Reflecting on our Spring Garden Pivot
When schools initially shut down due to COVID-19, I thought we were just getting a longer spring break. I even created a list of “things to do over our long spring break”, which included kitchen dance parties, making play-doh from scratch, virtual museum tours, and nature days. We scratched off some of those things in the early days when it all seemed kind of novel. This list is still clipped to our 2020 calendar, which I’m pretty sure is not on the current month. I was also excited to start working with 2 schools right after spring break, working in our Kansas Ave learning garden and in a Redmond school garden. We quickly pivoted our planned work to other avenues.
Learning Garden to Resilience Garden
For our on-site Kansas Avenue Learning Garden, I slowly planted it out with the idea that we could grow food for The Family Kitchen, potentially grow food for our students to harvest in the fall, and maybe to use with the Boy & Girls Club kids this summer. With so many unknowns, planting the garden was therapeutic for me. It’s no surprise that so many people planted gardens this spring, both for food security and something to do in their backyards. We have been able to donate radishes and salad turnips the last few weeks, and while fall programming is still up in the air, we look forward to working with 20 Boys & Girls Club kids in the garden this summer. Students that were supposed to come to the garden got weekly garden update videos instead. The full cycle farm field trip was turned virtual and they got seeds to plant at home.
Grab and Go Garden & Nutrition Activity Kits
In Redmond, we went from planning to work directly with teachers and students to figuring out how we could get resources in the hands of parents now at home with their kids. We turned to Oregon Agriculture in the Classroom, who we were recently planning on joining for Central Oregon Agriculture Day in mid-March, until it was cancelled – our first COVID impact. We had decided to use one of their activities, Living Necklace, as they would have provided the materials for us to facilitate for 275 students. When we turned to them to see if we could still get these materials, they were happy to provide us with those and many others. We reached out to Redmond Nutrition Services to inquire about making activity packets to hand out to families that come for the meals, and our Grab and Go Garden & Nutrition Activity Packets idea was born.
Over the course of 10 weeks we handed out 1,025 family activity packets. We came to recognize many smiling faces week after week, as well as new ones each time. Each week we reached between 250 – 325 kids. Kits included supplies for each kid to do the activity themselves, or to work on as a small group. The kits alternated weekly, from garden at home seed germination or planting activities, to nutrition focused activities like mindful eating, learning about ‘go, glow, grow’ foods and how to make a ‘power plate’.
Survey Says!
About half of the families completed surveys that we’re still going through. However, 79% of parents said that ‘After doing the garden-based activities, my child is interested in gardening and/or plants more than before’, and 32% of parents reported that ‘After doing the nutrition-based activities, my child is interested in healthy foods more than before.’ Said one mom, “My boys loved these activities. Even the ones that weren’t so popular they made great conversation during meal times”. Another said “It was wonderful having something positive and educational for our family during this time. Thank you so much!” We love that we were able to pivot quickly and reach new families with these activities that aim to connect kids to nature through food. As we enter into another season of unknowns, it gives us some confidence that we can adapt quickly and support garden-based education in innovative ways.