RadicleRoots & Our Core - Youth Leadership at Land to Learn

Throughout the five years I have worked with Land to Learn and Our Core, I have seen countless students come each summer. Every single one of them has always brought an open mind and eagerness to learn something new. This summer I got to meet 8 wonderful young adults that have been working hard to benefit their community here in Newburgh, New York. This summer for me is a bit different from my previous ones. Since I am older than the other teens, I have taken on a new leadership role. I am learning as we go. I appreciate the hard work that these teens have done since they began in early July. I remember the first day they showed up, they were all shy, nervous and uncomfortable, which tends to happen every year. The first week was short due to the July 4th holiday, so we started with introductions and getting to know each other, learning the basics of gardening like harvesting, and really just taking time to get comfortable with the land on which we are working.

The second week was a little bit more labor intensive but fun. The teens got to meet some baby chickens courtesy of Mrs. Hutchinson, the executive director of Our Core, who showed them how to be kind and considerate to all of the living creatures that occupied the spaces we work in. The teens also learned how garlic is planted, and the different parts of it like the garlic scapes. Then they harvested it and learned how to let it dry. Since Land to Learn manages different school gardens, the teens learned about the benefits of mulching and how to identify weeds from vegetables. They also started to work as a team. That same week they learn how to transplant and seed plants like cilantro, catnip, and peppers.  They learned how to use fish emulsion as an organic fertilizer. It does not have the nicest smell, so a lot of teens didn’t like it! That is understandable. For the first time they were also able to share the fruits of their labor with their community by donating it to food pantries and churches. The crew donated Swiss chard, kale and kohlrabi. The last day of the second week was mostly used to work on mending and restoring the beautiful Grand Street Garden next to the Newburgh library, which is a garden that I helped start with Mrs. Hutchinson and some other teens two years ago.

The third week, which is the current week, has been fun and chill. Every year teens from all over the Hudson Valley that participate in agricultural programs gather together on a host farm to have a meal together, work on a project that the host farm might need help with and do different activities utilizing the plants and natural resources that the farm has at its disposal. This past Wednesday we had one of these gatherings, or JAMS, and the host farm this time around was Sky High Farm. In our preparation for the gathering, the teens came up with a couple of recipes to share with the other teens and prepared them a day in advance. When we ventured to the farm we helped pick and clean garlic and we also got to do different kinds of activities like painting signs for vegetables, mixing honey with medicinal herbs, and doing a scavenger hunt with polaroids cameras. Overall, it was a nice experience where all the teens got to experience something new and meet new young people from around the Hudson Valley that are also doing agricultural summer jobs like them.

Maria Herrera, she/her

Anne Saxelby Legacy Fund Fellow and Radicle Roots participant since 2019. Maria is currently studying plant science and liberal arts at Dutchess County Community College.

What are you excited to see grow?

The 2022-2023 school year is winding down but we asked our educators and students what they were most excited to see growing in their school and personal gardens this season. Here are a few of the highlights! 

“I am so excited to watch the asparagus spears pop out of the ground in the indigenous agriculture space at the South Ave garden. We have been cultivating this asparagus & strawberry patch for 4 years now, and I love introducing students and teachers to how delicious asparagus tastes when it is raw, straight from the garden. Many people don't love asparagus until they try it this way.  Many of the students at South Ave said they are excited to plant seeds, watch flowers grow, and taste new things!  I am looking forward to teaching the Indigenous Agriculture lesson with the 2nd graders- this is a lesson that I haven't taught since before Covid, but it sparks such wonderful conversation around how plants have changed over time through growing technology that was passed down through Indigenous wisdom for thousands of years.” - Ms. Megan

“I love growing spring salad turnips in the school gardens. The sprouts are just coming up now and by the time we have our closing lesson and make a salad with classes, they will be golf ball-sized, smooth, white, crisp, tender, and sweet! They add such a nice texture and flavor to the salad that the kids really enjoy. Over the years I have introduced this Japanese variety of turnip to many people and everyone loves them.  The students are excited about seeing their seeds sprout and continue to grow over the next couple of months. They are super excited for strawberries! And especially enjoy opportunities to investigate the garden habitat and "dig in the dirt" to find critters.” - Ms. Nicole

“I'm really excited to grow the "3 Sisters" and explore the different places all the students come from and what things are staples of their diet, as well as what connects us all to the land we share. I'm also really excited to grow the "Dragon's Tongue" Beans, because...Dragons.” - Mr. Josh

“My kids are looking forward to digging in the dirt.  And I am looking forward to planting in my gardens and the newly bought raised beds for the front and side yard.  Growing food for those in need!” - Ms. Crystal

“I am really looking forward to planting strawberries this year with the students, even if we have to wait until next year to harvest them! I am looking forward to our Indigenous Ag lesson too.” - Gardener Mara

“I am most looking forward to growing bush beans and cucumbers. I love to eat both right out of the garden and I encourage students to do the same. A great fresh garden snack! We had three class votes yesterday in my 2nd grade classes at Sargent. Each class voted to choose which crop to grow. Rainbow chard was the hands-down favorite, followed by multicolored beets, then Easter egg radishes. Students also suggested that we grow watermelon, cantaloupe, pineapple, dragonfruit, strawberries, 'money tree’, and chocolate tree!” - Sam

“I am most excited to put up a new trellis and grow beans and cucumbers over the garden walkway. I am also excited for strawberries and hoping we can eat some before the end of the school year.  Students are most excited to try the salad greens for our end of year garden party. They have loved planting the spinach, lettuce and radishes that we plan to eat. They cannot stop talking about how yummy the dressing will be!” - Ms. Dana

We hope that your own gardens are bursting with new life and starting to provide a small harvest to you and your community.

Through an Educator's Eyes

Dana DeSousa, Education Co-Director

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”

- Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

This quote has always been a favorite of mine and lately has been replaying in my head each day that I am teaching. At Land to Learn, I share this philosophy with my students while we search for caterpillars on kale leaves or write recipes about pickling. Instilling the idea that a garden is where imagination, confidence, creativity and nurture grows, allows our students to recognize places where they can “tend to their garden” outside of school.

Hearing students share their family traditions of cooking with potatoes or telling a friend they grow cherry tomatoes in their garden with such excitement creates a learning environment that is fun, inclusive, safe and kind. One day when a student was exploring with a hand lens, they exclaimed “I found the coolest bug!” While this is a normal occurrence in our garden, what made this moment special was this student absolutely despised bugs! The whole class looked on in wonderment as I shared with the class that they could touch the praying mantis they had just found with a gentle finger. Would this student touch the bug? We discussed the flying abilities of bugs and how most will fly away when they are touched and it may startle them. We all watched on as our brave, bug despiser reached out a hand to touch the praying mantis. As soon as the hand came near, it took off to a nearby plant. Rather than recoil in fear or disgust the student had a huge smile on their face and chose to follow the bug to its next location. After a few minutes of reaching for and following the movement of our new small friend, garden time was sadly over. All students could talk about while lining up was their witness of bravery in the garden that day. The garden was a space where fear disappeared and curiosity took over. These moments of curiosity, exploration and encouragement among my students inspire me to educate in new ways each week. I am learning to be more brave, inquisitive and compassionate by watching their interactions. I receive more joy from my students each and every day that we share our garden world together.

The role Food Justice plays in Community Wellness

At Land to Learn, we see our mission as dual-pronged, and highly interconnected. Food justice is community justice, and vice versa. Our work has proven that the benefits of garden-based education extend beyond learning subjects like art, math, reading and writing, science, nutrition, and social studies. Students develop a personal relationship with their food by growing it themselves at their school, and sometimes even take their newfound passion for fresh food and grow it into lasting, meaningful change in their communities.

Food justice grows each time a LtL educator steps into the classroom or school garden to teach a young person how to grow their own food and develop their food literacy. Understanding where food comes from, learning about the food system, and learning how to grow food oneself are powerful tools that call students into the movement towards food justice. A generation of students that love fresh vegetables and have the skills to feed themselves builds community wellness from the ground up. Teaching these tools to young people helps build a local food culture committed to fresh and nutritious food. Our flagship in-school program, SproutEd, engages students in gardening and helps them build skills and confidence as a grower and eater. Students plant seeds, water and tend to their plants, and harvest and eat them fresh from the garden. They try dozens of fruits and vegetables over the years of the program, from arugula to zucchini, many of which they helped grow with their own hands. They discover that they love tomatoes, but maybe don’t care much for beets. Some of these students will develop a passion for vegetables, and some will develop a passion for growing them. One student in Newburgh went from hating kale to putting it in her daily breakfast smoothie that she made with her mom. This same family went on to maintain a plot at a local community garden in Newburgh for many years.

Community wellness stems from students growing and eating the bounty from the school gardens, and sharing their knowledge and skills with their family, friends, and neighbors. Maybe they discover they love kale or spinach or cilantro and ask their families to buy it for them. Maybe they start a garden at home or join a community garden to grow their favorite veggies for themselves. Or they will build a brand new community garden in their city, which is what happened in the summer of 2020. Some enterprising teenagers took the skills and knowledge gained from their summer apprenticeship with Land to Learn and our community partner, Our Core, to start a brand new community garden located in front of the Newburgh Free Library, and a lending seed library within the library itself. Any citizen of Newburgh can now maintain a plot at the new garden on Grand St and any library patron can check out hundreds of varieties of seeds for free. 

Our mission is to empower all our program participants to do the same. To grow a movement for food justice and community wellness through garden-based education.

- Sam Adels Co-Director

A RadicleRoots Story

What Gardening Means to Me

Throughout the two years that I worked with Our Core and Land to Learn, I have been able to obtain so much knowledge on a wide variety of topics in the field of farming that have helped me to this day. I went from being a scared person that did not like bugs to accepting them because they are living organisms. During the two summers I’ve worked with them, I met new people and saw their perspectives on a farming career path, which gave me insight into their hard work. We always worked together as a team, and that is how we accomplished most of the work assigned to us, such as weeding, watering, planting, packing seeds, and making beds.

This past summer, RadicleRoots participants had different paths to choose from for their summer focus. I picked Row7 Seed Company because they are a plant breeder company, and their motto is to provide a better variety of vegetables to the community. I knew I wanted to collaborate with them when I took a road trip two years ago to their research field, located at Windfall Farms. There I met Patch, a Row7 culinary director who gets to do research and trials on plants and sends data to universities and other companies that also are breeders for Non-G.M.O plants and vegetables. One of the exciting things they do is pick names for their new breeds of vegetables and fruits. 

Now two years later, I’ve had the opportunity to work for Row7, and I am glad that I knew the basics of farming from my time in RadicleRoots and was prepared to use my skills. I am thankful for the opportunities given to me as a member of Our Core and Land to Learn. They have done a great job collaborating with other farms to give me a broad insight into the different career paths to take in the farming world. They also taught me that farming is challenging because of how much work needs to be done to keep the farming season going!

Maday Luna

RadicleRoots ‘20 - ‘22

Hear from some of our amazing teachers why they value our work!

Land to Learn is a fabulous, fantastic, and fun-filled educational hands-on program that allows scholars to experience farm-to-table participation in their school. Having been a teacher who has observed the growth of Land to Learn since its inception, I have witnessed the compassionate, positive, and resourceful activities that the Land to Learn instructors design for all scholars. My scholars always inquire when it is going to be Garden Time, as they eagerly look forward to taking part in the purposeful and relevant NYS Next Gen learning standards-based projects. In closing, Land to Learn is an enthusiastic educational program that allows my scholars to create meaningful connections of real-world experiences to our curriculum of Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems.

-Mrs. Lynn Kirk, Temple Hill Academy, Newburgh

Having the Land to Learn SproutEd program incorporated into our classroom has been an amazing experience, for not only myself as an educator, but for the students. The curriculum they provide is enriched and a great extension to the one within the classroom. After learning about plant life cycles in the classroom they are able to witness it in the garden and experience the process. The students are able to make connections between the classroom and the world. They have learned about communities working together to source food from the land. It has broadened the students vocabulary and experiences with the environment and food. The hands-on experience is something many students may not have had the opportunity for if not for this program. Ms. Nicole has been a wonderful asset with her positive and warm demeanor. She has created a respectful and open relationship with the students. Each year the students look forward to working with Ms. Nicole and the garden!

-Alicia Grant, JV Forrestal, Beacon

My students love learning about the garden. They seem very interested in what is being taught to them. I have a few students who I know garden at home, and give me beautiful flowers weekly. I also know that my students love participating in creating delicious food from the garden. So much so that they include their families in recreating the garden food at home. Last week, Ms. O taught an amazing lesson. She taught the class about salsa and how to make it using fresh ingredients from the garden. All of my students raved for the entire week about the lesson. We created a challenge for the students to make the recipe at home. Many of them did, and emailed pictures that very night. The following days I received many pictures of my students' homemade salsa. I had two students bring me their salsa to try, and even received a birthday gift of homemade salsa from a student. This lesson was a great success! They all gained the skill of making homemade salsa, and learned that the ingredients can come right from their backyards. 

-Ms. Morgan, Temple Hill Academy, Newburgh

Reflections from a Radicle Roots Program Participant

I have had a great experience getting to work with Land to Learn, OurCore, and the Downing Park Urban Farm. Doing this work has given me a better work ethic, and has helped me to be more responsible. I loved getting to see the fruits of my labor and it is the most rewarding job I have ever worked. I love the challenge of farm work and the satisfaction I get when it’s time to harvest. I’ve had the opportunity to learn a lot of farming skills that I didn’t know about. My favorite skill that I have learned is the Florida Weave. This one is my favorite partly because tomatoes are my favorite plant to grow, but also because it’s so useful and was very easy to learn. It has been amazing to be able to work with so many great people and I’m glad that I get to work with people that enjoy doing the same kind of work that I do. I didn’t realize how important farming was to society, and I’m glad that I got into this line of work and that I can contribute to that process.

August Grice has been working with LtL and OurCore since 2019. He has worked with us at our school gardens, Boys and Girls Glub summer camp, our virtual summer learning program, and has been employed by Downing Park Urban Farm. He loves gardening and farming and likes tomatoes.

Reflections From a New Educating Co-Director, Kubrat Ogunleye

Land to Learn had a very busy spring! We served students across the Beacon, Newburgh, and Kingston districts doing various tasks in the garden. We began by teaching  the importance of garden mapping, in which students were taught about bird's eye view and its importance when creating a map.  Students were able to explore their district gardens and decide on various seeds to plant.  In our Spring Gardening lesson, students planted spinach, chard, beans, beets, and turnips seeds  to enjoy at the end of the year Harvest party.  The students loved the experience of planting, watering the garden, and watching their vegetables come to life in their own homemade salad. 

As a gardener, It has been a great first time experience working in the Newburgh School District serving Temple Hill  and Vails Gate Elementary.  Each school has unique gardens that were essential to planting and harvesting crops.  My favorite moment at Temple Hill was when the students created a “SuperHero” Insect.  The students created unique insects making sure to include their “six parts”.  Students sang and danced the insect song, and it was quite a sight, on how creative and enthusiastic each student was in creating their insects.  At Vails Gate my favorite highlight was having the students explore the garden while completing their “ Task Box”.  In this lesson students were given different tasks to complete in the garden. The students enjoyed finding different color flowers, got to taste and smell the mint, and even help with weeding.  Overall the students loved their garden experience and I enjoyed teaching and learning with them as well.