Today it was our last day workin in the farm. everyone split up into groups and got staright to the work. some people harvested, others cleaned up the basement, and some people worked on expanding our farm.

after farm work was over the youth GROW group had a discussion about tommorows field trip to Newport beach... as well as plans for the upcomming block party.

During the end of the day the Youth GROW group split up in to their team projects to work on their last task of the year

Hey all!

Sorry for the lateness and length of this entry, but we wanted to update you on all our activities from last week!

All I have to say is last Tuesday was *awesome*. The morning started off with guest speaker Jennie Stephens, who teaches Environmental Science classes at Clark. She led a discussion on global warming & climate change – and showcased her hybrid car for everyone! Nate and Phonzi seemed really interested in electric cars, and the whole group was open about what they knew and learned a lot from the discussion. Another guest we had, Lisa, said she learned more from our group about global warming than from
anything else!  The rest of the day continued; we had team projects and then lunch with some very important people... Ed Augustus, Tim Murray, a city councilor woman, Jack Foley and all their staffs. Our YouthGROWers did a fantastic job leading these politicians around the farm and explaining our program, and afterwards, we sat down to ask and answer questions. It went really well, and we bade farewell and sent them off with fresh greens from the farm.

On Wednesday, we had another great field trip  Today we drove out to Overlook Farm in Rutland to visit one of Heifer International’s farming projects.  First, some of the workers at the farm took us on a nice tour of their farm, and they let us taste some of their produce (the peas were amazing).  For lunch, we had organic peanut butter and jelly, and for dessert we tried to make our own ice cream!  We broke up into groups to do work in the afternoon, and then we went on another tour, this time to look at some of the livestock kept at Overlook.  On the farm, multiple houses and small plots had been built that represented different lifestyles, housing styles, crops, livestock, and farming techniques from different parts of the world, including Guatemala, Kenya, and Thailand.  All in all, it was a great field trip.

As for Thursday, the day started off with a productive morning of farm work.  We harvested over 150 pounds of produce, which was really exciting, and we got a lot of other work done as well.  In the morning we also had a discussion about food, and we all got a chance to talk about specific meals and foods that are important to different traditions or celebrations in our own lives.  It was really interesting to hear all of the different meals, and to think about how food can bring people together and connect people in different ways.  I can’t speak for everyone else, but the conversation made me really hungry! J  After lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon working with our team projects. With the NOFA conference on Saturday and Sunday, and with the block party coming up this Friday (read Lorena’s post from today for more info!!!), all of the groups had a lot of work to do. 

HEY EVERYBODY!

         Welcome back to our blog again and guess what??? It's almost this years ending of the summer program we all love YouthGROW very much. Since the past few weeks we have been on the farm, it was a great experience and a total BLAST! Now that the bloc party is almost coming up, everyone on the team have been running around like chickens working their butt off preparing for the special event. So today we worked on the farm in the morning for a half an hour and then we plit up into groups working on personal things. For instance, the journalism group is working very hard on the cookbook, yearbook, this awesome blog and taking pictures of the whole farm team. The others teams are also working to their bones. After the group projects. We will be having visiters on our farm from Providence, Rhode Island. We all will be working on the farm together for another hour. Then we will be huddling up group discussion and we will discuss further more about food civilization. I think that's what Erin and Betsy calls it. But it's a great discussion and we will be resuming the discussion today after lunch and work. So I hope your satisfied for out team and come back again for more bloggings from us.