YO! Youth Organics

yologo YO! is a garden project engaging and partnering with youth through skills trainings in sustainable agriculture and community organizing.

We provide leadership opportunities, a challenging environment in which to grow and a space for personal development, especially the improvement of health and nutrition.

Ultimately, we seek to create a just, local, sustainable community food system where everyone has access to safe, healthy foods, regardless of income, where farmers receive a fair price for the food they produce, and the land and the people are once again in relationship.

At the end of our third week of this session of Youth Organics, I am so appreciative that this group of people got to meet and work together this summer. We are ten teens and two adults of different backgrounds and interests who are growing food for our community. Each week we work the 3^rd Avenue garden, take tours of and help out on local farms, and prepare and eat delicious, healthy meals together at the Governor’s Mansion. Our group has worked with the Capital District Permaculture Guild who are cleaning up and replanting a vacant lot around the corner from our garden. There, some very well-dressed teenagers really got their hands dirty picking up trash and hauling tree stumps out of the ground. We learned about nutrition and healthy eating with a trip to Price Chopper and the Honest Weight Food Co-op for a “food fact-finding mission.” I’m proud to say that this is the first time I’ve taken a group of teens to the Co-op where every one of them tried goat cheese, sheep cheese, and tofu!

The challenges we’ve had this year are mostly pest related. We started out the summer with a deer coming in and eating all our strawberries, chard, large portions of the tomato plants, and most of the beet greens. Yes, deer right there on 3^rd Avenue! Organic repellent spray has worked okay so far, but we may need to do a fairly large-scale fencing project in the near future. Sadly, the other pest we are having trouble with is the vine borer. This is a black moth that lay eggs on the stems of zucchini and other squash plants which hatch into worms that dig into the stem and eat it from the inside out, killing the plant. In an organic garden, pest control is much more complicated than just spraying a poison on the plant and being done with it, but everything is a learning experience. This gives us opportunity to talk about the physiology of the plants as well as the life cycle of the borer, and a good topic on which to ask the advice of all the farmers we get to meet over the course of the program.
Even with these challenges, we are enjoying bountiful harvests of other crops including garlic, onions, greens, and a variety of fresh herbs, with many more on their way. Hopefully the teens that are tending to these crops will enjoy eating them as much as the community members who purchase them through our Garden Share and those who access our produce through the Trinity Institution Food Pantry.

Spring and Summer 2010 Schedule

Spring Program: May 3 – June 10, Monday – Tuesday, & Thursday, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Summer Program: July 6 – August 13, Monday – Friday, 8:30 AM – 12:30 PM

For more information email youthorganics@grandarts.org or call (518) 495-5055.