There were no big parades or political protests in Fort Bragg for Earth Day on Sunday, just a gathering of people in a circle in a field behind Fort Bragg High School.
That suited Mai Kobayashi of Fort Bragg just fine.
“This is just a regular dirt field that has turned into a community center, a place for the whole community to gather and celebrate how we are all connected to the earth,” Kobayashi, an Aerators volunteer, said.
The Noyo Food Forest hosted the gathering with a potluck that included the winter greens of their first harvest, along with barbecued steak, vegan specialties and local organic apple sausage.
The potluck followed a cleanup on Noyo Beach that yielded 260 pounds of trash and then moved to the organization”s Learning Garden, located on the site of the old Fort Bragg High School agriculture program.
The Noyo Food Forest is an organization started mostly by a younger generation than those who have celebrated environmental causes on April 22 since college students launched it in 1970.
The Noyo Food Forest practices environmentalism not with politics but by working in the dirt.
“The [Regional Occupational Program] Organic Food Production course has been going very well. We have another seven classes, ending June 9. We have an average class size of 20 students, pretty good for a Saturday class. All of the upcoming classes include field trips to local farms, including John Jeavons” Ecology Action farm in Willits,” said Susan Lightfoot, an organizer of the Food Forest.
Jeavons pioneered “double digging,” a method of deep soil cultivation demonstrated at the Learning Garden Sunday, followed by the planting of potatoes and other vegetables.
Over 300 students from Fort Bragg High School, Dana Gray”s after-school program and Shelter Cove Continuation Middle School now come to the garden for activities. The Harvest of the Month partnership connects young people with healthy food, from seed to plate.
Weekly Wednesday workdays are from 3 until 6:30 p.m., rain or shine, at the Learning Garden. Activities include planting, building, digging, painting, sign making and more. Free healthy snacks are offered to volunteers.
The Food Forest will hire three youth interns this July for a four-week internship. These interns will learn the basics of organic food production. The summer produce will be sold at the Farmers” Market.
“A cool piece here is that we”re going to have pedal-powered produce, riding our bikes from the high school to the market,” Lightfoot said.
Kobayashi won”t stop her hands-on work on behalf of the earth with Earth Day. This coming weekend she will working in Caspar for the “Gorse Festivus” to remove some gorse. As well as hacking the invasive, ankle-ripping thorny plant, they will recycle it, making gorse-flower wine and gorse paper.
The fun runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at Jughandle Creek Nature Center on the east side of Highway 1 in Caspar.
