Hello fellow teammates and Oberlin basketball supporters and fans! I hope that everyone is doing well and enjoying your summers as much as I am. As Kayla mentioned, I have already emailed many of you about what I’ve been up to, so bear with me if this is redundant.
I’ve been spending the summer interning with People’s Grocery, a food justice organization located in West Oakland, CA. West Oakland is a low-income area inhabited predominantly by people of color. The community faces a range of challenges, including food access issues that stem from an abundance of liquor stores and the lack of a grocery store where fresh, healthy food can be conveniently purchased. To address this concern People’s Grocery runs a low-income CSA (community supported agriculture) where West Oakland residents can purchase a box of produce, called a “Grub Box” for $12 a week. Sponsors pay $24 a week and help enable the discounted prices offered to residents.
People’s Grocery runs a few urban gardens in Oakland, but the majority of their produce is grown on a 3.5 acre organic farm plot in Sunol, about 35 minutes south of Oakland. As the “Farm Intern” I have been spending three days a week on the farm, where my tasks consist of transplanting, direct seeding, harvesting, doing irrigation, and weeding…a lot. Work is often hot, tiring, and, at times, tedious, but I couldn’t be happier. The people I work with are great and I feel like I am learning so much. The farm is really beautiful and it is right by a shallow creek so sometimes when it is extra hot we jump in to cool off. Aside from my work on the farm I have been doing some grant research with a woman who, small world that it is, knows a woman who I was working with in Oberlin this past spring! We also have monthly film screenings and reading discussions in the urban gardens that address topics related to environmental justice. I even got to go to a tea tasting last week at this tea shop that is interested in the work we do and wanted to host us. As one of the perks of the job, I get a lot of free food. Interns get weekly grub boxes, and we can also pretty much harvest anything we want at the end of a day out on the farm. This has been very good for me since it forces me to cook, which is not exactly a strength of mine…good preparation for living in a Union Street house with a kitchen this fall!
Work and work-related extracurriculars have been taking up most of my summer, but I’ve been able to fit in some basketball here and there of course, and I’ve been supplementing my P90X workouts by carrying heavy boxes of zucchini, cabbage, potatoes, onions, and turnips from the rows where we harvest them to the work van.
I’m beginning to feel like the end of summer is slipping through my fingers. I’ll be home for three more weeks, during which I will continue to work and I’m trying to plan a white water rafting trip up north. On the 18th I’m going to France to visit my parents for about a week and a half, and then I will be flying straight back to Oberlin. Though I don’t want to leave home I’m super excited to get back to campus, meet the incoming freshmen, and get to playing some ball! I was hoping to include a couple pictures of the farm, but my camera battery is dead and I don’t know how to get cell phone pics on the computer, so instead here is a picture from the 4th of July of me and the freakishly large farm zucchini/squash that we clearly didn’t harvest early enough. I’m thinking if my boxing out isn’t on point this season I can always club some girls out of my way with one of these. Hehe I kid, but they do make a good stir fry. Be well everyone!
Love,
Emily
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