fight the Power

Only a Pawn in Their Game (starts at 3:23)

To what extent are we a continuation or evolution of the Civil Rights Movement?

OSBG Student-Led Workshop Weekend

2011-07-22T16:58:00.000-05:00

Come join OSBG staff and students for the culmination of our summertime food security academy. On Saturday, July 30 our students will lead tours and workshops on the farm to showcase the work and learning that they have done.

9AM-Noon: Student-led workshops and tours

Noon-4PM: Potluck Lunch

All are welcome

See you there!

spoofs

2011-07-21T09:58:00.001-05:00

The students at OSBG have taken it upon themselves to take the lies or false advertisements of other local fast food restaurants.

OSBG Lauches a Kickstarter! We need your support!

2011-07-20T22:11:00.003-05:00

That's right, we've got 12 days to raise $10,000! Spread the word!

All funds raised will go directly towards the continuation and planned growth of the project over the coming months. Over the next three months, we will be building out an entire city block for intensive production, including vegetables, fruits tree, chickens, and pigs.

To do this, we need:

-100 yards of organic soil to supplement our compost
-Seeds for sprouts, row crops, and heirloom vegetables
-Hoophouses (inexpensive, quick-to-build greenhouses)
-New bee hives and a new queen bee
-10 new worm bins for vermicompost
-Shovels, hoes, and rakes for students
-Irrigation necessities: water meter, hoses, and sprinklers

But what will my support actually do?

$10 buys seeds to grow one pound of sprouts
$50 buys sprout seeds for one day
$300 buys a beehive and a new queen bee
$1000 buys the plastic for a hoophouse
$3000 buys a hoophouse so we can grow food year-round

Support empowered youth creating a food secure New Orleans! Pass this message along!

REGISTER FOR FREE DEBATE CAMP WEEK OF AUGUST 7

2011-07-14T09:09:00.001-05:00

Dear All
Thank you very much for the interest you have shown in our upcoming “Securing Liberty Debate and Media workshop”. As previously mentioned, the workshop is held in partnership with Loyola University and the International Debate Education Association. At the moment we have set up a website for interested students to apply. We will leave the call open for a week with a deadline of July 18th. Because we have garnered more interest than we anticipated, we’d appreciate if you could facilitate the outreach to your networks as soon as possible. We would like to get a sense of how many participants we are able to accommodate and as well as make sure we have a tailored curriculum for the new college track we are considering (because of interest shown from older students to participate). Please let us know if you need any further information. For specific questions on local logistics, kindly contact Stephanie Hotard (Development Officer, College of Social Sciences, Loyola University) on 504-861-5775
I have pasted the link to the application below:

http://www.idebate.org/open-society-debates/workshops.php

Best regards,
Ru

Rudo Moyo
Youth Initiative
Open Society Foundations
400 West 59th Street
New York, NY 10019
Ph:(212) 548-0318
Fx:(212) 548-4610
rmoyo@sorosny.org
www.soros.org/youth

Social Media group produces an awesome video for OSBG!

2011-07-08T09:37:00.002-05:00

This Is How WE Do It ! from ourschoolatblairgrocery on Vimeo.

Look at those beauties...

2011-07-06T19:30:00.001-05:00

NY2NO is in the building

2011-07-05T21:06:00.001-05:00

Today, we all sat in on our first full class with Job 1 students and the staff of OSBG! After introductions, we split up into three groups and participated in a lesson about feeding people, and how much land it would take to adequately feed everyone in the Lower Ninth Ward for one year. We first estimated out how much food a family of four consumes in one day, walking through each meal and what goes into them. After figuring out one family, we moved to how much 750 families consume in one day. 750 is roughly the number of families living in the Lower Ninth, which led us to calculate the number of square feet it would take to feed the entire Lower Ninth Ward for a year. Fiddling with and estimating at the actual numbers made our goal seem a lot more tangible and real, instead of this abstract idea that it can sometimes become.

Once our air conditioned (thank goodness!) lesson was over, we all convened outside for some work time, doing different tasks, including harvesting arugula, weeding in numerous beds, sifting worm castings, and adding to the compost pile. As you can see, we had a very busy, very productive day here at OSBG, while simultaneously making new friends across state lines!

-Cai @ NY2NO

There should not be this many ingredients in the blueberries in my waffles...

2011-07-05T19:12:00.001-05:00

Nat Turner clip by Hawthorne College of Business students

2011-06-30T22:33:00.002-05:00

Nat Turner from Andrea Chen on Vimeo.

Video by OSBG/Job 1 students, Miracle and Quan

2011-06-30T22:24:00.000-05:00

the farm cycle ($ave money,save plants) from ourschoolatblairgrocery on Vimeo.

Visit Our Students blog

2011-06-30T13:18:00.002-05:00

To see what our "Social Media and Journalism" class is doing from week-to-week, visit: http://studentsatblairgrocery.blogspot.com/

Curriculum: What is it going to take to make Food Security a reality?

2011-06-30T09:34:00.003-05:00

Introduce Essential Question:

What is it going to take to make the Food Security a reality?

Break growers into groups to look at each of these organizations and answer the following questions on large sheets of paper.

Questions for each group to answer:

1. Who are they? When did the organization start this work? Where do they work?

2. What do they do and how do they do it? What don’t they do? (Do they grow food? Work with youth? Train potential growers? Source food from local farmers? Change politic policies?)

3. How do they do their work? with who? for who?

4. What results have they achieved so far?

5. What overall impact are they having on food security?
6. Each grower should make a drawing of the group they are examining to show typical things that might be going on with that group.

Policy

Farm to School

http://www.farmtoschool.org/policies.php

Production

Polyface Farms in the Shenandoah Valley, VA

http://www.polyfacefarms.com/

Good Food Revolution

Growing Power in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

http://www.growingpower.org/

Food Justice

Immokalee Workers - Campaign for Fair Food in the Southeast

http://www.ciw-online.org/101.html#cff

Growing Growers

The University of Missoula at Montana Sustainable Food Systems Program

http://www.gardencityharvest.org/

Sustainable Community Development

Ma’O Organic Farms in Hawaii

http://www.maoorganicfarms.org/

Nuestras Raices in Holyoke, Massachusetts

http://www.nuestras-raices.org/en/home

Multinationals

http://www.sodexo.com/group_en/corporate-citizenship/home/better-tomorrow-plan.asp

Ask each group to present their findings

Questions after the groups have presented, use their drawings to answer the questions:

1. How do different groups work to make food security a reality?

2. Are any of these parts of the work more important than others? how and why?

To answer question 3 they will have to draw what happens at OSBG

3. In comparison to these other groups from all across the country, to what extent do you think OSBG is doing good work? or, to put it a different way, is OSBG doing the work it’s going to take to make food security a reality in our community?

Sheaux Fresh: Amazing family farmers visit OSBG!

2011-06-29T19:46:00.003-05:00

The Food Revolution Will Not Be Televised!

Well, Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution is being televised but that isn't exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about what's going on right here in our backyards. For some of us that literally means in our back yards. Slowly, often painfully so, people are realizing that the food they purchase may not be the best possible quality and it's certainly not the best possible price. In spite of being world famous for our cuisine, New Orleans has been designated as a food dessert. In other words, too many people have too little access to fresh, healthy real food. Some neighborhoods don't even have grocery stores and what's offered at most corner stores is not what a family should eat all week. Well, some people are just tired of it and have begun to look outside of the corporate food system for what they need.

Recently, Thad, our children and I met some people who are really food revolutionaries. Nat Turner and the rest of the farmers/educators from Our School at Blair Grocery have created a beautiful oasis of self sustainability in the Lower Ninth Ward. They saw that food needs weren't being met and decided that the best way to address the issue was to create a system that is fair, healthy, natural and local. What they're doing is really simple but that's what makes it so revolutionary. They, like many local growers, have eliminated unhealthy, unnecessary practices from the food growing process. On top of that, they are training young people to recognize what really goes on with most of the food that is available to us, creating an awareness that encourages them to step out of the corporate food system by learning to grow food locally.

It was a pleasure for us to see other people with whom we share a similar mission. Check them out and see for yourself what a positive impact the food revolutionaries from Our School at Blair Grocery are having on our community.

RETRIEVED FROM SHEAUX FRESH: http://www.sheauxfresh.com/sheaux-fresh-blog.html

Some of the pieces of the puzzle

2011-06-27T12:15:00.000-05:00

Please check out these links and come Tuesday ready to discuss them:

Some cool stuff they are doing in Brazil:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/food-for-everyone/the-city-that-ended-hunger

A great program in Detroit for teen mothers:
http://www.grownindetroitmovie.com/

What's happening to the detroit program:
http://peterslarson.com/2011/04/18/detroits-catherine-ferguson-academy-for-young-women-is-closing

And don't forget your waivers.

questions: turner@ny2no.org

Empowering young people to take the forefront of the good food revolution

2011-06-23T19:46:00.002-05:00

After hooking up with Job One workforce development summer youth employment program, we are now working with about a dozen kids from our neighborhood and 25 youth from the Greater New Orleans area Monday thru Friday. That makes us one of the largest employers in our community. We hope to build upon this experience to include people of all ages in the future.

On the first day, we jumped right in with the movie “Fast Food Nation”, students were asked to write down: who the characters are (a sentence about each character) and how they are related to one another. After watching about half of the movie the kids were broken up into five groups with a team leader, which was either a staff member or a long-time student at OSBG and asked to answer the questions together and draw a diagram of how they relate. After twenty minutes, we all reconvened in a circle with one staff and one long-time student leading discussion around the question: how realistic is this movie?

The discussion was mostly led by the staff member as the student had never facilitated a meeting before but the student, Twig, introduced the question and the take-home assignment.

After this activity, the students took a ten-minute break and reconvened for an activity led by Nat. He put an old fashion school chair (“the chair desk thingy”) on one of the tables the students were sitting at and asked them to draw it and tell him a bit about the purpose of the chair. They wrote for ten minutes and reconvened. Students threw out ideas like:

you face forward
you sit up straight
you can’t fall asleep because its forcing you to sit up
“all four on the floor” (what a teacher would say)
you face the board
you have a pen and paper

We deduced that the chair was used most in schools to get students to face forward, and look at the board because that is where learning is supposed to happen. In neat little rows and assigned seating.

As Duranta says: "Learning can happen everywhere, not just in the classroom!"

Turner introduced that this was not just a job, that the young people should think of their time here as learning that does not just occur in the classroom but also in the garden and between people. He then wrote down: ELA, math, science, social studies, and Economy on the board and asked students to go on a scavenger hunt to find elements of the project around the farm and the building that had to do with each discipline.

Where does learning happen?

2011-06-23T19:44:00.000-05:00

Let's talk about those traditional school chairs for a second...you know the one:

Draw it. Write a little bit about it.

What's it made of?

Who made it?

What is the purpose of it?

Where do you find this chair usually?

What have your past experiences been sitting in this chair?

Now, where does learning happen?

(...)

...Now, whats wrong with this picture?

Coffee Grounds = Excellent Compost

2011-06-21T23:59:00.000-05:00

College Board Study: The Educational Experience of Young Men of Color

2011-06-21T10:25:00.000-05:00

"In fact, a recent report commissioned by the College Board found that one out of every two young men of color ages 15-24 who graduate from high school will end up unemployed, incarcerated or dead."

http://youngmenofcolor.collegeboard.org/home

Teaching for Social Transformation thru "The Matrix" movie

2011-06-21T09:43:00.001-05:00

HW:

Choose 1 out of these 3 questions:

1) Which character in the film are you? Why?

2) Which character in the film is OSBG? Why?

(You can choose between: Morpheus, Cipher, The One,

the Nebakennezer (the ship), the Oracle and the Agents)

3) Write about a moment since you've been working

on the farm where you have "learned Kungfu".

Food Security Curriculum is well underway!

2011-06-17T16:42:00.003-05:00

After working from 9:00-11:00 in the morning our summer program students return from 4:00-6:00 in the afternoon to participate in learning about food security in the air-conditioned classroom of OSBG.

On Wednesday, we split the students up into four different groups and had them rotate through four different stations each facilitated by a different member of the OSBG staff. The stations and activities are listed below:

GLOBAL FOOD SYSTEM:
WorldMapper.com with intern, Moana
Look up the following maps:
International Fast Food

Adult Literacy

Fuel Use

QUESTIONS:
What country has the highest?
What country has the smallest?
How do the maps relate to one another?
How does this relation impact you?

PERSONAL DIETS:

Myplate.gov versus the Food Pyramid with staff member, Jamie
Students observed two different pictures used to express the importance of a diverse and nutritious diet

QUESTIONS:
Do you think this is a good change or a bad change?
How does this relate to what you eat on an every day basis?

LOCAL FOOD ACCESS:
USDAs Food Desert Locator with Turner

We spoke about the United States Department of Agriculture and what they are in charge of in the government
We typed in our addresses into the Food Desert locator to determine whether or not we are each living in a food desert according to the USDA
We searched the USDA website for an concrete definition of a food desert and found this:

"How is a food desert defined?
The HFFI working group defines a food desert as a low-income census tract where a substantial number or share of residents has low access to a supermarket or large grocery store:
To qualify as a “low-income community,” a census tract must have either: 1) a poverty rate of 20 percent or higher, OR 2) a median family income at or below 80 percent of the area's median family income;
To qualify as a “low-access community,” at least 500 people and/or at least 33 percent of the census tract's population must reside more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store (for rural census tracts, the distance is more than 10 miles)." (DEFINITION RETRIEVED FROM: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/fooddesert/about.html)

Then, we asked ourselves: what do we think of this definition? Can we create a better one? Let's do it!

Some things that the student said about this USDA definition is were that:

"It is a little un-necessary" and "Too complicated"

Our students came up with their own definitions in one sentence that they could use to explain to their friends and family what they are doing on the farm and in our classroom:

"A food desert is a drought"
"A food desert is when you don't have grocery store with in a mile of your house"
"It is when people don't have enough money, they don't have enough stores and if they do, it don't sell healthy food"

THE ROLE OF RACE, CLASS AND
GENDER IN THE FOOD SYSTEM:
Applied Research Center and Kellogg Foundation's The Color of Food Report with intern, Izzy

QUESTIONS:
What is the most surprising information you found in this report?
Why do you think it is like that?
How are race, class and gender related?
Is it fair?

Filmmaker Ian Midgley Follows Nat Turner and OSBG for his Documentary, "You Are God"

2011-06-16T21:21:00.001-05:00

Ian is an independent filmmaker following revolutionaries, free-thinkers and free-doers across the United States. We have been very lucky to be included in his project entitled as an example of people who are shaping their own realities and making change.

Here is Ian filming one of our classes with twelve of our students learning about Food Security.

To learn more about Ian, the characters in his film and his project please visit:

http://www.youaregodblog.com/

Add You Are God on Facebook: www.facebook.com/youaregodmovie

School: Fast Food Nation Part Deux and Follow-up

2011-06-14T18:45:00.000-05:00

Weeding, Cardboard 'N Chippin the Mustard Green Beds

2011-06-14T10:38:00.000-05:00

Growing food and justice this morning starting at 9:00am...

Day One of Summer Program: Fast Food Nation

2011-06-13T22:08:00.001-05:00

Designing a Sustainable New Orleans

2011-06-04T02:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we had a group of city planners from the Greater New Orleans area who are part of the American Planning Association Metro New Orleans Section (for more information on them, check out their website and their facebook page) came by the school for a tour and extended conversation about designing a sustainable New Orleans.

Turner--leaning on Randy, our green-waste-hauler--giving an overview of composting

More pictures of their day at OSBG

Our discussion began with a history of the project, from inception on November 27, 2008 to it's current state. Two representative narratives can be found in this New York Times article by Charles Wilson and this episode of Majora Carter's The Promised Land.

Then we looked at three models that inspire us:

The City that Ended Hunger Belo Horizonte, Brazil
CS Mott Group Detroit, Michigan
Garden City Harvest Missoula, Montana

We wrapped up by exploring possible cross-sector partnerships that will facilitate the vision into reality. We look forward to many fruitful collaborations in the days ahead!

Spreading the Good Food Revolution to Ontario

2011-06-03T22:17:00.000-05:00

They visited us over Christmas break. Great to see they're doing exactly what we hope every visitor does: making it happen where they are.
Students hungry for new menu: Ontario High calls for healthy food

An Educational Exchange with LowerNine.org

2011-05-26T09:39:00.001-05:00

We want our students to have as comprehensive a view of urban farming possible. The school itself is a living, breathing classroom with 1,001 "teachable moments," but it helps to have something to compare it too. A huge part of understanding the food movement is seeing that we're not the only ones doing it.

A few blocks away from us is LowerNine.org's Lamanche Community Farm (lowernine.org, lamanchefarm.blogspot.com, @lowernineorg on twitter). Many of our students had never been there, so we made a trip to look around. Luckily there were a couple of folks more than willing to give us a tour.

Students getting a tour of Lamanche Community Farm

Afterwards, LowerNine.org brought over group of volunteers from Connecticut to check out the school:

Debrief after the tour

Oh, it was also everybody's favorite day, pay day:

What it takes to build a Farm City

2011-05-11T12:36:00.000-05:00

The other day a few of us went over to the home of a senior citizen and ally of project to put in an unique triangular raised bed. Even in his small backyard he'll be able to grow a ton of food: okra, cucumbers, beans, and all kinds of good stuff. Not only will he be able to feed himself and his neighbors, but he's been sick as of late and there's nothing like fresh wholesome food to heal what ails you!

Unloading our powerfully fertile compost, the best possible medium

to give the plants a great start.

Filling the bed. Notice the newspaper underneath to keep down

that stupid johnson grass and other weeds.

Filled, leveled, and looking beautiful!

First order of business is okra.

We're in New Orleans, after all.

More to come.

Building a Delicious Economy: A case study in snap beans

2011-05-08T17:21:00.001-05:00

If you've been by OSBG lately then you've probably seen that we're up to our teeth in snap beans.

This is, of course, a good problem. We're eaten our fair share of snap beans right off the vine, but there were/are still WAY too many for us to handle by ourselves.

Enter Beatrice and Darnell, neighbors and long time supporters of the project. You can usually find them sitting on their front porch right across the street from the school. They came by a few days ago and picked a whole bunch of beans. Then Beatrice did her magic with them:

Beatrice's Smothered Snap Beans

Snap Beans, lots of them

Garlic

Onions

Potatoes

Pig tails

Bacon ends

Ham seasoning

Salt, Pepper, and Zatarain's

Last night she brought us a big delicious bowl of it, which we've just about polished off. It reminds us of an article in March's issue of Martha Stewart Living that we're been using as a teaching tool:

http://www.marthastewart.com/photogallery/community-garden-potluck-party?lpgStart=1&currentslide=1&currentChapter=1

The good news:

There's plenty more where that came from.

How to build a 4'x4' raised bed garden by Shamika

2011-05-02T18:13:00.000-05:00

STEP 1: Get 4 pieces of 4 foot long boards
STEP: 2 Screw in 8 screws, 2 in each corner
STEP: 3 Lay down cardboards to cover up all weeds
STEP: 4 Add a hand full of worms
STEP: 5 Next put down half of wheel barrow of soil
STEP: 6 Lastly put in seeds by hand and water right away
STEP: 7 Water first thing in the morning and when the sun goes down

Sango Radish Sprouts!

2011-05-01T13:29:00.001-05:00

Looking beautiful and ready to harvest. Not only do they have a distinct peppery flavor, they also help fight off free radicals and have anti-inflamatory properties.

Look for them at Mardi Gras Zone in Bywater tomorrow!

Orientation for Derrick, our newest after school student

2011-04-29T14:30:00.000-05:00

Learning it

Doing it

OSBG's first honey harvest, or the bees get a new hive

2011-04-29T10:30:00.001-05:00

Last week friend of the project and master beekeeper Emil Albrecht came out to teach us how to move our bees from the old Top Bar hive into the new Langstroth hive. Anyone in the New Orleans area looking to have a wild hive removed or for help setting up a hive should give him a call at (504) 909-3447.

Emil and Rob removing comb from the Top Bar hive.

Emil really loves bees!

Moving the comb into Langstroth hive.

Bees are in place and doing their thing

A week later we checked out their work--they're happy and busy

And of course a sweet ending

Urban farms our students are interested in

2011-04-28T17:12:00.002-05:00

Our School goes to the French Market

2011-04-23T11:33:00.002-05:00

This week the French Market hosted Gulf Alive, a celebration of the cuisine of the Gulf Coast (www.gulfalive.com). Along with cooking demonstrations and events covering all things culinary, we were invited to set up a booth for all three days, managed beautifully by Bryan and Shamika. This year's theme was "the value of heirloom, heritage, and other locally grown ingredients," so our presence was all the more pertinent.

It was a great opportunity to talk to folks, both visitors and locals, about what we do. Of course, we also brought the freshest produce possible--beets, radishes, eggs, sprouts, and all kinds of greens--grown right here in the lower ninth ward.

Bryan and Shamika from Our School

Partnerships for Youth Empowerment

2011-04-23T02:17:00.002-05:00

Friday afternoon we loaded up a yard or two of great compost for Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools farm to school and experiential learning urban farm. We are proud to support our WKKF partner on their summer initiative.

Left to right (front): Micah from Rethink and Jamie from Our School; (back) Turner from Our School, Qasim and Brennan both from Rethink and Louisiana Delta Service Corps.

Revolutionary Dreams

2011-04-09T23:47:00.000-05:00

Revolutionary Dreams

I used to dream militant dreams
of taking over america to show
these white folks
how it should be done

I used to dream radical dreams
of blowing everyone away
with my perceptive powers
of correct analysis

I even used to think I'd be the one
to stop the riot and
negotiate the peace

then I awoke and dug
that if I dreamed natural
dreams of being a natural
woman doing what a woman
does when she's natural
I would have a revolution.

-Nikki Giovanni

Majora Carter's 'Promised Land': An update on OSBG

2011-04-08T22:28:00.000-05:00

We'd like to send a special thanks to Major Carter for her amazing radio spotlight of OSBG on her show The Promised Land, sponsored by American Public Media. Her most recent episode in the series 'Voices from the Gulf Coast' features our founder, Nat Turner, as well as other staff and students from our neighborhood.

Click here to listen to the program.

There is only one thing to be amended: the investigation mentioned in the interview did not result in Turner being barred from teaching in New York City, nor the revocation of his teaching license. The investigation by the NYC Board of Education had no legal impact. Questions raised by his lawyers were simply about the ability for a school board to question a teacher's freedom of speech on his/her own private vacation time.

A Reality Check

2011-03-25T20:08:00.003-05:00

We are very fortunate. We enjoy the privilege of being able to think about strategies to alleviate poverty, eliminate food insecurity and bring about racial equity. Others are not so fortunate. They are being hacked to death, starving to death or a few paychecks away from catastrophe.

In Paulo Freire's posthumously published Pedagogy of Indignation he challenged each of us to move beyond the prevailing discourse, the norm and the limitations of, let us say, closed minded realpolitik thinking. Instead Freire challenges stakeholders of all sorts to catalyze a pedagogy of possibility: we have arrived at this moment because of choices and decisions; our future will be made similarly; Freire makes it plain: preparing youth to navigate the choices (or seek alternatives) and empowering youth to make globally responsible decisions will, under the circumstances, most likely determine whether the 21st century descends into chaos or forges community. MLK foresaw these challenges 40 years ago. The challenges are upon us whether we resolve them or not.

We are participating in critical and innovative cross sector partnership discussions rooted in systems based analysis catalyzing transformative pedagogical praxis on the cutting edge of non-profit work eating away at a diverse range of inequalities uniquely manifesting in New Orleans but present across our nation and the globe.

The following two slides should remind us of the urgency of our work. They speak for themselves:

Almost there!

2011-03-17T10:43:00.000-05:00

As most of you know, the building that we use for staff/intern housing and the school has never been renovated since Hurricane Katrina. At the end of last summer we finally started rebuilding the upstairs where the Blair family used to live. We had to reframe nearly 75% of the building, we replaced all of the siding and painted with the help of Project Homecoming, the electrical is done, and the plumbing is done, and central air and heat is going to be a big welcome when we get the walls closed up.

We've come a long way and we need a little help. With everything ready to be insulated and sheetrock, we find ourselves at a standstill. We need an additional $2500 to purchase insulation that we don't already have, sheetrock, and bathroom fixtures.

Here's the challenge...if 25 people were to make a $10 donation online we would have $250. If those 25 people were to make sure that they each got 9 people to make a $10 donation we would be ready to rock.

I know how resourceful everyone who has supported OSBG is, so let's see if we can make this happen by the end of the week.

New Beam to open up the kitchen space

Electrical Panel Upstairs

Shower Fixture Ready to start flowing

2011-03-16T11:58:00.002-05:00

More Sifting

2011-03-16T11:56:00.002-05:00

Sifting =)

2011-03-16T11:55:00.002-05:00

Volunteers creating some shade for our Green Houses

2011-03-16T11:54:00.002-05:00

Today we got a visit from the 2nd graders at Martin Luther King in the Lower 9th

2011-03-16T11:52:00.002-05:00

OSBG featured on 2010’s ‘Best of Democratic Education’ List :: IDEA

2011-03-08T20:03:00.005-06:00

Our School at Blair Grocery was featured on the Institute for Democratic Education in America's 2010’s ‘Best of Democratic Education’ List. The article "Powerful Learning Grows in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward" by former OSBG faculty David Ferris was originally featured on YES! Magazine's website and Education Newsletter, which reaches over 10,000 educators across the United States. Support IDEA! Thanks IDEA for highlighting our efforts at Our School at Blair Grocery!

2010’s ‘Best of Democratic Education’ List

Posted in on Jan 02, 2011 - 04:47 PM

I recently read through Education Week's "Revisiting the Most Popular Stories of 2010" list and was generally disenchanted. This is not to say it's a bad list, rather it didn't represent my work and passions in democratic and alternative education. After a few days of jogging my memory, looking through a few 'cheat sheets,' and asking around I now present to you my 'Best of Democratic Education' list for 2010. I've organized the links into a few categories with no ranking system (I wouldn't want Alfie Kohn to get mad).
Best of...
News, Commentary, & Blogs
The kind of mayoral engagement we can celebrate
Science Shows Making Lessons Relevant Really Matters
50 Ways to Make Your School More Democratic
Reframing the Education Debate
Matching kids with adults who live their dream
HuffPost's Greatest Person Of The Day: Omo Moses, Who Sees Math As 'The Great Equalizer'
How Democratic Are Our Schools?
The Case Against College Education
Why College is Overrated
Diversity Debate Convulses Elite High School
Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling in Graduation Speech
Articles & Essays
Powerful Learning Grows in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward
Democracy in Action: Educating Students to Think, Create, Initiate
Parents Are People, Too
Towards an Organic Learning Community
The World Becomes What You Teach
Lives of Passion, School of Hope: The Alumni Project of Jefferson County Open School
Putting the Revolution into Education
Videos
Graeme Taylor Speaks Out on Behalf of Teacher
Sir Ken Robinson's 'Changing Education Paradigms' (RSA video & original talk) Make Your Voice Heard: Discover Democratic Education
Finding a Way Forward During Challenging Times: A New Agenda for Progressive Education
The Child-Driven Education
Democratic Education with Young Children
Books
Quality Education as a Constitutional Right
Lives of Passion, School of Hope: How One Public School Ignites a Lifelong Love of Learning
Turning Points: 35 Visionaries in Education Tell Their Own Stories
Celebrate People's History!: The Poster Book of Resistance and Revolution
Films
Race to Nowhere
Schooling the World: The White Man's Last Burden
August to June: Bring Life to School!
Resources
Beyond Tolerance: A Resource Guide for Addressing LGTBQI Issues in Schools
Free to Learn: A Radical Experiment in Education
Education Revolution: The Magazine of Educational Alternatives, a free online archive including current issues
Planning to Change the World: A Plan Book for Social Justice Teachers
IDEA's Democratic Education Resource Section
Events
International Democratic Education Conference (Tel Aviv, Israel) 7th Annual AERO Conference (Albany, NY) See related post on IDEA's website
Northwest Teachers for Social Justice Conference (Portland, OR)
Education People's Movement Assembly at the United States Social Forum (Detroit, MI) (Education Revolution's fall issue)
'We the People Tour' Also see "Quality Education as a Constitutional Right" National Day of Action to Defend Public Education and also Education Revolution
Coalition of Essential Schools Fall Forum: Demanding Education That Matters(San Francisco, CA) see also Pedro Nogeura's opening keynote address: "Finding a Way Forward During Challenging Times: A New Agenda for Progressive Education"
2nd Annual Education Circle of Change (Santa Fe, NM)
Perhaps the greatest contemporary historian
Howard Zinn, 1922-2010, Our Favorite Teacher
Howard Zinn: One of the Great Democratic Educators
...and just for fun
The Funniest Kids Test Answers of All Time
Increasing Number Of Parents Opting To Have Children School-Homed
Precocious Kid's Christmas List
What would you add to my list? Let me know!

Growing a Garden with the Lower 9th Ward Fire Station

2011-03-03T19:40:00.000-06:00

Today we got a visit from some of the fire fighters from our only fire station on the in the Lower Ninth Ward who continue, more than 5 years after Hurricane Katrina to operate out of no more than a trailer.

Our local fire fighters continue to be really excited and supportive of our project and it seems like our work to grow good food locally on available land is catching on. They came by today to ask us about soil and compost for a small garden the fire fighters plan to start on the vacant property next to them.

So, we decided we'd get them started with some of our amazing compost in a small bed they built to grow tomatoes, squash, and peppers and we'll expand together with local youth from there.

The fire fighters dedication to healthy, local, organic food was an inspiration. One even committed to becoming a monthly member of our "Good Food Box" program. We're really excited to see where we can continue to develop this relationship while growing good food together and exposing the young people we work with to the possibility of careers in fire fighting.

Thanks guys! Hopefully this is just the beginning of the growing and learning we can do together for years to come.

Soil test!

2011-03-01T21:55:00.000-06:00

Student Anthony Johnson and intern Max Penraat testing soil from the new raised beds. They tested the Ph, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and potassium levels.

The Results

PH level- Neutral

Nitrogen level- High

Phosphorus level- High

Potassium level- High

Looks like we have some great soil on our hands.

Intern dinner

2011-02-28T21:04:00.000-06:00

Intern dinner

Local greens in salad

Mashed sweet potatoes

Our collards sautéed with Crushed peppers and garlic

Baby reds with our dill and parsley

Dumpster dived vegetable curry

Grow Dat with OSBG

2011-02-26T13:57:00.005-06:00

The youth of Grow Dat payed us a visit today for a compost & verma-compost workshop today. The Grow Dat Youth Farm project has grown out of a partnership between the Tulane City Center, New Orleans Food and Farm Network and City Park. We hope they come back again soon!

Growing Power Workshop Weekend Photo Slideshow

2011-02-21T18:09:00.002-06:00

Helping Hands

2011-02-20T23:34:00.001-06:00

Here are photographs of just a few of the helping hands that made the workshops at Our School at Blair Grocery successful today. What a great way to kick off the conference weekend! Thanks to everyone for their hard work and dedication, especially our friends at Growing Power. See you guys again tomorrow for more learning experiences.

Please contact Kacie Fayard at klfayard@gmail.com for information regarding the usage or reproduction of these photographs.

Growing Power Workshop Weekend Photos (part 1)

2011-02-20T20:02:00.000-06:00

Today was the first day of Our School at Blair Grocery's Workshop Weekend with Will Allen and staff from Growing Power.

With well over 100 participants, we introduced our school as a powerful and innovative place of learning and growing for the "Good Food Revolution". Participants toured our space and learned from staff and students about the work we do...

...and participated in workshops on composting, hoop house building, mushroom growing, youth empowerment and more!

Because growing good food starts from the ground up, we spent a lot of time working with Will Allen and learning about the importance of compost and how to get the richest soil possible in order to maximize production.

And we are really excited about the progress we made today on our new giant hoop house that will be completed by tomorrow afternoon.

Thank you to everyone who joined us today. We look forward to seeing you back tomorrow for more amazing work that we can do together.

If you participated and have more pictures of the day's event please send them to Kyle at kmeador@ces-nola.org. We'd love to share those too!

"I Am" by Anthony Johnson

2011-02-16T09:57:00.002-06:00

I AM

I am a black man with special wants

I wonder when my people going to wake up and see the world for what it is.

I hear sirens thru my neighborhood.

I see my family being lost in the world.

I want to put an end to this madness.

I am a black man with special wants.

I pretend that I live in a pure and perfect world.

I feel the tears of men kind as they drop to the ground.

I touch the hearts of people nearest to me.

I worry that one day I would be alone.

I see my parents trying to give me and my sibling something they never had.

I am a black man with special wants.

I understand one man can’t save this world because the problems grow too large.

I say that if we work together as a unit that we can change the world.
I dream of random stuff.

I try to not to fall back into old habits and lifestyles.

I hope we will come to realize the wickedness in the world.

I am a black man with special wants.

Anthony Johsnon is a 16 year old student at Our School at Blair Grocery.

It Takes a Village, Not a Tiger

2011-02-14T17:37:00.001-06:00

by Katha Pollitt for The Nation.

Click here for a link to the original article.

Are you a tiger mother, a soccer mom, a helicopter parent, an attachment mom, a permissive free spirit who just wants your child to be herself? Congratulations. Your kids have a good chance of turning out reasonably well. Not because you are a parenting genius who has hit on the perfect method but because you have the time and energy and cultural capital to give your child what he needs to be successful in today’s world no matter what child-raising method you choose. You are probably not, for example, poor, homeless, functionally illiterate, socially isolated, an addict, in prison, living in substandard housing, working three low-paid jobs—or unemployed for life. You have books in your house, and probably a computer too. You know enough to help your child with homework—and if not, you have the money or networks to find a tutor. You feel comfortable volunteering at your child’s school, being in the PTA, calling the principal, going to parent-teacher conferences. You can afford to take your child to the doctor and the dentist for regular care. If your child should happen to get arrested, as quite a few do—if he’s caught with pot, say, or spray-paints graffiti, or jumps a turnstile—there’s a good chance that the charges can be made to go away, or at least not become part of his permanent record. Your ex may have run off with your best friend, your apartment may be too small, you may hate your job—but you are still a white-collar, college-educated, middle-class person. And that makes all the difference for your children.

The biggest barrier to educational achievement today is not any of the things the media talk endlessly about: poorly prepared teachers, badly run schools, too many tests, low standards. It’s child poverty—which, like poverty in general, has just dropped out of the discourse. The Democrats don’t talk about it, except to wag the finger at deadbeat dads and teen moms, and the media don’t talk about it except in the context of crime or individual triumph. In fact, from the coverage you’d think our current crisis chiefly affected the middle classes—office managers, newly minted lawyers, college grads who have to move back in with their parents—when actually the unemployment rate for people with college degrees is 4.2 percent, which is where it was for all Americans before the recession. By contrast, for those with only a high school diploma unemployment is 9.4 percent; for high school dropouts it’s 14.2 percent. And those figures measure only those actively looking for work, not the millions who’ve given up or have never held a job (some 16.5 percent of black men over 20). All those women pushed off welfare, called success stories because they got a job as a receptionist or a security guard or a clerk, with supposedly the hope of something better to come? Forget them.

Inconveniently, though, the poor and near poor, whom we don’t care about, come attached to children, for whom we supposedly have some concern. So how are the kids doing?

Some facts from the National Center for Children in Poverty: one in five families is food-insecure, i.e., they don’t have enough food for everyone in the family at least some of the time. Health? Poor children are far more at risk than better-off kids: from secondhand smoke (32 percent vs. 12 percent of nonpoor children), low or moderate levels of lead in their blood (30 percent vs. 15 percent), lack of health insurance (16 percent vs. 8 percent) and lack of dental care (18 percent of poor kids hadn’t seen a dentist in the past year vs. 11 percent of nonpoor children, which is bad enough). Poor children are more likely to have asthma (18 percent vs. 13 percent). They are more likely to have missed five or more days of school for health-related reasons (20 percent vs. 15 percent). Twice as many poor parents report that their child has “definite or severe” emotional, behavioral or social problems (10 percent vs. 5 percent). Poor kids are also more likely to be obese, to get insufficient exercise, to be diagnosed with ADHD or other learning disabilities and to have mothers who are in poor health themselves. No wonder they are less likely to be described by their parents as being in very good or excellent health (71 percent vs. 87 percent).

Poor children’s home lives are more precarious. Almost one in five children in poor or low-income families had moved in the last year, which means disrupted schooling and stress. In 2007, 1.7 million kids had a parent in prison, including one in fifteen black children. In 2008, around 460,000 children spent time in foster care. In 2009, 2.2 million were being raised by grandparents or other relatives.

Poor kids are more likely to be raised by single mothers and to have parents who didn’t finish high school or go to college. Even just living with other poor people seems to harm kids. Those who live in disadvantaged neighborhoods have lower reading scores; so do low-income kids who go to schools where the student body is 75 percent or more minority. Most black and Latino kids attend such schools. By the age of 2, poorer children have fallen cognitively behind those from wealthier families.

We’re looking at millions of kids, disproportionately black and Latino, who face a wide range of serious difficulties: how can that not affect their ability to do well in school? Moreover, the number of poor and near poor children is growing. In 2009 more than 1.2 million children entered poverty, even as school budgets are being cut all over the country: classes are getting bigger, teachers are being laid off, extracurriculars are being cut. You can see why the schools say they can’t do it all.

The parenting wars look like they are about children, but really they are only about each parent’s own child. That’s why they serve such a useful social function. Without them we might have to think about the frightening place America is becoming for ever more millions of kids. Who knows? We might even feel that we should do something about it.

Wow! Look at the building!

2011-02-11T20:01:00.000-06:00

REGISTER NOW FOR GROWING POWER WORKSHOP WEEKEND TODAY!

2011-02-09T13:58:00.000-06:00

Don't miss out on the opportunity to participate in the Growing Power Workshop Weekend February 19-21 when we host Will Allen at Our School at Blair Grocery.

Follow this link for registration details:
http://www.osbgrotc.blogspot.com

SPACE IS LIMITED - REGISTER TODAY!

Harvest in Hammond

2011-02-08T13:44:00.000-06:00

Every week for the last month or so we have been harvesting greens from our farm partner Sunflower in Hammond. We hope to keep this relationship alive as her farm and her projects develop alongside ours.

Garden rows made from clay soil, sand, manure, and saw dust. And on the rights an herb spiral!

Arugal, baby mustard greens, and green onions!

Foods Corps! Grow for it!

2011-02-08T13:05:00.001-06:00

The folks at Food Corps have reached out to OSBG to spread their message! Would you love to grow food in school gardens and be supported to do it? If you are interested in this work please please please check out the information below.

FOODCORPS RECRUITING FIRST CLASS OF SERVICE MEMBERS FOR SCHOOL FOOD SYSTEMS

FoodCorps, a brand new and much anticipated national service program, opens applications for its first class of service members. Those selected will dedicate one year of full-time public service in school food systems – sourcing healthful local food for school cafeterias, expanding nutrition education programs, and building and tending school gardens.

FoodCorps is a scalable solution to the national obesity epidemic. Since 1980, the percentage of American children who are overweight or obese has doubled. With one in four U.S. children struggling with hunger and one in three obese or overweight, FoodCorps addresses the root cause of both: access to healthy food.

FoodCorps seeks up to 80 young men and women with a passion for serving their country by building healthy communities. Beginning in August 2011, service members will get their hands dirty in one of 10 states: Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina or Oregon.

Applications and more information can be found at www.foodcorps.org.

Contact:

Debra Eschmeyer

debra@foodcorps.org, w: 419.753.3412, c: 419.905.8612

FOODCORPS RECRUITING FIRST CLASS OF SERVICE MEMBERS FOR SCHOOL FOOD SYSTEMS

NEW YORK CITY – (February 8, 2011) — Today, FoodCorps, a brand new and much anticipated national service program, opens applications for its first class of service members. Those selected will dedicate one year of full-time public service in school food systems – sourcing healthful local food for school cafeterias, expanding nutrition education programs, and building and tending school gardens.

“We’re on the lookout for hard-working young leaders who believe healthy food should be available to every child,” said Executive Director Curt Ellis. “Being part of FoodCorps is a chance to make that vision a reality for kids in this country—and to have fun in the process.”

FoodCorps recognizes though broad in its reach, America’s obesity problem does not affect all parts of our country equally. First, there are geographic patterns to its severity. High rates of childhood obesity plague whole regions, particularly the American South: North Carolina 18%; Arkansas 20%; Mississippi 22%. Zooming in on a map of American obesity, there are also localized geographies in crisis: rural communities in Oregon where children are twice as likely to be overweight as their counterparts in healthy Portland; and small-town kids in Iowa who, despite living amidst the nation’s richest topsoil, lack regular access to the fresh fruits and vegetables required for a healthy diet.

In addition to geography, there are demographic and environmental patterns associated with the epidemic, including: 1) Ethnicity: in Michigan, 42% of African-American children are overweight or obese, compared with 28% of non-Hispanic Whites. In New Mexico, American Indian kindergarteners suffer obesity at three times the rate of non-Hispanic Whites. 2) Poverty: in Massachusetts, wealthy Arlington maintains a 10% childhood overweight and obesity rate, compared to 47% in impoverished Lawrence. In the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona, where annual per capita income is uniquely low––$8,100––rates of Type II diabetes, diagnosed in children as young as six, are estimated to be the nation’s highest. 3) Food Insecurity: in Maine, where 1 in 5 children are at risk of hunger (the highest rate in New England), a low-quality diet puts the same kids at heightened risk of obesity.

“Schools––their classrooms, cafeterias, and playgrounds––are the logical frontlines in our nation’s response to childhood obesity,” said Debra Eschmeyer, FoodCorps Program Director. “More than 31 million children eat school food five days a week, receiving more than half their daily calories from school food programs. What we feed our children, and what we teach them about food, affects how they learn, how they grow and how long they will live. Considering that when last studied, only 2% of schoolchildren met the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the nation’s school food environments have significant need for improvement.”

America’s sweeping epidemic of childhood obesity requires us to martial a national response. The known geographic, demographic and environmental hotbeds of this epidemic are strategic places to concentrate our work. Accordingly, in partnership with Host Sites in the ten states identified above––Arizona (Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health), Arkansas (Arkansas Children’s Research Hospital), Iowa (National Center for Appropriate Technology), Maine (University of Maine Cooperative Extension), Massachusetts (The Food Project), Michigan (Michigan State University), Mississippi (Mississippi Roadmap to Health Equity), New Mexico (University of New Mexico), North Carolina (North Carolina State University and North Carolina 4-H) and Oregon (Oregon Department of Agriculture)––a new national service program, FoodCorps, stands ready to bring significant assistance: a “troop surge” for healthy kids.

“We’ve heard from young people around the country interested in developing knowledge and skills in farming, food systems and public health,” said Cecily Upton, FoodCorps Program Director for Sites and Service. “FoodCorps will connect these young leaders with hands-on experience and the opportunity to change our food system for the better.”

Applications and more information can be found at www.foodcorps.org. The FoodCorps recruitment video, created by Peabody-winning filmmaker Ian Cheney (King Corn) can be viewed and embedded from the site as well.

ABOUT FOODCORPS:

FoodCorps is a new national service organization that seeks to reverse childhood obesity by increasing vulnerable children’s knowledge of, engagement with, and access to healthy food. Service members build and tend school gardens, conduct nutrition education, and facilitate Farm to School programming that brings healthy, affordable local food into public schools. The program also trains a cadre of leaders for careers in food and agriculture. FoodCorps was developed with funding from AmeriCorps and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, in partnership with Occidental College, the National Farm to School Network, Slow Food USA, The National Center for Appropriate Technology and Wicked Delicate, as part of an open planning process that engaged thousands of stakeholders from around the country. www.foodcorps.org

###

Check it out and Grow for it!

Fresh Is Fresh

2011-01-28T11:44:00.000-06:00

Afterschool Growing Growers students discussing Fresh: The Movie

Fresh, one of our afterschool students, aced his quiz on Fresh the Movie. Fresh Got Fresh.

Here's the quiz:

What grows in Iowa?
What is the problem with feed lots?
What are cows given to eat in feed lots? What are cows supposed to eat?
What is monoculture? Name 1 disease cause by monoculture
What is the difference between conventional/industrial agriculture and organic agriculture?
Why does Joel Salatin move his animals around the farm and Why do birds follow the cows?
Why is cheap food expensive?
What did you notice about the music in the movie?
Do you think that they interviewed enough people? Why?
What did the movie do to keep you interested?
How are the farmers spreading their messages?

Our Automobile Needs at Blair Grocery

2011-01-26T17:45:00.000-06:00

In January 2009 OSBG got our first minivan as a donation from a good friend. It was a white minivan adoringly names White Minivan. It was our first vehicle that wasn't a massive blue bus. After a while we had to replace the front end. That was expensive! Then we got another donated car and had to replace the front end. It was expensive! Then we bought another minivan and had to...I think you get the picture.

Louisiana roads are a death sentence for any front end. Any used car more than 3 years old is likely to have hundreds of dollars if work needed on the front end. So we got smart. A Volvo mechanic called us in California contacted us about helping us out for a bit. Before he was scheduled to be in NOLA we had a conference where he lives. Long story short, he found us a peach of a car that he had worked on for the last 20 years and new for a fact that it had been well maintained. So far Peaches has made 10,000 miles with us with no problems and no leaks.

We're heading to CA again soon and our mechanic friend has another car lined up for us. We're hoping to have to funds to purchase the car for 2,000-2,500 to replace an ailing minivan. Volvo wagons are super safe therefore the insurance is much cheaper and with all of the scurrying around dropping off and picking up students. So, if you'd like to make a donation to support our car fund please click on the "Donate Now" button on the right of the website or if you'd like to make a donation by check it can be made out to Our School at Blair Grocery and sent to 1740 Benton St. New Orleans, LA 70117.

Thanks so much for your continued support!

Anthony's experience at the SSAWG conference.

2011-01-25T17:25:00.001-06:00

Last week Arthur, Tuner, Rob and myself attended the SSAWG conference about urban and rural farming in the south and in Tennessee. We were surrounded by many farmers who all shared the same goals and ideas. When we arrived, I went to the Crab Tree Farm, a wonderful farm in Chattanooga, Tennessee. They had special events and their own farmers market. Crab Tree Farm is the closest farm in Chattanooga, Tennessee. When I was asked what I thought about Crab Tree Farm, I said ” Chattanooga Crab Tree was an awesome place and I hope to visit again soon.” When I got back to the convention area with Arthur we attended the meetings about sustainable farming. We also attended a silent auction were they were selling important farming tools, plants, pictures, etc… Louisiana had their own meeting just like Mississippi and other southern states did. We talked about some of the issues about urban and rural sustainable farming, for example, how to market our fruits, veggies, and even sell meat at our farmers market. After thirty minutes of talking and commenting on our problems, we finally got together and made solutions to the problems on how to make an healthier environment for us and the generations to follow.

Come By and Get Some Good Food

2011-01-24T01:03:00.002-06:00

Come by OSBG Sundays from 1 - 3pm to pick up some Good Food. Beginning this month, OSBG is selling Good Food boxes to our neighbors in the Lower Nine and friends throughout the city.

We're proud to partner with Hollygrove Market and Farm to begin our Good Food program. We're working with our afterschool Markets Assistants to develop a strong customer base by the summer. Above you'll see a picture of our large box - fresh broccoli, green onions, mushrooms, potatoes, citrus, strawberries, salad greens, chard and cilantro - sold to residents of the lower nine for $20 and our supporters from outside the neighborhood for $25.

Cornel, one of the young men in our Growing Growers program, picking out his Good Food Box.

Two weeks ago, we began a trial period with a handful of our neighbors, offering sample boxes in exchange for their input on the program. Our Market Assistants drop off the produce each Sunday and go around the neighborhood Wednesday afternoons collecting feedback and taking orders. During the market, they cook samples, sell boxes and represent the program.

Stop by next Sunday and get some Good Food. Make sure to get there early - supplies are low!

Email cory@osbgnola.org to guarantee your box or set up a regular order.