TRAVERSE CITY -- Potatoes and tomatoes, herbs, flowers and roots ...
On one of the few bright warm days earlier this month, Nili Magee and Mackenzie Vance dug into the soil -- shovelful by shovelful -- and prepared a home for seed potatoes.
Completing two long trenches, they meticulously placed the vegetable sections inside before topping with a layer of leaf mold. The students were creating a foundation for this summer's Youth Market Garden program, their hard work part of a plan to teach where food comes from. In its second summer, the program has six participants ages 14 and up, each attending on varying schedules.
"It's kind of scary not knowing where our food comes from," said Vance, who just graduated from Traverse City West Senior High School.
"This is my first time growing potatoes; I've never had the space before," said the former casual gardener.
Years ago, Magee grew tomatoes with her mother, but has learned to enjoy the process as well as the deeper purpose.
"I want to have my own garden because I think everyone should know how to grow their own food," she said.
Presented by Little Artshram with the help of adult mentors, the Youth Market Garden program is based at the Community Gardens at the Grand Traverse Commons in Traverse City. Guide Penny Krebiehl, founder of Little Artshram, is basing the program on Community Supported Agricultural principles. This means the students have planned and planted, and all summer will nurture, grow, harvest and market the bounty themselves.
"I think a great piece of inspiration is that if we're going to contribute in a healthy way to educate about growing food, we need to do it with the CSA model as one of the bases rather than a (mass production, for profit) system that we know is falling apart and doesn't work," she said. "And how to do it in the context of this being community-owned property that is focused on education and not on profit."
"We're trying to generate and sustain what we're doing," Krebiehl added.
Considering the Commons' farm market their home base, program participants have already been a presence there selling heirloom tomato plant seedlings they grew. This exercise, launched from seeds saved last fall, generated another farming lesson.
"We overplanted and we've been selling this stuff to help make our costs up," said Krebiehl, who is in her fifth season holding youth programs at the Community Gardens. "We earned about three-quarters of the cost from these saved tomato seeds."
The students also have been sharing a stand at the downtown farmers market with mentor Nic Welty, co-founder of the 9 Bean Rows CSA.
"Last summer we sold produce at the farmers market and were there for the whole process, which is pretty cool," said Vance, who participated in the Youth Market Garden program last summer. "Up until I started here last summer, I hadn't done anything like this."
The students are managing four plots in the Community Gardens this year, a trim from last year's ambitious six. An earlier training week helped kick off the program but now it's all about tending what has been planted.
"We're still learning, we're in the confusing, complexity space -- so to speak -- of the cycle," Krebiehl said. "That means we're learning what it means to write a business plan and take a risk like a CSA farmer -- no salaries, the money is going back into the program at this point."
Little Artshram is also offering a Beehive Art Farm Camp for children ages 6 and older. The four-week program begins Monday and runs daily from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. For more information, see www.littleartshram.org or e-mail info@littleartshram.org.
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