Seeds of Hope

ABSTRACT IDEAS TAKE ROOT IN COMMUNITY FARM

by SHAWN RYAN

Anna Smith thought she was just signing up for yet another online class when she enrolled in the philosophy course “Values and the Environment” for the fall 2020 semester.

Smith, a political science nonprofit management major, says she was pleasantly surprised to learn the class would involve more than just those Zoom squares.

“I didn’t even know it would have a community outreach or involvement,” explains Smith, who is minoring in philosophy and environmental science. “I actually got to get outside of my house and be around other people, and that was quite a novelty.”

As part of the course, Smith and her classmates volunteered with Grow Hope Farm, a community garden maintained by Hope for the Inner City in East Chattanooga. The partnership continued into spring with “Exploring the Benefits of Urban Farming,” another philosophy course. Both courses were led by philosophy lecturer Lucy Schultz.

Schultz started volunteering at Hope for the Inner City in summer 2020, helping with their COVID Mercy Relief program that supplied free groceries and precooked meals to neighbors in the surrounding Avondale community. Near the end of the summer, she was introduced to Joel Tippens, executive director of City Farms Grower Coalition who helped start Grow Hope Farm in 2012.

During the height of the pandemic in early 2020, the farm wasn’t tended, although the still-rich soil grew an “incredible batch of weeds,” Tippens says.

After they met, he and Schultz began making plans to revitalize the farm.

Students at work in Lucy Schultz’s Benefits of Urban Farming class Friday, March 5, 2021, at the Hope for the Inner City campus in East Chattanooga.

PRACTICE WHAT YOU TEACH

From pulling weeds to painting murals, students in Schultz’s class sowed seeds, harvested collard greens, built a greenhouse and shared fresh produce with the farm’s neighbors. They watched as the gardens slowly came back to life.

Schultz sees the course as fulfilling the University’s mission to incorporate more experiential learning into the curriculum but, more importantly, getting students engaged with the community as they help address local food insecurity.

“I want students to understand how philosophy is not just sitting back, reflecting on abstract ideas. It really does make a difference in the way that we live in the world and how we relate to each other and the environment,” Schultz says.

“This is a real hands-on way to see those ideas in practice.”

Anthony Watkins, executive director at Hope for the Inner City, says it’s an education in itself to connect the students with a community that’s only a few miles from the University yet far away in terms day-to-day living.

“There are students here learning and growing in the same way as the garden by connecting with community. Young people need to be exposed to that as much as they can. That’s what college is all about.

“There are so many wins here,” he says.

From the mental and physical benefits of working in the gardens, to gaining practical skills and new hobbies, to better understanding the socio-economic impacts the urban farm has on its community and more, Schultz’s list of ways students benefited from the course is a mile long.

“I think that what students took away from the experience is varied and personal depending on what their background is,” Schultz says.

“That was really exciting to see and experience because I couldn’t have planned it. We just dove right in and developed this partnership and now we’re seeing the fruits of it, and I’m really eager to see what else will come of it.”

NOT THAT UNIQUE

Without the class, Nia Alston doesn’t think she would have ever volunteered on a farm.

“I don’t think I ever would have been like, ‘Oh yeah, let me go,’ because I was pushed to kind of go and do it. I really have seen how much I enjoy just being out there,” explains Alston, an environmental science major concentrating in engineering science.

Around the farm, the word “play” comes up a good bit, as in “playing in the dirt,” Watkins says. But with the students, “play” leads beyond the context of just having fun, he says.

“We love to play, but the whole idea is to really produce enough product that we’re not a total food desert. So really that collaboration created opportunity for us to start producing product. Since I don’t have the funds to hire someone, the benefit was we had activity students helping us to, you know, we create the land produce product.

“There’s just so much awareness that’s being brought out by them being exposed to things that they would never—well, I can’t say ‘never’—that they were exposed to communities closer to an urban environment, exposed to this farm and you know, seeing the fruit of the harvest. I think they get a lot out of that.”

Tony Houston, senior philosophy major with an environmental science minor, says his experience in the course has caused some serious self-reflection. Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, he lived in a similar neighborhood and had a detached relationship with food.

“I didn’t even know what a potato was beyond something that can be consumed. What I mean by that is: I had no idea how a potato was grown or where they were grown.

“I remember growing up, that’s how it was. You go to the corner store. You get your bag of chips. You’re going to eat the chips, split the bag open, lick the crumbs. Then you’re just going to toss it.

“You don’t really value your environment at all. It comes from a sense that your environment doesn’t really value you because of where you are, how you’ve been treated, how hard it is, the situations and opportunities you’re presented.”

When Houston interviewed Grow Hope Farm neighbor Charlie Bell for an assignment, the conversation was eye-opening.

“She told me, ‘Some of these children don’t know where their food comes from.’ That grounded me. My experience wasn’t that unique. Children are facing the same problems I did when I was younger, two states away from my hometown. It made me realize that this lack of nutrition affected a lot of low-income communities.

“I greatly enjoyed my experience on the farm this semester, and it has changed my relationship with food as well as my understanding of it.”