This was our first summer at the Washington Youth Garden working with the Mayor’s Green Summer Job Corp Program. Administered through the District Department of the Environment, over 800 youth are employed by the city to perform outdoor-based work to improve our urban environment. We hosted one crew of fourteen and fifteen year olds who worked with us twenty hours a week, for six weeks.
We admittedly got off to a slow start. Attendance was inconsistent, it was really hot, they didn’t like the bugs, and were hesistant to kneel down and dirty up their pants. In our introductory walks around the garden, a lot of our attempts to get them to taste different herbs and vegetables without washing them were met with looks of “you are crazy”. It took a while, but the more time we spent out in the garden, the more our crew members began to open up.
What really did it was cooking. We carved out Fridays as our group cooking time, a more relaxed day where we’d hang out under the shade of our great willow oak tree in our makeshift “kitchen classroom” and celebrate the work that we accomplished all week. These were the days when vegetables actually entered mouths without any prompting. Large amounts of vegetables, actually. Over the course of our six weeks together, we cooked up dishes using a rainbow of goodies harvested from the garden: tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, green beans, squash, cucumbers, okra, onions, scallions, carrots, beets, chard, basil, and on and on. In the beginning of the program, our chef friends Jon Nickerson and Jenn Flynn from Poste Modern Brasserie came out to cook with us. They cooked three different dishes for us to try that all tasted amazing. As they were cooking, Jon and Jenn talked the whole time about what they were doing – how to chop onions, how long squash should be cooked, what it meant to blanch green beans. They also shared why they got in to the world of food and why they think fresh, local food is important. Having real chefs cooking specially for us really jump started the interest and enthusiasm of our youth. They asked Jon and Jenn lots of questions. They huddled around the stove, watching every move. They licked their plates clean and ate well over the recommended daily serving of vegetables that day.
Fittingly, all of the WYG staff is obsessed with food, cooking, and eating. So we really enjoyed sharing our food passions and bonding over tomato sauce every Friday. While our staff here is also obsessed with plants and insects, it was our food obsession and excitement that we really saw transfer over to our youth. As I said earlier, we started off slow in the beginning. We put the offer out there for them to take home the vegetables and herbs we harvested, but there weren’t too many takers in the first week or two. However, as the weeks went on, we started to see vegetables being taken home. It started off with the easy ones like cherry tomatoes. By the fifth or so week, they were taking home leeks and asking what to do with them. Leeks! We received report backs that the produce was eaten and enjoyed. And even in one case disappointment that her other family members kept on eating all the vegetables before she could get to them. She went home with more after that.
Our last day was a marathon four hours of harvesting and cooking. We made up a quinoa gumbo-like dish with okra, green beans, tomatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, and scallions. Freshly harvested sweet corn was cut from the cob and mixed with onions, garlic, scallions, and flour to make a flatbread (big, big hit). All this was washed down with orange mint and lemon balm iced tea, sweetened with a few stevia leaves. Before we dove in, we held hands around the table and shared what we were thankful for. Though some shared that they were thankful for shopping and Starbucks, we also heard thanks for the land and the people who grow nutritious food. We know that not every youth who comes through the garden is going to necessarily become a farmer (some would be nice though). But we do know that we send out into the world more grateful eaters.
For more pictures of our summer adventures in vegetables, check out our blog.
