In the ruins of Fort Bragg High”s once proud agriculture program, an enthusiastic new group put down roots on Sunday, or at least they planted some garlic and a green delicious apple tree.
Noyo Food Forest, a group started by five young women who love to garden and want to share their enthusiasm for spray-free, local cultivation, held a land blessing and potluck Sunday at their new learning garden. More than 50 people gathered in a huge circle, with adults and youngsters sharing stories and songs and then each person planting a clove of garlic.
Working with Fort Bragg Unified Superintendent Steve Lund, high school Principal Alan Urbani, nutrition program teacher and administrator Petra Schulte, Pilar Gray, who runs the cafeteria and oversees student nutrition programs, and Safe Passage Family Resource Center, volunteers from the group are creating a new school resource in the footprint of the old agriculture program site. Wednesday workdays from 3 p.m. until dark have been going on since summer. Volunteers are needed
“The food we grow in the garden will be sold to the school district food service program and then served to the students in the cafeteria” said organizer Susan Lightfoot. “Pilar Gray, the food services director, is working with us to make this happen,” Lightfoot said.
Noyo Food Forest is working with the Mendocino County Office of Education”s Regional Occupation Program (ROP) on a new class to be offered to the community starting in January called “Introduction to Organic Ornamental and Food Garden Design.” Noyo Food Forest will hire five youth interns and will provide drop-in after-school activities in the garden beginning fall 2007, Lightfoot said.
The organization”s goal is to sustain education and youth programs through the selling of organic produce and vegetable starts at the farm and the farmers” market. Noyo Food Forest will begin offering hands-on workshops to the community beginning spring 2007. At the high school site there are two large greenhouses for growing, plus more than a half acre outside. One area will be used for native plants, which can be provided for local landscaping and park efforts. A tiny children”s greenhouse has even been set up.
Noyo Food Forest also hopes to find a spot for a community garden and a similar learning garden near Fort Bragg Middle School.
Noyo Food Forest”s mission is to “re-establish the connection between people, food, health and the environment. We cultivate a sustainable, affordable and accessible local food system by providing opportunities for education, enterprise, and community involvement.”
At Sunday”s blessing of the garden, local Native Americans provided songs and expressed enthusiasm for the respect for the land the new approach has shown.
Noyo Food Forest formed in 2005 following one of the community meetings about redevelopment of the former Georgia-Pacific mill site. Five young women, Lightfoot, Kimberly Morgan, Katrina Aschenbrenner, Tamara Faulkner, and Brooke Wilder, dreamed of transforming the five empty industrial-size greenhouses on the mill site into year-round organic food production.
But hopes for a quick cleanup and redevelopment of the mill site waned as controversy over toxins erupted. Noyo Food Forest shifted focus from the mill site into the town itself. Lightfoot now worries that the herbicides used in the old greenhouses over the years might make it an inappropriate place to grow produce.
To raise awareness of the need for a more sustainable local food economy, volunteers participated in the annual 4th of July parade in Mendocino and handed out over 200 organic vegetable starts to the public, according to Noyo Food Forest”s brochure. Volunteers attended leadership workshops and nutrition education trainings and visited community agriculture projects in other areas. “World-renowned permaculture expert John Jeavons taught a double-digging” workshop to over 50 local gardeners and donated the proceeds to the Noyo Food Forest,” the brochure states.
“Word spread like wildfire and it wasn”t long until the Fort Bragg Unified School District caught wind of this grassroots movement and enthusiastically invited the Noyo Food Forest to utilize the dilapidated former student farm at Fort Bragg High School for its first site. The timing was perfect as the district had just passed a student wellness policy which strives to have all food offered to the students be fresh and locally grown,”” the brochure states.
The Noyo Food Forest Board of Directors includes Steve Lund, George Reinhardt of the Noyo Headlands Design Group, Scott Zeramby, owner of Dirt Cheap, and Marty Johnson, of C”mon Home to Eat and CELL.
In October 2006, the Noyo Food Forest incorporated as a organization and is presently awaiting approval for federal tax-exemption. Safe Passage Family Resource Center wholeheartedly agreed to fiscally sponsor the new organization in the meantime.
Fort Bragg High School”s agriculture program, which once featured animal and produce programs, offered agriculture classes through last year but had been downsizing in recent years. Principal Urbani said credentialing requirements under No Child Left Behind mean that a teacher must have an agriculture-specific credential to teach ag at the high school level. With only two classes, it is difficult to hire an ag-credentialed teacher. The more stringent requirement has cost the high school electives recently, he said. Such classes were once taught by community members with expertise in the field.
Students have strict requirements for what they can take in school and if failing in an area like English or math, they often lose out on the chance to take an elective class, reducing the pool of students, Urbani explained.
Urbani said the construction class has helped rebuild the ag program buildings. A bright spot for the schools is that the gardens might help provide nutritious foods. Urbani said very strict guidelines for nutrition go into effect in the 2007-2008 school year.
For more information about Noyo Food Forest, send email to Susan Lightfoot at noyofoodforest@riseup.net or call 964-0218.
