Community Garden Outreach
Fridays 1:30-5 pm
Hayes Healy Formal Lounge and in the Garden
Professor: David Silver
Office: Kalmanovitz 141
Office Hours: Tues & Thurs 10:30-11:30 am & by appointment
Community Garden Outreach is a 2-unit hands-on and seminar class held in conjunction with Justin Valone’s Urban Ag class. Through gardening, harvesting, foraging, cooking, eating, reading, reflecting, and discussing, we will explore social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental issues around food, food production, and food distribution. In addition to continuing our educations as gardeners, we will work online with social media to document our garden activities and offline in groups to organize and implement various food distribution projects. Further, through life competency sessions led by Golden Venters, students will reflect upon and discuss their processes of intentional change, contemplation of self, and inter- and intrapersonal abilities. Community Garden Outreach is part of the Garden Project Living Learning Community.
Learning Goals:
o To learn more about organic gardening, urban agriculture, and community food production;
o To learn how to use different kinds social media to document the planting, preparing, and sharing of food;
o To learn how to work collaboratively to design and organize community food distribution projects; and
o To learn how to bake bread.
Books:
o Novella Carpenter, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, 2009.
o Michael Pollan’s Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, 1992.
Calendar:
Friday, January 29
Last semester, through your work in Melinda Stone and Justin Valone’s fall 2009 courses, you’ve learned a lot about gardening, urban agriculture, and food production. The majority of today’s class will be spent bringing the professor up to speed with your individual and group projects and progress. We will also discuss the syllabus, course expectations, and your spring internships.
Friday, February 5
Read Barbara Kingsolver, “Called Home,” Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, pp. 1-22. Begin using twitter. Life Competency Session with Golden Venters from 3-5 pm.
Friday, February 12
Read Michael Pollan, “Made Wild by Pompous Catalogs,” Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, pp. 205-228, and Maggie Gosselin, Sarah Klein, and Jessica Prentice’s “San Francisco Bay Area Local Foods Wheel.” Brainstorm & discuss our three food distribution projects: Campus Farmstand, Food Not Bombs, and Dean’s Dinners. Begin using flickr.
Friday, February 19
Field trip with Justin Valone to forage for wild greens and stinging nettles.
Friday, February 26
Read Novella Carpenter, “Turkey,” Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, pp. 1-98. Begin blogging. Life Competency Session with Golden Venters from 3-5 pm.
Friday, March 5
Read Novella Carpenter, “Rabbit,” Farm City, pp. 99-184. Prepare garden tour and meal for class guest Novella Carpenter, author (Farm City) and urban homesteader (Ghost Town Farm).
Friday, March 12
Read “The Story of Food Not Bombs (Parts 1-4).” Watch “Food for Bombs – Nigeria." Prepare garden tour and meal for class guest Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs.
Friday, March 19:
SPRING BREAK
Friday, March 26
Read Novella Carpenter, “Pig,” Farm City, pp. 185-269. Discuss internship progress. Life Competency Session with Golden Venters from 3-5 pm.
Friday, April 2:
GOOD FRIDAY
Friday, April 9
Read Michael Pollan, “Planting a Tree,” Second Nature, pp. 150-175. Brainstorm and discuss documenting the building of the garden kitchen.
Friday, April 16
Read Michael Pollan, “Green Thumb,” Second Nature, pp. 117-134. Cook with Chef Jean-Marc Fullsack to prepare Food Not Bombs meal.
Friday, April 23
Read Elizabeth Kolbert, “Green Like Me: Living without a fridge, and other experiments in environmentalism,” The New Yorker, August 31, 2009. Life Competency Session with Golden Venters from 3-5 pm.
Friday, April 30
Read Michael Pollan, “The Garden Tour,” Second Nature, pp. 229-258, and Matt Hickman, “40 farmers under 40: Readers’ choice,” Mother Nature Network blog, September 24, 2009. Discuss semester’s successes and shortcomings. Brainstorm final party.
Friday, May 7
Prepare a delicious garden meal for the final party. Life Competency Session with Golden Venters from 3-5 pm.
This class has no final exam.
Grading:
o Class participation - 25%
o Social media participation - 25%
o Food distribution group projects - 25%
o Student Internships - 25%
If you are curious or concerned about your grade, you can request a meeting with me anytime during the semester.
Rulez:
1. Read all assigned readings prior to class.
2. In class and in the garden, listen to and learn from everyone.
3. No late work accepted.
4. No drinking out of non-reusable containers in class.
2 comments:
Design for Haiti. Ahora es el momento de empezar a implementar en Haiti algunas de las ideas que se encuentran en el libro “Design for the other 90%” /Now is the time to start implementing in Haiti some of the ideas suggested in the book "Design for the other 90%" http://bit.ly/7eISF6. http://jlopi.wordpress.com/2010/01/14/diseno-para-haiti/
Look at you go, David. Not just one - no? - but two, yes two (that's "2") books! And one of them from (gasp!) 1992! Your reputation is shot.
I hope you have a quarter as much fun as this class appears on the surface. If you do, you'll have a great time.
I do notice, though, a conspicuous absence: dumpster diving! It ain't as easy as it was a few years back - locked dumpsters are a drag. Back when both Scharffenberger and Acme had open dumpsters, life was good all over North Oakland. But you can still hit up TJ's for a good haul of packaged but just-past-freshness delicacies.
Post a Comment