Cultivating community: Learning and serving at UGArden

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Jordan Powers: 0:00

Welcome to Cultivating Curiosity, where we get down and dirty with the experts on all the ways science and agriculture touch our lives, from what we eat to how we live. I'm Jordan Powers.

Emily Cabrera: 0:12

And I'm Emily Cabrera. We're from the University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

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Jordan Powers: 0:20

We are here with Ty Brooks, farm director at UGArden, a student community farm at the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Ty, thanks for coming in this morning.

Ty Brooks: 0:30

Absolutely. I'm glad to be here.

Jordan Powers: 0:31

Awesome. And we know you came in from the field just to be here. So an extra round of appreciation for that. I know it's a busy time - well, it's always a busy time at UGArden.

Ty Brooks: 0:39

Mmm-hmm

Jordan Powers: 0:40

And we also know that UGArden covers all three main CAES missions, research, teaching and outreach. Tell us how this unique space provides opportunities for engagement, service and experimentation.

Ty Brooks: 0:52

There are innumerable ways that we engage the students at UGArden. That's basically how we run the farm day to day. So, our students are either working as interns, student workers, classes are happening out there. And then every week we're having multiple volunteer opportunities. It's open to the community, but predominantly UGA students are the ones out there helping us get things harvested, wash, packed in the coolers, and making the farm run each and every day. As far as service, everything that we do at the farm, or at least the majority of the things we do at the farm, as far as vegetable production and fruit production, all that is getting returned, or at least the majority of it, over 90-something percent of it is getting returned to the community to fight food insecurity through a couple different ways. When a student is helping, or they're helping harvest or helping work on the farm, it's all service at the same time. And then lastly, the research. A lot of the research projects are more student engaged research projects. We do a lot of informal research, and we do a lot of research just to benefit ourselves. And I always tell everybody, you know, farming is always an experiment. Everything you do, you're trying, trying something new, trying to figure out better, new ways to do things.

Emily Cabrera: 1:55

You mentioned that 90% of the produce comes back to the community. Can you talk about how you have partnered with programs in the community and with the University of Georgia to help get that produce out to community members?

Ty Brooks: 2:09

One of those biggest partnerships would be with the Campus Kitchen at UGA. That partnership has been very long. Campus Kitchen, UGArden came about at about the same time, they were sort of conceptualized back in like 2010 and I think once they started growing produce at UGArden, when they started out just with a very small field space, even then, they sort of realized very quickly that they have a lot more produce than the students could take home and use and utilize. And so, when Campus Kitchen came about, like I said, around about that same time, they wanted to do that work, getting this food back into the community. So, it was a natural partnership. And so now annually, on average, we produce about 15,000 pounds of produce. Like I said over 90% of that produce is going right to Campus Kitchen. So on those volunteer days after it gets harvested, washed and packed, it goes into the coolers. At that point, Campus Kitchen takes over, and they'll take that produce and distribute it. It gets distributed as both fresh produce, it gets put in like grocery bags and goes out into the community, and it goes into meals that the students involved with Campus Kitchen actually make themselves. And then we'll distribute. Those people that get those food are typically clients that are referred to them through the Athens Community Council on Aging. And a lot of times it's seniors raising children, and that's about 50 families each week that are receiving those grocery bags. But then some of the produce is also going out to local food pantries. Each week, on Wednesdays, we send out about 150 items to the Covenant Food Pantry, the Covenant Presbyterian Church on the East Side. So, our stuff is getting out numerous ways through the community. There's programs with neighborhood leaders who work very intimately with their community, know people, and so they'll come a lot of times and pick up food directly at the farm, pick up produce, and then get that out in the community as well.

Jordan Powers: 3:47

Absolutely incredible work, looking at the opportunities for students to learn, but then to turn around and benefit the broader community is something that is truly inspiring. And I know I heard you mention volunteer days, so we will be sure to link to that in the show notes, because I know there are many opportunities for people in the community to get involved and help harvest that produce. So, we will be sure to include that for listeners who might be interested or local and interested in coming by to help that initiative. We know you also partner with UGA Office of Sustainability. Can you talk a little bit about what that partnership looks like?

Ty Brooks: 4:19

It's very much one of collaboration and support. Office of Sustainability actually helps provide a little bit of the operational funds for the garden each year for UGArden. And they will take some of the interns that we have as well. So we have a compost intern that they help provide for the farm each semester. That we go out, and they will manage our compost for us. A lot of times, that's actually in partnership with another volunteer community member that helps volunteer with that. So the Office of Sustainability also has several grant projects that'll happen regularly, and so some of those will happen at the farm, student projects. We just finished up one for a gray water garden that was all our wash water from when we wash and pack produce that was just getting washed out into the field. Now it goes into a garden space, it helps nurture those plants for beautification purposes as well as we are able to harvest some of that for our herbal program as well. And then there are several different projects, Office of Sustainability works closely with recycling and composting with Athens-Clarke County, and so they asked us, I think, last year, to be one of the satellite drop off sites for Athens-Clarke County compost. So we have a couple bins right near the farm where community members can come and drop off their compost. And what's really great about that is, when we do on-farm composting, we're not able to compost things like dairy or meat and these sorts of things that the county is able to compost. And so because Campus Kitchen is also sort of staged at the farm, they also, when they do their grocery pickups, food rescue programs that they're getting from local grocers, they'll have dairy and meat as well. And so when they have things that are going bad or whatever, they're able to put that in that county compost, so that we can really make sure a lot of the waste is going back into the compost. Then other partnerships, let's see Office of Sustainability takes care of some of the green roofs around campus, and so we oversee some interns and help provide management and support for the green roofs, specifically the Geography green roof. And then recently, Office of Sustainability has started helping with the University Village has a community garden space, and so we've helped consult with that and help them sort of get things organized and provide support for their interns that help with that as well. And then, very recently, also last year, I believe, Office of Sustainability has been putting on a student farmer's market on Wednesdays at the Tate Center, and they wanted some produce to offer at their farmer's market, and so we started providing that to them maybe two semesters ago, I guess, at this point. And so that ends up being really the only produce that ever gets sold off the farm. And that's probably about 30 items that go each week to that farmer's market. So lots of different ways that we work with the Office of Sustainability.

Jordan Powers: 6:42

And we will link to the Office of Sustainability in the show notes as well, so that listeners can learn more about some of those projects that Ty was just speaking about.

Emily Cabrera: 6:50

So I'm thinking about an operational farm, and the day to day, the things a farmer thinks about, the people that work on the farm that help that farm function.

Ty Brooks: 6:58

Yes.

Emily Cabrera: 6:58

This is a very unique place. It's a student community farm centered around teaching. But just as you have said, there are so many other things happening and partnerships involved and initiatives taking place that you guys are not just on the farm itself. So I'm wondering kind of two things here, what a day to day looks like for you, and then what would students expect if they came out to the farm? What does that look like for you? What does that look like for students?

Ty Brooks: 7:26

Just like any farm days can vary a lot. I would say there's definitely sort of a seasonal pattern and then a weekly pattern that you can kind of see. We'll have our regular harvest days that are happening. That's really where the students are getting involved, or volunteers are getting involved. A lot of times those are happening in the morning, we'll get things washed and packed. A lot of times, staff and myself are getting to the farm before those start, trying to get things that may require a little bit more skill or knowledge about things, get that harvested so that we can get that washed and packed when the volunteers come. A lot of times, at least right now in the summer, when harvest is happening very frequently, very regularly, we're normally harvesting Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Doing those sorts of things, and so that normally takes up most of the morning. We do like to sit down with all the students and interns, whoever at the farm, and we normally have a lunch where everybody's around together, hanging out, talking about the rest of the day, the week, things that are going on. And then a lot of times in the afternoon, if we're not back engaged in farm work, it will be tour groups that are coming. It will be classes that are showing up. We'll be hosting events. This past week, we had our Grow It Know It event for teachers - there's a three day teacher training. So there's always things like that. So you're doing your best to try and work the farming in around writing grants, working on these various projects, these sustainability projects you might be working on, working with interns, trying to teach them and make sure that they're engaged in learning something and not just weeding every day. And then still making sure that harvest is coming in, things are functioning. Our cooler broke down last week, and we had to pull an AC unit guts out of one cooler and put in another one. You know, you do your best. Farming is a lot of planning, a lot of prep, and then all that gets thrown out the window because the tractor breaks down, and now you gotta fix it. That's how it goes. But like you said, we're always especially in the summer, we're having lots of summer camps that are coming by. We had Sandy Creek brought a group by last week. We had the Minorities in Agriculture summer camp that came by the week before. So a lot of times, we'll give them a tour, and if they're around long enough, we'll try and engage them in an activity, maybe do some harvesting or help with something around the farm. So day to day, very variable, but there are seasonal patterns and weekly patterns that are happening.

Emily Cabrera: 9:34

So how might a student get involved? What would they need to do to get out there and get their hands dirty?

Ty Brooks: 9:40

It's very simple at this point for a student to get involved, and there's numerous ways to do it. Like I said, the weekly volunteer day is probably the easiest way, just a one-off that you can do, get a few hours, come out to see how things are going, how you like it. You can sign up through those. Check out our social media, our Instagram at UGArden, that'll link to our Give Pulse page where you can sign up for volunteer events. Like I said, we have those regular, reoccurring volunteer events that are normally centered around harvest. And then we'll have work days as well that often involve weeding or some sort of planting activity. And then we will all sometimes have specialized volunteer events centered around herbal programs. We're trying to blend tea or make a salve or something like that as well. For somebody that wants to be maybe a little bit more involved weekly, but not necessarily still working on the farm as much. There's UGArden Club. UGArden Club is sort of the remnant of the initial group that came together and put forward the proposal to have a community garden on campus. And so that club still exists. They meet each week during the regular semesters on Wednesdays, I think at like four thirty or so. A lot of times they'll just be engaged in activity, planting or weeding like that around the farm. And then they also will have events where they do more fun type stuff. They'll do yoga down by the barn, or they'll do a canning workshop or something like that. And so that club is open to everybody. I think normally about 40 plus people are in that club. So it's fairly active, and a fairly large club. I'd say.

Emily Cabrera: 11:03

It's like a farm party.

Ty Brooks: 11:05

It is. It really is.

Jordan Powers: 11:06

That sounds amazing.

Ty Brooks: 11:07

Yes.

Jordan Powers: 11:07

Like, so four thirty on Wednesday

Emily and Jordan: 11:09

[laughter]

Ty Brooks: 11:11

I think especially if you're not out weeding every day, you know, weeding is very cathartic, if you're just doing it once a week and out there for an hour, you know. But you know, then beyond that, we have our internship. So I think that's HORT 3920. You do need permission from the department, but I think it is open to everybody. When you come out, that is when you're really starting to get more involved with the farm. We're going to be putting you on equipment. You're going to be learning how to operate equipment, maintain it, repair it. You're going to be talking about whatever our season is, that you're out there working. You'll be involved and the planting, the irrigation, the spraying, all these sorts of things that are happening out here at the farm. And then we have student workers. A lot of times, I encourage people to do the internship, and that allows us to kind of, them to learn and to know what's going on at the farm. And at that point, that's sort of a pool where we can hire student workers from. We'll have a communications person that'll do our communications and website stuff. And we'll have general farm worker students that'll help us around the farm with whatever. And then we'll have people that sort of specialize in our herbal program as well. So numerous ways, yes.

Jordan Powers: 12:11

So many opportunities to get involved. And then here you are managing it all, (laughter) making it all come

Ty Brooks: 12:17

Doing my best, anyway.

Jordan Powers: 12:18

Doing your best. You are doing an amazing job.

Emily Cabrera: 12:21

So, there are so many things happening on the farm. How do you manage to keep it all organized and running?

Ty Brooks: 12:27

You know, we are student community farm, and so the vast majority of the work is getting done by students. But thankfully, I have another staff person at the farm, and that would be April McCoy, our farm manager. Without her, I couldn't keep it all straight. You know, the day to day calendar. We do our best, but without our student workers and April, of course, as the farm manager, I would never be able to keep track of it all.

Jordan Powers: 12:47

It really, it takes a team. We also know that you are a Double Dawg with a bachelor's in wildlife biology and a master's in agricultural and environmental education. How has your academic and career journey prepared you for this role?

Ty Brooks: 13:01

As an undergrad, when I came in, I definitely had an interest in plants and horticulture and wildlife, and so studying wildlife, it really makes you cognizant of environmental issues, ecological concepts, and the ways that humans interact with these and have impacts on these sorts of things. And I also really think that it sort of gives you an eye for detail, because you really need that in farming, and you're having to pay attention to all these things when you're identifying plants or animals and these sorts of things. As an undergrad, a lot of it was very conceptual. You're talking about these things in classroom spaces. And then after I graduated and got into the field more, I was working mostly in arbiculture and then in wildlife biology as well. I actually worked out west in Colorado, doing some wildlife biology work. That was really where I started to get my first-hand experience of that intersection between agriculture and the environment and wildlife. Specifically, I worked with prairie dogs a lot on agricultural leases in Boulder County. So you really see the impacts firsthand that are happening, and that's when I started to actually get very interested in agriculture and the ideas behind organic agriculture, specifically. I actually had found on my online searching that UGA at the time had an organic agriculture certificate program, and had reached out about that. Didn't end up coming back here - there was a nine year gap between my undergrad and grad school. So, even after when I first found that program, was about five years later until I actually came here, and doing my graduate program and pursued that certificate while I was in the ALEC program.

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Emily Cabrera: 14:30

When Ty references ALEC, he's talking about the CAES Department of Agricultural, Leadership, Education and Communication. ALEC faculty and students focus on messaging, educational strategies and leadership designed to advance agricultural and environmental science.

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Ty Brooks: 14:47

And of course, AgEd and communications, it's absolutely something that I do every day in my job. I'm having to teach our interns, our student workers. We're trying to always educate the volunteers that are coming, about how the farm works, issues we may be facing, sustainability issues, environmental issues. And so then I'm having to communicate, I'm having to communicate with our tour groups. I'm having to communicate with these people that are coming by the farm and interacting in different ways. Then after I graduated, after I got my master's, I ended up working at a non-profit sort of community garden space, which really started helping me learn about volunteer management and working with volunteers and these sorts of things. And after doing that, I was farming on my own for a while, and now I'm in this position, and definitely all these skills have come together and help with making sure that I'm able to get through these weeks and these days with everything happening.

Emily Cabrera: 15:35

Okay, I know it's not good practice to ask a yes or no question.

Ty Brooks: 15:39

Okay, okay.

Emily Cabrera: 15:40

But I'm going to.

Ty Brooks: 15:41

Sure.

Jordan Powers: 15:41

[laughter]

Emily Cabrera: 15:41

Is this a dream job?

Ty Brooks: 15:44

I would say that this is about as good a farming gig as I could hope for. You know, like said, I definitely am able to get out in the field and do the things that I want to be doing, engaged outside and still able to interact with people and meet people that are interested and that want to be involved and help people, maybe learn and think of ways that they can be involved and engage in agriculture and the environment and sustainability as well. It's definitely an amazing opportunity for me, and I'm very grateful that I have it.

Emily Cabrera: 16:12

Are you able to get involved in research projects out at the farm?

Ty Brooks: 16:16

Recently, we have projects like seed saving projects. There was an heirloom seed saving collard project that just happened out on the farm. And the herbal program in particular, is something where a lot of research happens, because when they first started doing this, there wasn't a lot of information on fertilization rates and plant spacing and all these sorts of things. And so over the years, we sort of built up this knowledge, and I'm very excited that we can continue sort of doing that and putting that into practice now, as we sort of try and ramp this program up and figure out ways that we can maybe help other people that are into this sort of thing, sort of know some ways that they can take care of their plants and grow these herbs as well.

Jordan Powers: 16:51

I don't know if it's your communications background or just fortuitous, but that leads right into my next question perfectly, and that we know that this spring UGArden's herbal tea program launched sales in select UGA dining halls. And we will, of course, link to that story in the show notes. And I will put in a shameless plug for that Tulsi tea, because it is so good. Tell us more about where our listeners can find the UGArden herbal teas on campus and around Athens.

Ty Brooks: 17:15

Currently at Oglethorpe Dining Hall, our chamomile is available. It is really herbal season right now. So we're harvesting tons of stuff. Chamomile is almost done. We're harvesting Tulsi and we're harvesting peppermint and all these things. As we're sort of finishing up these harvests, we'll be getting more of this stuff packaged and hopefully offering the Tulsi and the peppermint to the dining hall and the new chamomile here very soon. As far as other places where you can pick up the teas. Botanical Gardens gift shop has a lot of our teas and herbal products. Community is a store downtown that carries some of our products, and then whenever we have on farm sales, so we'll have plant sales and things like that, Throughout the year, we'll always have our herbal products on offer at those times. There has been a coffee shop around town, Molly's Coffee, that has carried some of our Tulsi tea as well over on Macon Highway. Especially as we move through the thick of herbal season here, and we start to get things wound down, dried and start packaging stuff, we'll probably start to send some of our herb interns back out into the community to maybe try and do some more sales and get into some more places around town.

Jordan Powers: 18:18

What an awesome opportunity for the students, right? To be on the farm, drying the herbs, processing, packaging. But then also for some people, especially people who maybe are more in tune to being in a drying room or on a farm than in a sales role, to get out there and get a product in the community and really get that full spectrum of what is involved in bringing a product to market.

Ty Brooks: 18:36

Yes.

Jordan Powers: 18:37

That's exciting. Is there anything that we've missed that you want to make sure our listeners know?

Ty Brooks: 18:41

I can't say anything specific, but I want everybody to know that in August, there's going to be something sort of big for UGArden happening, that people who are into UGArden can help support us with. So you got to stay on the lookout for that.

Emily Cabrera: 18:56

Ooh, the intrigue.

Ty Brooks: 18:57

Yes.

Emily and Jordan: 18:57

[laughter]

Ty Brooks: 18:57

A little cliffhanger for everybody. Yes, absolutely. So, uh, keep your eyes and ears open. We'll be putting out our newsletter. It'll be on blast, like I said, right around the beginning of August. And there'll be a window of time where we are going to need your assistance.

Jordan Powers: 19:12

Okay. We mentioned earlier, but we will have UGArden's website, social media channels, etc, all linked in the show notes, so you heard Ty. Stay tuned. There will be more. I'm excited. I don't know what it is, but I'm excited.

Emily Cabrera: 19:23

[laughter]

Jordan Powers: 19:24

Well, Ty thank you so much, we do, we know you came in from trellising melons this morning to have this conversation, and we know you're headed right back out there. So thank you for taking the time in the middle of a busy season to come in and tell us a little bit more about UGArden.

Ty Brooks: 19:37

Absolutely, thank you. I appreciate your opportunity to talk about UGArden and let more people know about it.

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Jordan Powers: 19:43

Thanks for listening to Cultivating Curiosity, a podcast produced by the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. A special thanks to Mason McClintock for our music and sound effects. Find more episodes wherever you get your podcasts.