Above: BRCC students planting green beans in containers in March.
BRCC Digs Gardening Project to Benefit Blue Ridge Area Food Bank
Learning through volunteer experiences has long been a hallmark of a Blue Ridge Community College education. This past spring, faculty, staff and students used their green thumbs to plant, tend and harvest an Edible Landscape garden that provided fresh vegetables for the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank.
English instructor Pamyla Yates helped coordinate the project and her Learning Community students ventured out behind the J Building in March to start the planting. “Students told me, ‘I really learned something there,’ and one of the students, from a dairy farm and used to agriculture, told me, ‘That was really interesting; I'd like to do more of that,’" Yates said.
The idea for the project came out of a lecture by Joel Salatin, local farming advocate, at the 2009 Hunger Symposium. Yates’s Learning Community students that year did a feasibility study and Tim Byrd of the Buildings and Grounds department made wooden boxes, filled them with soil from the site, and test grew some vegetables. Those vegetables were used in soup for the Hunger Symposium Empty Bowl Dinner.
This year, about 50 quarts of beans and 100 pounds of potatoes were delivered to the Food Bank. Byrd worked alongside students and members of the Dream, Achieve, Believe Club (formerly the Buddies Club) to do the planting, watering, weeding and bug “redirecting.”
“Lots of people volunteered for this great project,” Byrd said of the campus-wide effort. He noted that Lisa Giovanetti, laboratory specialist in the Biology department, and Frank Moran, Director of Learning Resources, and Jan Larsen, assistant professor of Veterinary Technology, were instrumental in all the hard work required to keep the vegetables growing during a hot summer. Yates often encouraged BRCC employees via e-mail to take a “bean break” and spend some time in the garden, visiting with co-workers and enjoying fresh air and sunshine. Pollination of the vegetable garden was assisted by a nearby butterfly garden that was funded by the BRCC Educational Foundation.
BRCC and the Food Bank have partnered for the past five years to put on the Virginia Hunger Symposium, a week-long event held on campus to shed light on hunger issues in our area. This year’s Symposium kicks off on October 24 with a video presentation about childhood hunger and culminates with an Empty Bowl Dinner fundraiser and a fabulous benefit concert by Robin and Linda Williams and Their Fine Group and on October 27. For a complete listing of Hunger Symposium offerings, visit the Hunger Symposium Website.
