December 2009

Where will you begin?

Collective Roots needs your help. Without generous donors like you, we wouldn’t be here today. And we wouldn’t be able to continue on this path: building our award-winning school gardens and supporting sustainable market gardeners like Bob Hartley, who grow affordable food for all. Our goal is to raise $85,000 by December 31st to fund next year’s programs. We can’t do it without you!

Dear Friends,

We are the stewards of the earth, and of our children's future. There is no one else. It is an awesome responsibility. It is also the source of our greatest potential.

Sometimes, this idea overwhelms me. It is hard to know where to begin. But here at Collective Roots, there's a simple place where we always start: a plot of land, some seeds, and a little sun and water. You see, gardens are the heart and soul of our work. With the abundance and joy they bring, even our humblest gardens harbor unimaginable power. From modest backyard plots to expansive, lush acres on school grounds, our gardens have the power to heal and transform landscapes, shape young lives, and create new and meaningful livelihoods.

WHERE IT ALL BEGINS

Tony Sanchez is 11 years old. He has been a part of Collective Roots' Garden Club for 4 years. When he grows up, he wants to be a farmer, raising pigs, chickens, and "lots of vegetables, especially broccoli". More teaching assistant than student, Tony knows all the plants that grow in the garden. He can tell you when to harvest a pumpkin, thresh amaranth, and cook a mouthwatering plate of Chipotle Collard Greens. In a landscape dominated by fast food and foreclosures, Tony has found both solace and strength in the garden.

For the Reverend Bob Hartley, it was his father who kept a garden. A staple of his family's diet, the amazing array of fresh vegetables Bob grew up eating were just a part of daily life in the Hartley's modest home. It wasn't until years later that Bob had any idea how special that garden was, or how following in his father's footsteps would help him transform his community in a time of crisis.

Like Tony and Bob, I was also very fortunate to grow up gardening. My mother, a single parent, always made sure we had a modest but well-loved garden. Even while I suffered through "forced labor" I developed a taste for simple, hard work. I knew the pure joy of eating a freshly picked tomato. Even today, my memory is fresh and full of hours spent outside and free. And yet, last summer I realized that it has been almost two years since I last put my hands into the earth. Two years! Two years since seeds and soil shaped the rhythm and flow of my life.

SURVIVE AND THRIVE

The garden is also a part of my soul. It is where I draw strength. But my calling, running our thriving nonprofit, sometimes takes every ounce of my energy. That's even more true in a time of such phenomenal growth.

Collective Roots is nine years old, but in just the past two years we've opened our certified farmer's market, created a Backyard Gardener Network, built 4 new school gardens, planted 150 orchard trees, received congressional recognition of our work, and been placed on Oprah Magazine's "Fresh Food for All" List. Extraordinary accomplishments. Yet even when receiving an award from the U.S. Congress - as much as it filled me with pride for our organization - I somehow felt disconnected from our successes.

It was not long after when I first met the Reverend Bob Hartley. An unassuming man with a genial, infectious laugh, Bob was the newest member of our Backyard Gardener Network. It had also been a while since he'd had a garden. But like me, Bob was determined to get back to the garden, still so vivid from his childhood. With encouragement from Collective Roots' staff, Bob and his wife Clara started to grow a few summer vegetables - including the most amazingly crisp bright green rows of collard greens.

Here in Silicon Valley gardens like Bob's are an increasingly rare treasure. You see, we all live in an urban landscape with four times as many fast food outlets as sources of fresh food. In Bob and Clara's hometown, East Palo Alto, the ratio is much higher: 11 times as much fast food! That's an awful lot of greasy burgers. The worst part? These fast food joints are cheap. Cheaper than the supermarket, cheaper than fresh vegetables.

But nothing's more affordable than growing your own. As Bob told me, "When I was growing up, there weren't a lot of McDonald's around. And we didn't have a lot of change in our pockets. So our menus had to do more with nutrition and being able to survive and thrive for the tomorrows. So we struggled for food, and that struggle brought us closer together - certainly as a family - and consequently as a community."

GREENS AND MEANS

There are so many reasons to support our work...

...it's about our planet, and the resources we use to create and transport our food.

...it's about our bodies, how we choose to fuel and care for them.

...it's about our communities, and how open spaces renew our connection with the natural world and one another.

...most importantly, it's about our children, and the many ways we empower them to care for their bodies, their community, and their planet.

I was one of the first full-time organizers of farmers' markets in California — back in 1979. Back then, only a few of us were convinced that the idea of a farmer's market could take root. But our hard work paid off. And thanks to the enduring support of the communities across the state, those first certified farmer's markets - and many others like them - exist today.

But we still have so much work to do.

Unlike those early markets, where we advertised a 30-40% discount versus grocery stores, farmer's markets today are not cheap. And as you know, the twin crises of obesity and diabetes darken our children's future. Meanwhile, struggling families can't afford to make rent and healthy food choices simultaneously.

At Tony's school, 93% of the kids qualify for free or reduced price lunches. That means that, in a bad week, the food a child gets at school might be the only food she gets. In our first season, running the market was tough - we lost a lot of farmers because people weren't buying enough. Our customers loved us, but they only bought what they could afford - which wasn't all that much. I had to admit, if Tony's family couldn't afford to shop at the farmer's market, then we had no business running one.

That's where the Reverend and his wife came in. Bob and Clara set up a small produce stand at the East Palo Alto Community Farmers Market, the new market created by Collective Roots. It looked pretty modest next to our larger vendor's stands - just a small card table with a red checkered tablecloth and pop-up tent.

And yet, their crisp green collard greens - only $1.50 a bunch - were soon the first thing to sell out.

Bob found that through this work, he connected with his community in ways he could not through his parish or his family. "It takes a different approach to community organizing than I'm used to." he said, "I start talking, not about sons and guns specifically, but about greens and means. And how you can bring back some respect for each other."

Respect for each other. Respect for the earth. And respect for the power of a community to heal itself.

BACK TO THE GARDEN

Inspired by Bob, I decided that I would try reintegrating gardening into my job. It's not in a typical Executive Director's job description to weed and rake and harvest, but then again we're not a typical organization. Every Friday, I would spend my last four hours of the week at Collective Roots' flagship garden at the East Palo Alto Charter School - Tony's school.

The idea was daunting at first - rearranging meetings, juggling deadlines, creating time where none seemed to exist - and yet that first day out I had a sense of exhilaration that I had not felt in two years' time.

The first thing I noticed were the kids in Garden Club - breathless, covered in dirt, and absolutely radiant with excitement. They were playing with such freedom and abandon, darting in and out of the giant green dome, hiding behind the giant rosemary bushes, getting to know a resident ladybug, and creating elaborate forts out of sticks, leaves, and flowers.

Tony was clearly a bit of a celebrity in Garden Club. Three girls - Sarah, Vidi, and Selenne - giggled as he guided Lorenzo, a first grader with an impish smile, through the process of harvesting "sour leaves" - sorrel growing by the pond - and offering them to an unsuspecting volunteer. My own impish smile mirrored Lorenzo's - it was about time I got back to the garden.

FOOD FOR ALL

Every Friday, Tony and the kids in Garden Club make a dish using vegetables from the garden. Like a family, they sit around a big table and share their meal. This week, it was Chipotle Collard Greens. Everyone but Lorenzo loved the fusion of sweet and spicy on the rich greens - even though his sister Andrea did a lot of the cooking. Tony announced it was the best dish they had ever made, "except that it needs some broccoli".

The East Palo Alto Community Farmer's Market just finished its second season. Bob and Clara's collards are replenishing, and Clara just put some seeds in the ground for mustards, collards and peas. When we re-open next spring, Bob and Clara's greens will sell out quick, so be sure to come nice and early.

If you're lucky enough to get a couple bunches, you can try our Garden Club's Chipotle Collard Greens recipe at home. I've included a recipe card for you to keep. See for yourself the magic that comes with fresh food, simply prepared, grown by a family whose hands you can shake when you buy them.

If you understand this magic, you understand what Collective Roots is all about.

I hope that your generous donation can help us to usher in a new era of fresh food for all, with school gardens, affordable farmer's markets, and an army of sustainable market gardeners like Bob and Clara.

Food activist and farmer Joel Salatin writes: "You, as a food buyer, have the distinct privilege of proactively participating in shaping the world your children will inherit." After my first day back in the garden, I couldn't agree more. The food we buy, the food we share, and the spaces we create where our children's lives take root. All of them are critical in shaping our planet's future, because we know...

We are the stewards of the earth, and of our children's future. There is no one else. It is an awesome responsibility. It is also the source of our greatest potential.

All you have to do is begin.

Warm wishes to you and yours this holiday season,

Wolfram Alderson
Executive Director

P. S. We hope that next season, if we can reach our goal of raising $85,000 by December 31st, that at least 25% of the produce we sell will come from local market gardeners like the Hartleys - dramatically lowering our market's prices, creating new livelihoods in a city with 22% unemployment, and dotting our concrete landscapes with small oases of green.

With your generosity, our market could someday become the first farmer's market to have all its food grown both by and for the neighborhood! Bob is ready to lead the charge, encouraging his friends and neighbors to start new gardens or get back to their agricultural roots.

But we can't do it without your help.