High school students taking root in business and agriculture.
Eight Classic City High School students spend four days of the week at the West Broad Community Garden in Athens, GA. For school credit in a vocational course, they are being trained not only to be urban farmers but to be entrepreneurs.
The Young Urban Farmer Development Program reaches out to a generation of students who are largely disconnected from their food. At one time, agriculture ruled the South and the school calendar was built carefully around the planting and harvest seasons. Today, the ideal of the family farm is increasingly distant, but the YUF Development Program students are offered the rare opportunity to learn a skill that defined civilization.
Each week, these students engage in hands-on experience in every realm of small-scale commercial agriculture. On Mondays, they focus on farming as a business. Local experts teach them about marketing plans, finances, banking and budgeting. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, they start the day in the garden, getting their hands dirty learning about the upkeep of a plot. They practice the tasks that are constant for an urban farmer--harvesting plants, sowing seeds, weeding, composting, mulching and building structures like rain buckets and raised beds. To get a taste of the sales side, they also assist in the set-up and breakdown of the West Broad Tailgate Market, at which local farmers come out and sell their products. On Saturdays, they learn to cook.
“The main objective is to have them become the future farmers market vendors,” said Bantu Gross, the YUF Development Program Coordinator.
The program is empowering for the at-risk students it employs, endowing them with the drive and insight it requires to succeed as a farmer and business person, as well as an opportunity to become connected to the community and land from which their food grows.
Each student earned his or her right to work in the garden. The application process to gain a spot in the program is involved. Classic City High school students, many of whom struggled in the traditional classroom setting, are asked to complete a lengthy application packet followed by an in-person interview at the garden with other students in the program and the leaders.
“Some of the students that we selected were really good on paper,” said Gross, “And some of the students, we were like ‘I think they have potential, so we’re going to give them a shot.’”
The program is only in its second year of existence, but so far, it has produced results. Gross, who has a background in counseling, has been particularly pleased to see the kids benefit mentally.
“One of the students has expressed that he feels so free out there,” Gross said. “I think it’s really beneficial that he sees that.”
Even students who don’t plan to make a career of farming benefit from digging their hands deep into the soil. In the face of a curriculum that is based around touch screens, computer skills and navigating the Internet, the program offers a welcomed respite in the fresh air.
The hope is that the program will become sustainable and that opportunities for peer leadership will arise as well.
“In an ideal world, it would be staggered to where one group graduates and another group would come in and there would still be some there to mentor the new group, and once they graduate, the new group would mentor the next group,” said Gross.
Gross predicts that the program, which is sponsored by the Athens Land Trust, may someday extend to include students from other schools, but his main focus is helping the students that the program was developed for in the first place.
“I see those Classic City High students all the time,” he said, “and they get a bad rap, so we have this program that’s tailor fit to them, where they can be themselves and excel in other areas as well.”
Markus Peek is a returning member to the program. The Classic City High School senior began last year after his principal, Mr. Gurtz, approached him about the opportunity. Peek had never had a job before, and he didn’t know what to expect from a program in its inaugural year.
But Peek became quickly became invested in the work. He helped plant and harvest and even initiated projects that would span longer than the first school year. His interest in seeing the fruits of his labor brought him back for a second year tending to the garden.
“I had so many things that I started out here my first year,” said Peek, “and I just wanted to see it get done.”
He helped make mushroom logs in his first year that hadn’t yet sprouted, and he wanted to come back to sell a harvest he’d taken ownership of. For Peek, harvesting is his favorite part of the job.
“I mean, you come out here, turn all the dirt and do all of this work, and it wouldn’t be a very rewarding job if you didn’t get to see the final product” he said.
Peek is starting to think like an entrepreneur. Last year, he made a business of building and selling bird houses. He took pride in his work, making a product by hand that could also result in profit. This year, he hopes to launch a business building raised beds for Athens residents.
He and his classmates are crafting a largely lost skill set that can be profitable and marketable. They are being armed with the knowledge to become business owners.
“Basically they just prepare you and set you up to where you can start your own business while you’re in the program, and when you’re out of the program, you can just kind of pursue your business in whichever direction you would like it to go” said Peek.
Peek’s sense of community has also grown with the YUF development program. In the time that he’s participated, he’s grown closer to his peers as they learn and grow together.
“Getting to know people that you haven’t known before is really one of the most exciting things that came out of this program” he said.
He hopes to stay in the farming business after graduating high school in the spring, and because of the program, he has the means to do so.
“I never thought I would love farming so much-- I never thought I would have the opportunity to come out here and farm and learn what I do, and I’m really thankful for the knowledge that I’ve gained from this experience.”
Story by Jodi Cash
Photographs by Paige Beasley