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Schoolyard urban farming (BC Farmers’ Market Trail Stories)

BC Farmers’ Markets | June 2, 2022

Link to YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StEN-ZHDIgM&t=11s

“We get a deeper sense of where our food comes from by being able to grow it.”

A breath of fresh air from life in the big city, urban farming is an important part of local food production. Located in the city of Vancouver, this Story from the BC Farmers’ Market Trail features Fresh Roots Urban Farm founders Gray Oron and Ilana Labow who strive to make sure their communities are provided with fresh food. Since 2009, the members of their urban farm society have been working directly with schools to teach youth about where a career in food production can take them.

Meet more local farmers, makers, and artisans at City of Vancouver Farmers’ Markets: https://bcfarmersmarkettrail.com/regi…

The BC Farmers’ Market Trail proudly showcases 145+ authentic BC Association of Farmers’ Market members across British Columbia. Dedicated to helping local food thrive, the BC Farmers’ Market Trail is your route to fresh, local, in-season food and artisan goods direct from the farmers who produce them.

Follow The BC Farmers’ Market Trail:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bcfarmersmarket
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BCAFM
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bcfarmersmarket
Website: https://bcfarmersmarkettrail.com

#BCFMTStories #BCFarmersMarkets #ExploreBC

Click the image below to check out the segment!

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FARMER’S LOG, SEED DATE OCTOBER 26, 2022

It’s time to wrap things up on the farm. We had our last market of the season on Saturday and final CSA pickup the week before. Even though our plants aren’t melting away like they usually do at this time of the year, they have stopped producing and are ready for their next stage of life and death in the compost. 

While Fresh Roots winterizes the farms, we are also looking for someone to replace me during my parental leave in 2023. This person will be starting early in the year and working all season, overlapping with my return at the end of the summer. I’m hoping to find a person who will want to continue working with Fresh Roots for many years to come after I’m back. So, in an effort to recruit someone awesome, I’ve decided to use this blog entry to give a little breakdown of my position during peak season, and make it easier for folks to imagine themselves here. 

Farm Manager: Season Overview

The FR core team spends the winter strategizing on how to make things smooth, fun, and true to our overall mission. This makes spring feel totally fresh and exciting. The first thing the farm manager does is review the crop plan, count the seeds, and place a seed order. Then, there’s organizing the spaces, figuring out what compost and amendments are needed, and spending more money (provided by early season CSA purchases)  on all the good stuff. Seeds for our long-season crops need to be started either in the ‘grow-op’ in our storage space at the office, or in the prop house in the courtyard of David Thompson. Direct seeding starts at the end of February, so a portion of the farm’s beds need to be prepped and amended in preparation.

Next is hiring the farm team. The team looks a little different every year depending on where we are farming, but for the Vancouver site, I hire the following positions: 1) Market Lead, 2) David Thompson Field Lead, 3) Van Tech Field Lead, and 4) SOYL Jr Market Assistant. There may also be volunteers,  interns and LFS students who need to be onboarded, too. 

By May, all these folks should have their schedules and start a 5-week training program to get familiar with their responsibilities. This means that by the middle of June and the start of the CSA pickup, the staff and volunteers know what’s up and can graduate to beginning their leadership phase. This marks the start of Peak Season when we all need to work together as an oiled machine to meet our goals. By the first week of July, our summer youth internship program starts up, and SOYL youth will be directed by the farm workers in farm and market tasks for 6 weeks. 

A Week in the Boots of a Farm Manager

Here’s what my week looked like in 2022’s peak season, keeping in mind that 2023 may look differently depending on which markets we sign-up for, how we structure our CSA, and who is helping us harvest:

Monday: Admin and Communications 

This work can either be done on the Fresh Roots computers in our office or from home on the farm manager’s personal computer. I usually work from home with my cat on my lap and a steamy mug of tea. 

  • Email, orders, payments, newsletters, blog
  • Data entry of harvest, sales & CSA records from the previous week
  • 15-minute visits to the sites to see what veggies are coming up and making lists of what needs to be done
  • This week’s harvest planning for CSA and Market. Record plans in the Harvest Plan and CSA Plan documents
  • Field work plans for the week plus delegation of seeding & transplanting plans and ensuring data entry has been done
  • Work plan emailed to all the farm team including links to Field Work, CSA & Harvest Plans
  • Communicating in slack with all the other departments in Fresh Roots about what kids can do on the farm, and where we might need help. This means making clear plans with facilitators and managers in: Experiential Learning (EL), Sustainable Opportunities for Youth leadership (SOYL), & our Administrators (ED, Ops, and Comms). 
  • Fresh Sheet for EL so they can plan their farm lunches for day camp (feeds 40 kids)
  • Expense reporting
  • Review & approve the farm team’s hours if it’s the end of a pay period

Tuesday – Harvest Day

  • 730am: meet at David Thompson to harvest tender veggies
  • 1130am: ICC cooler – drop off harvest and eat lunch
  • 1-3pm: Van tech harvest of fruiting veggies / hot crops
  • 3-330pm: drop off harvest at the ICC cooler

Wednesday – Market Day & CSA Pickup #1

  • 730am: harvest flowers & any remaining harvest needed for CSA or Market
  • 1130am: pick up our bread order and maybe mushroom order
  • Lunch!
  • 1-330pm: help set up the market (operates 3-7)  with the Market Lead and whoever is helping out that day; either another farm team member, SOYL Youth, or volunteers

Thursday – Harvest Day

  • 730am: David Thompson
  • 1130am: ICC Cooler
  • Lunch!
  • 1-3pm: Van Tech
  • 3-330pm: ICC cooler

Friday – Field Work, Remaining Harvest & CSA Delivery for Pickup #2

  • 730am: complete any necessary harvest for CSA Pickup / Saturday market. Otherwise field work! 230 CSA Delivery to Collingwood Neighbourhood House for their “Community Care Veggie Box” program
  • 330pm: finished!

Saturday – VFM Market 

OFF!

Sunday – Everybody takes a day of rest!

OFF!

Wrapping Up the Season

Once the farm team’s summer contracts are over – usually at the end of August – one of the workers will stay on through the fall to help wrap up the CSA & markets and to winterize the farm. In 2023, I’ll be back to help the acting FM wrap things up. Together, we’ll write the crop plan for 2024 and work on the end-of-season reporting. We’ll also staff any remaining markets together, likely adjusting our schedules to Tuesday to Saturday. 

There are many other pieces of work that aren’t explicitly outlined in my weekly schedule – like all the planning and training that happens, community outreach events, volunteer events, tours, and workshops I lead. These bits and bobs are usually crammed into Mondays or Fridays, or woven into harvest days. Volunteer and youth training is also delegated to the farm team members during their field work time. Overseeing the schedules of each farm team member can be a jigsaw puzzle, noting that each member has their own domain to manage and it’s up to the Farm Manager to make sure responsibilities are fulfilled and deadlines are being met so we can meet our CSA and Market commitments. It’s also up to the Farm manager to make sure that mentorship is happening across the organization – so that the farm team members are supported and empowered to teach youth the skills they’ve acquired in their first 5 weeks. 

Peak Season is incredibly dense but it’s a lot of fun. All of the folks working on the farm are youth – from the farm team to the 4-year old campers in the EL program. There is so much life and energy to play with in this job, and I hope whoever is looking for that kind of fun will apply!

– Farmer Camille

Do you have what it takes to be our Acting Good Farm Manager in 2023? Apply here: https://freshroots.bamboohr.com/careers/53

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#SOYLyouth 2021 – Fiona

by Fiona Sutherland, SOYL Vancouver Mentor

As a mentor, I have loved seeing the growth and change this wonderful program has brought to not only my crewmates, but me as well. Watching everyone come out of their shells, take interest in farming, help the community, and expand their social circles has been so inspirational! Getting to know our wonderful SOYL youth this summer has been quite exciting, especially from a mentor point of view. I feel as if I have a lot more appreciation for the change and growth, I have seen from day one to now! Seeing the growth in myself is also incredibly exciting. I feel as if I learn more and more every year and I am so grateful for the opportunities this program has provided me with. My confidence in my own leadership skills is continuously growing as I receive feedback from our wonderful facilitators and help build on my current abilities. 

SOYL provides such an inclusive and fun environment to learn in, and this summer has helped me develop and foster crucial life and leadership skills. For example, I now find it much easier to take charge and help lead bigger groups. I feel a lot less afraid to give others gentle reminders and to step fully into my leadership position! SOYL has given me the confidence to trust my own decisions, leadership related or otherwise. I truly appreciate how SOYL brings hundreds of youth opportunities that are few and far between in our education system – not only does the program help prepare us for the workforce, but it gives us valuable information about the outside world and how to stand out amongst our diverse and talented peers. SOYL teaches youth how to bring positive change to our society, no matter big or small.

Learn more about the SOYL program HERE.

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A SOYL Summer – Part 3

A SOYL Summer- Part 3

As the 2020 SOYL (Sustainable Opportunities for Youth Leadership) program heads into the fifth week of learning and growing together in Delta, Vancouver and Coquitlam we are sharing the third installment in the three-part series written by four SOYL alumni from the summer of 2019. Introducing the third installment of this three-part series:

Written by Stephanie, Maria, Railene, and Sarina, 2019 SOYL Participants

Chapter 4 – Straight Talk

Straight Talk is something a lot of us found extremely important to our SOYL experiences. Straight Talk occurs once a week and it’s where our facilitators give us constructive feedback on how our performance in the program was that week. During Straight Talk, we get two positive things our facilitators saw us doing that week, and we get one thing that we may want to focus a little harder on.  Straight Talk is so important because it gives us another person’s point of view on our growth and participation so it helps us recognize our strengths and help us grow in areas we need to or struggle with. 

 

Chapter 5 –  Farmer’s Market

As we continue learning more about the farm, we also learned how to harvest and process the vegetables. First, we ask one of the farm team staff how to pull out the vegetables properly because you want to make sure if you’re doing it right. Second, we want to make sure that all the vegetables were properly washed because you don’t want any dirt on them. How do we wash our vegetables? Well, the farm team set up a harvest station to wash the vegetables and totes. After all the vegetables are nice and clean we put them in a tote for the farmer’s market. During the market, we learned how to sell our produce that we have locally grown in our schoolyard farms. We also gain customer service skills and share with the customers what is Fresh Roots about or even about the SOYL program. One of the things we sold in the market was our salsa! We spent a whole day in  SOYL making the salsa. In the kitchen one of our facilitators showed us how to cut the vegetables into smaller pieces, after that she showed us how to measure the salsa and how to can them properly.

 

Chapter 6: Leadership

Leadership is written in SOYL’s title. SOYL stands for Sustainable Opportunities for Youth Leadership. During this six-week summer program we crawl out of our shells, have new experiences, and become more confident. Every week a pair of SOYL crew members plan and lead a warm-up game for the morning. The warm-up games taught us how to speak in front of people. It helped us practice speaking clearly in front of lots of people. The fun warm-up games always wake all of us up. Giving and receiving feedback was important and that’s what FLIF is for. FLIF stands for “How do you Feel? What did you Like? What could you Improve? And would you like to receive Feedback?”We love sitting in a circle and appreciating our peers for their amazing work with positive and constructive feedback. Another part of leadership was learning the importance of active listening. In that workshop, we sat in front of our partners listening to them with active expressions. We practiced engaging with people’s conversations with patience, avoiding interrupting topics. SOYL has taught all of us how to be leaders!

Proceeds from the Fresh Roots Fourth Annual Schoolyard Dinner *At Home Edition* fundraiser On Sale Now provide critical funding for Fresh Roots programs, like SOYL, that engage and empower youth more important now than ever!

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A SOYL Summer- An Introduction

A SOYL Summer

As the 2020 SOYL Program kicks off this week with a whole new crop of youth, we thought it would be a good time to share an insightful piece written from the youth participants’ perspective and experiences in the 2019 Fresh Roots SOYL program. Introducing the first installment of this three-part series:

Written by Stephanie, Maria, Railene, and Sarina, 2019 SOYL Participants

Introduction by Nicole, former SOYL Youth, and Current SOYL Lead

For the past few years, I’ve had the pleasure and honour of facilitating the SOYL Program with Fresh Roots. I’ve become a lot better at this work overtime and am learning new skills every year. However, one of the toughest parts of my job is still trying to explain to others what the program is. People ask me all the time what I do for work and the answer is usually “I run youth programs on urban farms”, but that barely scratches the surface of what SOYL is about. When we go to the market to sell the produce we helped grow, we teach the youth to share their experience in SOYL with the customers. They talk about what SOYL stands for (Sustainable Opportunities for Youth Leadership) and how they are learning about the food system.

The story and importance of SOYL are much better shared by the youth, they can do a much better job sharing the story than the SOYL leaders! So, at the end of last summer when some of the SOYL Youth said they wanted to write a story about their experience in SOYL, I was so excited! It meant a few different things. First, that the youth enjoyed spending time together and wanted to find a new way to do that now that SOYL was over, and second, that they wanted other youth to have the same experience as them. It’s really heartwarming to know that the work we do as facilitators is appreciated and valued. In fact, this story mentions a few times how cool the facilitators are which is always nice. Something I would like to remind the youth and the public of is the impact of the program is felt by facilitators as well. I try to remind the youth as much as possible that just as they are learning from me, I am learning from them; just as they look to me for strength, I look to them. This is all to say the SOYL Program is much more than a youth program, it’s a community that means a lot to the people in it. It’s a space where we all grow and learn together. It’s a space where we feel safe and appreciated.

Reading this piece has helped me understand how I can talk about SOYL.

With gratitude,

Nicole, former SOYL Youth, and Current SOYL Lead

 

About the Authors

  • Hello, my name is Sarina and I am going into grade 11. I am in a special class called senior links program at Vancouver Technical Secondary school. My favourite SOYL moment was designing the salsa label because I really like to draw pictures. They are beautiful and pretty. My favourite field trip in SOYL was it when we went to Van Dusen Garden. We all sat in the green lawn after the amazing tour and we did a scavenger hunt. It was really funny when we got lost finding the maze, one of my group thought that the big board was a map of the park.  Then we lost each other in the maze. It was also the day of the Long Table Dinner. The table looks so fancy and we set up the table then we serve the food to the people. I have two jokes I like the most from SOYL. The first one was worm university and the other one was number 15. What an unforgettable summer!

 

  • Hello, my name is Stephanie and I am going into grade 9. I go to a mini school at Britannia Secondary school. I have two field trips I’ve enjoyed most and the first is when we went to Van Dusen Garden. We all sat at the great big lawn resting on the bright green patch. After the beautiful tour, we had a scavenger hunt. Running through the maze and swiftly walking past the shady fern garden. All of us laughed at how we lost each other during the hunt. On the same day, we had the Long Table Dinner, making dinner day extra eventful! At the Long Table, we set up the fancy tables and served the wonderful people. I’m so grateful for all the things I’ve learned from SOYL.  Another fantastic moment that occurred at SOYL had been during the last day. The morning of the last day was filled with sadness and joy. While we all waited for the bus all of us bonded laughing at different subjects. Our first stop had been the landfill. We learned about where all are waste headed and it opened our minds more. Continuing the journey that day we headed to a farm.  I loved how we got to eat lunch at a farm and meet the animals. We got to feed pigs and pick blackberries! Our last stop was at the park where the Fresh Roots office is. We played a typical mafia game, made pizzas, signed our names on our t-shirts, got certificates, obtained our stipend, ate cake, and pied the facilitator’s faces. It was an end to an unforgettable summer.

 

  • Hello, my name is Railene and I am a graduated high school student from Killarney Secondary School. My favorite moment at SOYL would be playing basketball with our SOYL facilitators because I wanted to see if they could beat me in 1 on 1. I taught them the most important skills; how to shoot the basketball and learn some basketball moves. Another great moment was the last day of SOYL because while we’re at the Fresh Roots office we did so many activities. Some of us were playing mafia while other people were playing basketball. Then one of our facilitators called us and showed us the slideshow that she made and it gave us enjoyment and laughter. In the end, we gathered together in a circle and two of the SOYL crew members were singing a song called somewhere over the rainbow and while one of the crew mentors was playing the ukulele. It was a beautiful summer.

 

  • Hello! My name is Maria and I’m going into grade 10. I attend Burnaby North Secondary School. Two of my countless favorite memories in SOYL were facilitating warm-ups with my fellow SOYL friends. Every day a new group of two SOYL members got the awesome opportunity to lead a warm-up for the team. I loved this experience as it gave me an opportunity to practice my public speaking, practice working with others and work on facilitation skills. My second favorite memory was all the times we went to the market. Selling at the market was such an amazing experience. I had been to a farmers market when I was younger and it was so cool to see the way everything was set up, how it all worked, and get to practice my customer service skills and learn about food.

Proceeds from the Fresh Roots Fourth Annual Schoolyard Dinner *At Home Edition* On Sale Now will go toward supporting Fresh Roots programs, like SOYL, that engage and empower youth more important now than ever!