Planted in the middle of Harney Plaza, a table surrounded by students and professors with the smell of fresh food wafting through the air drew the attention of curious passersby. “It’s the ultimate university, where students are feeding students real food,” said Professor David Silver, professor of media studies and co-adviser to the Garden Project’s Living Learning Community. He was speaking of the USF farm stand. New this year, the farm stand has started to make a name for itself each Thursday in Harney Plaza. It is staffed by members of the Garden Project, USF’s living learning community focused on cultivating the organic garden and learning how to live a sustainable lifestyle.
The farm stand provides fresh vegetables as well as baked goods and cooked meals, something they added this semester. All foods are provided in return for a suggested donation. “The farm stand is really about making students more aware of where their food comes from. When I would go to the grocery store, I would see just tons and tons of food and it all looked so perfect,” said freshman Garden Project member Carlen Handley. “It just didn’t seem right, which is why I wanted to get involved in the Garden Project and the farm stand. It’s about providing real food.”
Students in the Garden Project live on the same floor and attend classes together on Fridays. The classes teach them how to grow food in an urban environment and how to spread this knowledge. Class time is also spent tending to the garden, located behind the School of Education.
The farm stand was created as a means to spread word about sustainable living and also as an outlet for the excess produce from the garden. Last semester, the stand mainly provided different kinds of vegetables and herbs such as kale and chard, but found a lack of success due to the fact that many students living in dorms don’t have the resources or time to cook their own meals from scratch. To remedy this, the farm stand began serving prepared foods this semester, which they found gained a greater response from students.
Thursday, Feb. 18, found the farm stand dishing out potato-vegetable soup, created by freshman Kristin Castillo, as well as an ‘un-beet-able’ chocolate-beet cake, both made largely with ingredients from the garden. “I like to mainly use things we grow and then just add a few cheap store-bought things,” Castillo said. “The main thing is that I know everything that’s going in there. It’s not like buying a candy bar where you have no idea what most of the ingredients are.”
The garden project and farm stand seek to increase student awareness of the source of their sustenance, and hope that by giving just a little, students will gain a lot and see the benefit of working towards a greener future.
Students can check out the USF farm stand in Harney Plaza on Thursdays from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Or if you are interested in helping in the garden, stop by on Tuesdays from 1:00-5:00 p.m. for a chance to exercise that green thumb.
thanks for the great article about the farm stand and the garden project living learning community! i especially liked the quotes from garden project students carlen and kristin.
one thing to add – if you bring your own bowl to farm stand, you receive the prepared goods at half price!
Personally Im impressed by the quality of this. Generally when I come across these sort of things I like to post them on Digg. This article probably wont do well with that crowd. Ill take a look around your site though and submit something else.