COM IVC

College of Marin is a local community college that offers agricultural majors as an option. They teach sustainable methods of farming and how to obtain a farm. The College of Marin is proud to be 80% solar powered with solar panels on all of their campuses. Their farm is home to all kinds of fruits and vegetables. They have an orchard where they grow numerous variety's of fruits and olives. Everything they do includes the least amount of waste and emissions. The program is run by volunteers who have a lot of experience in the agriculture industry. I was very impressed by the enthusiasm the volunteers had for working on the farm. Coming from a paid job, managing a hundred acre farm, it may be difficult to adapt to a volunteering job.

If you are interested in the agriculture industry and are eager to learn more then the College of Marin is the place for you. You have to be willing to put in the work, and enjoy being outside enough that your willing to let it be your classroom.

-Hunter Bueman

IVC Field Trip

On Friday the 15th. Both sustainable agriculture classes attended a field trip at Indian Valley Campus Organic Farm and Garden. Here we engaged in numerous activities to help the farm and its members out. One of the most unique and applicable moments for our class was the process of making organic soil. We used different soil amendments such as perlite, peat moss, vermiculite and compost. We then sifted these ingredients through a table to create a refined soil. This contrasted our farm we have back at Redwood, although we do partially make our soil by using our own compost, we tend to use pre made soil. So being able to see the full process was very insightful, and is something we can take away and add to our inventory of methods. In addition to the soil amending we also engaged in Mulching. Mulch is a layer of material applied to the surface of soil. It helps soil moisture, improving fertility and the overall health of the soil. Overall the experience at the IVC farm was tremendously rewarding and directly correlated to what we were learning in class. -LL

Our Field Trip to IVC

Joe Stewart
-- 
Redwood High School
http://www.redwood.org/stewart
stewart@redwood.org

This week we took a field trip to the College of Marin Indian Valley Campus Organic Farm and Garden.

This organic farm had olive trees, rows of strawberries, a greenhouse, a lot of cover crops, garden beds, and more. After being introduced to a few of the farmers, we split up to take tours around the large farm. With our journals, we noted all of our learnings and observations. For example, the solar panels are used for 80% of the farm's energy source, and the greenhouses use swamp coolers to protect seedlings from the summer heat.

Then, we split into five groups to work on stations. My group's stations were adding compost below trees, weeding the raised beds, and pruning the olive trees. Our first station consisted of shoveling the compost into wheelbarrows, transferring it to the ground below the trees, and using rakes to make a circle outwards until the branches end. One important step was making sure that the compost was 1-2 feet from the trunk.

Weeding the raised beds during our second station seemed a little unproductive at first, but proved to be successful after seeing the wheelbarrow full of all the weeds at the end. We all dispersed with smaller buckets and pulled out various weeds and white flowers from the strawberry plants. We were taught that even the smallest weeds could crowd the fragile root crops and prevent growth.

On our last station, we pruned olive trees and collected the fallen branches. We were given pruners and the knowledge of cutting branches that were within 1 - 1 1/2 feet above ground, or any branches without leaves. Pruning the olive trees was good preparation for growing olives, which would be later turned into organic olive oil. At the end, we gathered all of the olive branches into wagons. 

Overall, this field trip was a good educational opportunity that we can reflect on when improving our own RHS farm, and it gave us lots of hands-on experience.

- Sarah D.

 

Candy

My blog this week will be about my food report.  My food report was on Almond Joy candies. I learned lots of information about the agricultural behind almonds and coconuts:  the two main ingredients in an almond joy. In drought conditions, Almond agriculture uses lots of the scarce water we need for other purposes. California, a state that often has droughts, produces 80% of the nations Almonds.  About 10% of California's water use is dedicated to Almond farming. Farmers claim it takes 1 gallon of water to grow one Almond. Farmers are using water conservation techniques to limit the amount of water the Almonds use.  They have already cut the Almond water use by 33%. Coconut farming also experiences problems that could be solved by sustainable agriculture. Coconut trees use lots of nutrients in the soil, and over time the soil becomes fallow.  To aid the soil, the farmers use synthetic fertilizers. This is a short term fix, but in the long run it leads to loss of soil structure, or erosion. Instead of using synthetic fertilizers farms should rotate crops and plant legumes to enrich the soil. -AlexP

Perennials

By Mats Sunshine

The picture is a picture of a perennial in our own farm.

This week we were able to have the opportunity to enjoy the company of guest speaker, John Valenzuela. Mr. Valenzuela is a horticulturist, consultant, and educator who lived in Hawaii for 15 years before returning to Marin County. With the experience he gained working with fruit trees that he learned from his time in Hawaii, Mr. Valenzuela is grafting exotic fruit trees onto the trunk of local fruit trees to make an assortment of exotic fruit trees with multiple breeds of fruit. We were very lucky to learn from his expertise and although we don't grow perennials like the ones Mr. Valenzuela was teaching us about, it still could be helpful information for a home garden or a dying fruit tree that needs new life.

The Art of Fermenting/Pickling

Another wild week full of fun and learning took place in Sustainable Agriculture some weeks ago:

This week we learned all about how to pickle the fruits and vegetables we grew on the farm and how to overall maximize its flavor. We were instructed to bring jars from home with a lid and told that we needed to add fruits and vegetables, water, spices, salt and vinegar. These conditions create the perfect environment for lactobacilli which is a big aid in the process of pickling your fruits and vegetables. It also eliminates bad bacteria which will have a negative effect on your fruits and vegetables. Picklingis crucial for many reasons. For one it allows you to preserve a fresh produce for longer. It also like I stated earlier adds flavor to the overall crop. In countries that don't have reliable electricity this could really help them out. Fermenting also encourages microbacteria which creates compounds like lactic acid or achohol which helps preserve food. Fermentation can be utilizied in a variety of foods like miso soup, yogurt, beer, pasta and many other foods. Overall Fermentation is very important for food preparation and it is something that people should use in their everyday lives.

-Zach

The Sustainable Solution

This week in Sustainable Agriculture we started off by learning about the nationwide agricultural transformation of Cuba following the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the movie Power of Community: Cuba, we learned that after the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba experienced a 34% drop in GDP and could no longer afford to continue their practice of conventional agriculture that required heavy amounts of expensive inputs. Cuba was forced to find a new way to grow food for a hungry country, and they did so in an amazing way as their transition to more sustainable methods of growing food resulted in a solution to their food crisis. Without the help of mechanized industrial farming, more Cubans had to join the farming force and help manage the farms across the country. Cubans found ways to grow food in all areas, even in city streets and complexes that previously would never have been considered reasonable areas to grow food. Although it initially seemed that Cuba was destined for years of poverty and hunger, their adoption of sustainable agriculture actually was very beneficial for their country as the food became much less expensive to grow and because it was being grown in all sorts of areas across the country, the cost of transporting the food was drastically cut.

- Dean Watson. 

Learning about Sustainable Farm Methods in Cuba

This week we spent most of our time in the classroom due to the poor weather. On Monday in class, we started watching a documentary on farming methods in Cuba. The movie talked about how Cuba had to overcome the loss of resources from the Soviet Union. It showed some of the agricultural transformations that they had to make in order to deal with the loss of resources for farming and to become more sustainable.Cuba had to scale down all of their industrial farms because they were no longer able to use large machinery in the fields. As a result of this they had to go back to the older farming techniques that involved using animals. The government also helped by giving open land to the farmers for free. This increased the number of small farms in Cuba and made the job of being a farmer more respectable and higher paying. Overall, the way that Cuba handled the transformation was good and resulted in making Cuba have a more organic and sustainable farming system. On Tuesday we continued watching the movie and finished it in class. On Wednesday in class, we learned about different farming techniques and how they are used and also researched some local farms that use some of these techniques.  

Cuba

This week in class, we watched a video about the Cuba Peak Oil Crisis. The Peak Oil Crisis occurs when the total oil supply in the world has reached a maximum extraction point and after reaching this point, heads into a decline. This will have detrimental global effects and the Crisis is not so far off based on recent calculations.

Cuba already experienced their own Peak Oil Crisis, when the Soviet Union fell and they were left with no one to get oil from or trade with. Instead, the entire economy had to work as a cycle inside their own country. They developed many interesting practices as a result of the crisis, which is what the video showed us.

One big change they had to make was farming techniques. Before the Crisis, Cuban farmers were using conventional methods to grow their agriculture and importing around 50% of some of the most used products in cooking, like rice. However, this was not sustainable and couldn't support the needs of the entire country itself. Instead, farmers transitioned to organic, sustainable methods, spraying 21% less fertilizers and using crop inter planting. They have also switched to using animals for labor on farms which saves fuel and exerts less pressure on the beds so as to not compact the soil. And after a 3-5 year transition period, relatively normal to a switch in agriculture, the farmers were switched over and could begin building up the economy again.

Many also cleared out many spaces that could be used for urban farming and gardens to grow their own food. This cleaned up many cluttered, ill-used spaces in Cuba and made way for beautiful, beneficial gardens and small farms. They now supply 80-100% of fruits and vegetables produced. Farmers are also now among the highest paid workers in Cuba because of the Crisis.

The world is eventually going to experience the Peak Oil Crisis and if we don't change our methods now, we will be forced to when the time comes. If it were up to me, the whole world would take a page from Cuba's book and prepare themselves for what is to come, but we will just have to wait and see.

- Noe

Fibershed & Poor Weather

In the Redwood Classroom this past week we had a guest speaker Rebecca Burgess who has recently started a non profit called Fibershed. Fiber shed is an organization that focuses on reducing carbon emissions by making 100% cotton clothing. The company doesn't create the 100% cotton clothings but they help fund the manufacturers. At the begging of her presentation she states that on average about 70% of your clothing in your wardrobe is plastic. She made this very clear to us because if your clothing isn't cotton, in most cases it is polyester and other plastic like materials. Over all, Rebecca has started a successful non profit that is helping raise awareness about the carbon emissions of plastic clothing, and she is helping others make the chance towards 100% cotton clothing. As far as the farm the farm weather has been lately, is has maintained very rainy weather for the past couple of weeks. With almost everyday being rainy, our class has received very little farm work to focus on our one beds.

Milan