Week Five

Kid helping with planting tomatoes

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Ajah and LaDarius helping plant in the raised beds

Volunteers from Maine, Gordon and Jay, helped the garden

The first kids of the week, Ajah and LaDarius

This past week began the morning time sessions with the kids from the local daycare center (located right behind the HERO campus). At first there were only two kids who had gotten their permission forms signed and it was a breeze. Lydia and I try to focus on educating the children about why vegetables/fruits are important and why gardens are so cool.

The kids are very enthusiastic about their time in the garden. We have six or seven kids each day. We have split them up into two smaller groups, having that many kids ranging in age from four to seven... it is difficult. 

Lydia plans what the children are going to do each day and I do my best to help her along. Many times we split the smaller groups up once more and have them doing separate tasks (i.e. planting small flowers, helping plant seeds, discussing what a compost pile is). Many times I leave before the kids do to join JJ for water quality work.

The compost pile is coming along well. We are still picking up old fruit from a farmer each day and tossing that in the pile. We really need to make a lid for it as well as a sign informing individuals what CAN and CANNOT go into the pile. When I got to the bin this Monday there was dog poop in the pile. Stinky.

Water quality work is still coming along well. I am more and more amazed with the people I am meeting, the situations I find myself in, and the sadness I feel for these people spending their money on crappy water AND buying bottled water. I was told today there is a high number of individuals in Hale County who have cancer and this individual hypothesized that it could be attributed to the additives catfish farmers add to their ponds. I wonder if Joe and JJ have explored this. The farmers don't have to have a lining on their ponds and the chemicals could seep into the groundwater. I will explore this more!

I write a week behind... this week (Week Six) is my last week at HERO. I will write again soon.

Justinn

Week Four

Garden

Dirt (over 1000 lbs)

Finished Raised Beds 

Front Loader picking up cinder blocks

This past week was very busy! We went to the local grocery stores and farmer's markets to ask the managers/farmers if they were willing to give us their pre-consumer waste (i.e. old vegetables/fruits) for the compost bin. We also drove around the town of Greensboro collecting leaves and twigs that can also be added to our compost bin.

This week we all continued to clean up the pavilion. Lydia, Spence, and I sought out a gentleman named John who allowed us to use his front loading tractor to load up the cinder blocks around the site and Pam's dad took it in his dump truck to a local site. This was an entertaining day indeed! 

Rennie completed the second raised bed this past week. Lydia and I helped screw the cedar boards into the second raised bed. I look forward to planting vegetables into the beds! 

I was amazed at how much the vegetables grew while I was away. Lydia added lime to the larger sunken bed. The tomato bed is still looking a bit rough... we added lime today. 

Funny little side note... Lydia and I knocked on a random house and a little boy answered. I asked him for some water and he proceeds to RUN three trailers down and scream to his mom... "Mommah!!! Mommah!!! White girls want our water." She screams, "WHAT?!?! What you mean boy?" It was funny. Maybe you had to be there.

I will write more about the current week soon. There is lots to tell!

Justinn

Week Three

Rennie

Raised Bed built by Rennie

What is left of the pavilion

Tomato Plant

Tomato Bed (Big Boys, Cherry, and more)

First Banana Pepper

Crooked Neck Squash

This past week has been very productive. We finished taking down the pavilion and pulling out nails and screws from the boards. This was a very time consuming process to say the least. As Rennie was building the raised bed (see the picture above) I continued to tend to the garden. This week I turned up the tomato bed and planted ten plants (three different varieties). I am worried that the tomatoes will not do very well. They are in mediocre soil (mostly clay) and in constant sunlight. When I left today they were looking pretty sorry. 

I am glad Lydia is there now because she is offering lots of advice to help the vegetables become more prosperous and healthy. She got some hay and was placing it around each of the plants when I left today to help the plants keep their moisture. I hate that we could not till up the sunken beds because there is already grass growing amongst the plants. I am still finding bricks and bits of broken glass throughout the beds. 

We have not built a compost bin yet but it is in the works. The guys in the pie lab have been saving their coffee grains and we have a large pile of grass clippings and scraps of vegetables for the bin. Lydia suggested we have a vermicomposting bin and I completely agree... partially because that is something I actually know about and I know it yields compost quickly.

I have the next week off so I won't post for a while. 

Justinn

Water Quality Work

Pie Lab Entrance

Pie Lab Pies

OPEN FOR PIE

PIE!

Today began the first day of my work with JJ collecting samples from houses within Hale County. The name of the study is "Water Quality and Health in Alabama's Black Belt."

Here is some basic background information (provided by JJ):

+ Study of household drinking water quality in Hale County. Decaying infrastructure in rural areas of the county results in serious degradation of water quality as delivered by public and private water systems. 

+ According to a 2005 community service conducted by HERO, 990 households (24% of the total) in rural areas of Hale County did not have domestic water service. Where households are connected to the system, high costs of water (2 to 3 times the national average) and leak-prone domestic pipes often lead to expensive bills. 

The collection of these water samples (gathered Monday-Wednesday) are tested by JJ in the lab and the participants will receive a free water quality report (with . The participants are asked questions about their water quality, demographics, and costs as through a brief survey.The results will help determine if there are possible correlations between human health and water quality. 

Here is WHAT I did today:

JJ told me there are 5 highways that enter Greensboro. We took one of these highways and knocked on clusters of houses to ask for a water sample from their tap or spicket and to answer a couple questions. 

The questions that are asked:

+ Are you connected to county water? Or do you use well water?

+ How long have you been connected? How much did it cost?

+ Do you have any problems with your county water (eg. discoloration, odor, taste, outages, etc)?

+ How much is your monthly water bill?

+ Do you have a septic system?

+ Do you filter your water?

+ How do you rate your drinking water?

The individuals filled a small Nalgene bottle with a corresponding number and survey and I handed them the bottle with a SMILE.

The majority of the individuals who ACTUALLY answered their door were very uneasy about us and what we were doing. As a result I felt pretty uncomfortable because the individuals we spoke to for the most part were uncomfortable. JJ explained to me never to push anyone and to follow the body language and flow of each individual.

Some of these individuals did not even give JJ the time to explain the purpose of our random visit and were on the defensive or chose not to answer the door. Many individuals were not home (it was 1 PM) and the individuals that were home were of the low socio-economic scale and largely African American. It is crazy how much of a difference there is between the houses and the inhabitants of Greensboro I saw over just today. 

I really liked the change of scenery and discussing the importance and social/environmental injustices associated with the water across the Black Belt with JJ today. I am looking forward to learning more...

Justinn

Week Two

Garden

Basil Plants

Tomato Plants

More Pavilion Shots

I stacked all of that. 

This week flew by in comparison to the first week. I am very excited that we managed to get zucchini, squash, and a couple varieties of sweet and hot peppers in the ground this past week. 

The plants are all looking a bit shabby now and really need to get into the ground as soon as possible. It is difficult finding the time in the day to work on the garden and continue to deconstruct the pavilion. This past week I have become very accustom to having a hammer in my hand and pounding out nails for hours. 

Rennie is much better with a crow bar than I am so we have a bit of a system down thus far. There is still much to be done with the deconstruction because there are concrete blocks holding up the remaining lumber and underneath that there is a good amount of gravel and trash that will need to be cleaned up to plant more vegetables soon. I hope I can see all of this happen over my time in Greensboro. 

This experience has truly allowed me to see how fortunate I am to work in the University setting. The University may not always have the environment on its mind but there are enough people and money floating around that I can usually get what is needed and get it quickly... Things aren't like that in Greensboro. Time moves ever so slowly and the things that I take for granted (i.e. planters and hay) are donated or salvaged. This has been a great lesson for me to learn and I am proud that I am having to opportunity to learn it.

Rennie, Ryan, and I went to model for some pictures in a HERO/Rural Studio home that is in Sawyerville on Friday. I have never felt so much compassion and force to stay active in a community before. There were houses we past that I were one room and had a patchwork on screen to allow air in and out of the room. I was mortified that people were living in this condition. I guess I always think of shantytowns in far away places not one hour south of my house. Rennie told me that is what she thinks of when she thinks of Alabama. It's crazy to me that people from across the United States think of Alabama that way. I grew up in this suburb of Birmingham and honestly had no idea what the "real" world is actually like. The thing I kept thinking about was what the education of these kids I saw must be like. I would like to look into that more and perhaps do some volunteer environmental work with the local schools through SGA. 

Anyways...

JJ, the UA PhD student, Lydia, and I are going to work out some sort of schedule next week (Monday-Wednesday) to go test water quality in various places (I am assuming). I am excited to get to help her and learn more about what she is doing down in the Black Belt. 

The Pie Lab opened this week. The guys have sold a good bit of pie... it seems that there are people going in and out constantly. I am glad for them, what they are doing is really cool. There website is www.pielab.org.

I will post when I can again. 

Best,

Justinn

Week One

The Garden

Deconstruction of the Pavilion
Old Building 
Back side of HERO

Plants

My first week at HERO was exhausting but worthwhile. Waking up at 7 AM has been an adjustment but I have learned a great deal about the world thanks to NPR on the way to and from the HERO office. I come home exhausted every day, which is a nice feeling.

On my first day, I was given a grand tour of the HERO campus and the surrounding HERO houses like the Rammed Earth house. I learned there are three main restaurants in town: a pancake house named Flava, Mustang Oil (a gas station + restaurant), and a Mexican restaurant. 

There are many more interns and workers at HERO than I expected. There are five VISTAs (I still don't really know what they do), one girl from Michigan, Rennie, who is also working on the garden, and four boys from Brooklyn working on the Pie Lab. The Pie Lab is located on the HERO campus and these students are working with Project M and HERO to create a delicious way for the residents of Greensboro to discuss crucial town tensions over pie. The guys have done a great job creating an aesthetically pleasing place to eat and work in the community.

The home of the garden rests over a former home/trailer. We began the week by hoeing the area for the sunken beds while watching for old sewage pipes,crumbling bricks, and bits of broken glass. It took all last week to ensure the garden was thoroughly hoed and glass-free. It was unfortunate we could not use a tiller but the local urban cowboy, Johnny Parker, informed us his tractor wasn't getting anywhere near the bricks in that garden. I guess I don't blame him, it was time consuming none the less. 

This garden will provide food to the HERO workers, VISTAs, interns, and I am assuming a small percentage of the Greensboro community. 

We have the following vegetables, flowers, herbs:

• rosemary
• 2 types of basil
• corn
• sunflowers
• arugula
• collard greens
• zucchini
• squash
• 3 types of tomatoes
• 2 types of peas
• hot peppers
• sweet peppers
• and more...

Meanwhile, there is a large pavilion to the left of the sunken beds that needed to be deconstructed. We began to deconstruct the building by removing the metal roof and removing the supporting beams for the roof. Removing each nail and screw from each piece of wood from the supporting beams took ages. Some of these materials will be used to build a community kitchen where the HERO staff and friends can have a place to cook together with the vegetables.

Today, I incorporated a half of a pickup truck bed of manure into the three sunken beds and cultivated the previous dirt and manure together. With the great deal of rain the great state of Alabama has seen lately the beds needed the extra support and the sand I added as well. 

There will be a five-six raised beds behind the sunken beds that have been created thus far that will house the rest of the vegetables. We have not begun building these beds yet, but hope to do so soon... We hope to create the beds out of charred cedar. This will repel insects and avoid unnecessary wood treatment.

Tomorrow, I began my work with JJ, a UA PhD student who is examining water quality in Hale County. I am anxious to learn more about what she is doing...

I will try to add some pictures and the plans for the garden/community kitchen soon... I will update as soon as I can.

-Justinn

Responsibilities at HERO

I am so very excited to have the opportunity to be a Hale Empowerment Revitalization Organization (HERO) intern. Interning at HERO will grant me opportunities to do the following things:

• Design and Build "Edible School Yard" on HERO campus.

• Participate in design/build charette for campus design master plan including rental pods and community kitchen

• Mentoring & tutoring for the Youthbuild program

• Organization and distribution for monthly HERO food pantry

• Mentoring at Pie Lab (small business start-up model)

• Organizing 2 community events for youth

• Coordinating volunteer groups for construction

I am looking forward to participating and implementing these programs over my five week internship at HERO. HERO is doing great things in Greensboro and I am really excited to contribute in any way I can. 

Beginning May 25, I will be assisting a UA PhD candidate that is studying water quality in Hale County in conjunction with HERO.

I start interning on Monday, May 18. I will be in Greensboro at 8 AM each morning and get off at 4:30 PM each day. 

I will post soon.

-Justinn