More reflections on Service Issue workshop

I've enjoyed this workshop enormously over the course of the semester. It was always a bit crazy, because it was squeezed in on Thursday afternoon between everything else in our crazy, busy lives, but for me, it acted as a blessed respite from the craziness. I feel sometimes that my life at Warren Wilson is constantly going from one activity to another, without really feeling like I'm accomplishing anything valuable.
Just about every afternoon that we went out through this workshop, whether it was to a school garden or a food bank or a community center, felt genuinely valuable, along with the work we did. Even if it was something small that we weren't sure about how much good it would do in the end, felt like a tangible good: We packed those bags full of food, which will go to these children; we dug that garden bed; we set up stakes for pole beans. So for at least a couple hours every week, amidst a life that feels like its lived in the abstract an awful lot of the time, I had something I could point to and say I felt proud to have been a part of.

In terms of the relevance of this workshop, to me the issues of food, how its grown, and how its consumed are some of the most critical of the time we're in right now. Even though we are still an extremely wealthy nation, and for the large part having access to some sort of food- even if its not particularly healthy or nutritious- is not an issue for Americans, I think that's going to change in the next few decades. Our industrial system of growing food has failed our environment, our health and well being, as well as our society. I don't think it will last, and what will replace it will have to involve a lot more people participating in the growing of our food.

So the idea of having vegetable gardens in schools, where children are raised from an early age being comfortable and at ease working with the soil, with vegetables that they help to grow themselves and eventually eat, is one of the biggest and best ways we can begin to recreate a culture where ordinary people are taking responsibility for their food. Whether this was at a place like Isaac Dickson Elementary School, MANNA Food Bank, the Black Mountain Community Garden, or the wonderful EMMA Family Resource Center, the message is the same, and equally powerful in its quiet way: We have the power to improve our lives, starting right now. Maybe puttering around gardens, putting in tiny seeds and whacking away at roots with over-enthusiastic third graders doesn't seem like the quickest way to save the world, or to start a real revolution. But I've found it to be the most satisfying way, and I know I'll want to keep both gardening and getting children involved in gardening part of my life into the future.