bing pixel
  1. Sabo Center News
  2. Category: Campus Kitchen

More Than a Garden: Growing Community at Augsburg

Posted on

Two Auggies digging in the dirt, managing the communal garden plots on a sunny day

Author: Greta Klawiter-Lein, Community Garden Coordinator

Tucked just behind the Hagfors Center, the Augsburg Community Garden is one of the most vibrant spaces on campus. Although it’s hard to miss the big garden there, you might not know what the intention is behind that space. It’s not just a garden, but a gathering place where community, learning, and food all come together.

The garden is made up of 64 individual plots, most of which are tended by neighbors from the surrounding Cedar-Riverside community. A few Augsburg alumni, faculty, and staff garden here too, but the majority of our growers are local residents who bring incredible knowledge, skill, and dedication to their personal plots. Augsburg provides this community of gardeners with many resources such as land, soil, seeds, plants, water and a hired gardener coordinator that manages communication, resources and facilitates events among other things. By lowering the barrier to access and having sustainable, healthy food practices right here in the city, this space is helping folks who do not have land to grow food and offering them an outdoor space to call their own.

About half of the plots are in-ground and the other above-ground plots are for supporting disabled persons and elderly gardeners. The gardeners here love this space; not just for the dark leafy greens and tomatoes they can grow, but also as a welcoming nature-space that they often end their evenings at. While you will see many zucchinis in this garden, you’ll also see vegetables you won’t always find at the grocery store, crops that are culturally significant and important to their families and food traditions such as anchote or epazote.

Walk through the garden on a summer day and you might hear five or more languages being spoken. English isn’t even the most common! You’ll hear Somali, Oromo, Amharic, Arabic, Spanish and others. On any given day you might catch some children playing hide and seek behind the tall corn, friends praying together, families collecting tomatillos for a shared meal, and friends connecting across rows of kale, tomatoes, and okra.

While each gardener manages their own plot, the space is open and welcoming. Apples and raspberries grow along the edges of the garden, and anyone walking by is welcome to harvest and enjoy them. All events that happen in the garden are also open to the public. If you ever meet a gardener, you will most certainly be gifted something from their plot; a prized fruit of labor and love.

But the garden isn’t just about food. It’s about beautifying our neighborhood, making space for experiential education, and creating opportunities for people to learn and grow together. From students curious about sustainability to families who’ve gardened for generations, everyone brings something valuable to this space.

Whether you’re a prospective student, a neighbor, or just someone who loves green spaces, the Augsburg Community Garden is a reminder of how much we can grow together.

Environmental Stewardship Team Celebrates & Reflects

Posted on

Today past and current Environmental Stewardship team (ESC) members gathered in the Community Garden to celebrate this year’s accomplishments, reminisce about fun times we’ve had together, eat local food, and reflect on what the work and team has meant to each of us.

 

In a tradition started this year, graduates from 2022 and 2023 ESC teams planted Arikara Yellows Beans. This planting acts as a symbol of the gifts each of our graduates, Alexa, Alyssa, Elan, Gigi, Grace, Mercy, and Zoe, have given to the work of advancing environmental sustainability at Augsburg and in our neighborhood. Although most may not see the results of the work they have started and propelled along, their legacies will be felt in small and profound ways by future Auggies, ESC members, and neighbors. These seeds, as their past work, will be stewarded by current and new ESC members. The dry beans will be cared for this summer, harvested in the fall, dried, and used to feed the community. Some seeds will be saved for the 2024 ESC graduates to plant anew. The cycle will continue and with each planting the soil will continue to be nourished as will the work of environmental sustainability be advanced. This is how changes happens – with joy, community, and the sharing of gifts.

 

Thank you Alexa Carrera, Alyssa Parkhurst, Annabella Castillo, Elan Quezada Hoffman, Elijah Abdullah, Gigi Huerta Herrera, Grace Muchahary, Malachi Owens, Mercy Zou Taithul, Summer Bordon, Wren Doyle, Yousra Tinsley, and Zoe Barany. Your collective leadership, equity-mindedness, authentic teamwork, wisdom, and organizing power has moved environmental sustainability work forward in profound and meaningful ways. The garden is continuing to be more connected to campus and advancing food sovereignty for its gardeners. The ShareShop has become a welcoming resource for many Auggies, a way to rethink waste diversion, and a catalyst for mutual aid on campus. Although renewable energy is still on the horizon, the steps to get there have become clearer and excitement is building. Thank you to each of you for your leadership, stewardship, and collective action.

 

Cultivating Community: Augsburg’s Community Garden

Posted on
Ten people in diverse garb sit on the edges of raised garden beds or at tables. Some are eating food, others are looking ahead with attentive gazes.
Gardeners gather for a meal and storytelling event in the garden.

Gazing out the west-facing upper windows of the Hagfors Center on Augsburg’s campus, you can’t miss benches, paths, and raised beds of Augsburg’s community garden. While the garden on the edge of campus has been cultivated since 2008, when the plans for the Hagfors Center for Science, Business, and Religion got underway, there was a distinct opportunity to preserve and re-imagine this unique community garden space. With support from the Medtronic Community Foundation, design guidance from O2 Design, and community-based input, the garden was rebuilt to make the space more accessible, inclusive, and visible. 

Throughout the design process for the new garden space, gardeners and Augsburg staff centered the enduring principles and goals for this vital community connection space: grow food, build relationships, and learn together. Two young people converse while sitting on the edge of a raised bed in the garden.The garden now has wider and defined pathways, clear plot boundaries, and a variety of raised and in-ground beds. 

The re-designed garden just finished its second season of production. With over sixty individual plots and communal growing space cultivated by residents of Cedar-Riverside and Augsburg staff, faculty, and students, the newly rebuilt garden is continuing to offer a place for learning and building community. 

About half of the members of Augsburg’s community garden are neighbors in Cedar-Riverside and Seward (six have a view of the garden from their homes across the street!), and about half are Augsburg staff, faculty, and students. Student groups, such as Hmong Women Together and the Augsburg Indigenous Student Association, tend portions of the communal gardening areas, and about ten students from TRIO Summer Bridge spent time learning in the garden over the 2019 growing season.

Individual gardeners are not the only people to utilize the garden; this fall, several professors teaching classes focused on food and sustainability are also capitalizing on the presence of the garden. From a history of food class, to a course on environmental connections to food, a chemistry AugSem, and a science of food and cooking class: the garden has increasingly become a laboratory for classroom learning on wide-ranging subjects related to growing and consuming food. Other classes utilize the garden in less formal ways, perhaps holding a class outside by The Loveliest of Trees, or sending students out for discussion as they walk the garden paths.

Natalie Jacobson and Allyson Green enjoy conversation in the garden. Another individual is in the foreground wearing a red backpack, their back turned to the camera.
Campus Kitchen Coordinator Natalie Jacobson (left) and Chief Sustainability Officer Allyson Green (right) enjoy conversation at a garden event.

During the summer and fall of 2019, the garden began to utilize the Food Lab space in the Hagfors Center for potlucks and food preparation. Chief Sustainability Officer Allyson Green, who oversees the garden, remarked that the first session of gardeners gathering in the food lab over the summer was the highlight of the season; people got to know one another and shared cooking techniques and conversation as they made sambusas. This season also saw a student-led storytelling event in partnership with Mixed Blood Theater and food activist, LaDonna Redmond. As gardeners and others are living into the new space, opportunities for connecting and learning with and from each other are growing alongside the vegetables. 

One challenge with the garden rebuild was impacted soil in the in-ground beds due to construction equipment. After the garden was initially built, gardeners were having a difficult time cultivating healthy root systems for their plants, requiring that all of the in-ground beds be dug up and the soil turned. Thankfully, dozens of students, several classes, and a few athletic teams answered the call, picking up shovels and making quick work of the beds that required turning.

When asked about how the garden fits into the overall sustainability commitments of Augsburg, Allyson noted that the garden is a visible demonstration of Augsburg’s commitment to caring for the place where Augsburg is located. By tending to our natural environment and building a place for community building, food access, and learning, the garden is an important aspect of Augsburg’s place-based and anchor institution work. 

An aerial view of the Augsburg Community Garden. A table in the foreground has food on it, and people are lining up to serve themselves.Allyson also noted her hopes for the garden. With twenty-five people on the waiting list, she hopes that the garden can continue to be a vital place on-campus for learning and relationship building that contributes to the well-being of the whole community. She dreams that the garden might be a model for cooperation and learning that can spread to other areas of campus, and even to other communities! 

As a space that requires the cooperation of dozens of people who all have different ideas about ways of growing food, habits of organization and storage, and different cultures, personalities, and life stories, the garden is a unique place for experimentation, building community amongst difference, and finding a middle ground. Here’s to a successful growing season and many more to come!

Serving up food and fun with Campus Kitchen Step-Up interns

Posted on

Hi my name is Davonte and I worked as one of Augsburg’s Campus Kitchen summer Step-up interns and it was my first ever job experience. Over the summer I’ve acquired a variety of job experiences and practiced many skills such as cooking, gardening, and researching food systems. Every Monday through Thursday I served food with the youth at the Brian Coyle Center and on Saturday I participated in the gleaning at the Mill City Farmer’s Market where we collected fresh donations of produce and gave it elders at The Cedars senior apartment building in Cedar-Riverside. It was a lot of hard work but it was also very fun and well worth the time. For example, going to the Guthrie Theatre during my shift on Saturday to enjoy the views made the time go so much faster.

This summer while cooking I learned new things such as new recipes made from fresh and healthy ingredients that ended up tasting really good like zucchini muffins and cucumber popsicles. Also one of my favorite parts of the job was just making other people happy by giving them food. It’s a rewarding experience.  

-Davonte

 

Hey, my name is Raykel and this past summer I worked for Campus Kitchen through the Minneapolis Step Up program. “What’s Campus Kitchen you ask?” Well Campus Kitchen is a food organization that is basically built off of donations. Any food not used in the Augsburg kitchen that has already been prepared but wasn’t eaten is given to Campus Kitchen to be reused. We have a wide variety of the kinds of food that we get, although once the food is put into the fridge we have a week to use it and most times it gets used and if not we freeze it. Another question you probably have is “Where does the food go once prepared everyday?” Well, Monday-Thursday the food is made and distributed to the Brian Coyle Center, for the children and even the adults (depending on how much we have left) but kids always eat first. Fridays, twice a month we take food to the elders at Ebenezer Tower Apartments and eat dinner with them. Campus Kitchen is like an organization that is always giving back to the community. Did I mention the garden where the community gets together and grows what they want to?

This job gives many opportunities. For instance, you meet people at a college and you learn things about the college that you didn’t know before. Also, you can put it on your resume. Plus if you ever need a job when you come to college then you know a place that you don’t even have to leave campus for. There were many memories and skills that we made and learned over the summer but there’s a couple that stand out to me:  knowledge of plants and knowledge of cooking in the kitchen. For two weeks in the summer time we had a gap in our schedule because the Brian Coyle Center was shut down so we helped out MN Urban Debate League camp. During, before, or even after their lunch we always could eat lunch so who wouldn’t go back for 3rds? This job helped me gain a lot of knowledge about many things and I’m very grateful for a great job.

Here’s some photos from the summer time:

1st photo is from the Garden

2nd photo was when we prepared the food by ourselves

-Raykel N.

 

Cooking and building community with Campus Kitchen!

Posted on

20160627_135606Hello! Kenani and DJ here, Augsburg Campus Kitchen’s summer 2016 Step-Up Interns. This summer we were placed with Augsburg Campus Kitchen for our first ever job through the City of Minneapolis Step-Up program. All summer we have been cooking and serving meals for youth at the Brian Coyle Center summer program. In addition, on Mondays, we helped teach gardening, cooking, and nutrition lessons to Brian Coyles’ K-8th graders. The theme for the summer was Top Chef and each week we had a cooking competition and awarded three participants Top Chef of the week. Thanks to grant support from The Campus Kitchens Project, These students were able to bring home a bag of groceries and recipes to their families so they could recreate the meals with them.

IMG_20160818_120719This past week in Top Chef we had a salsa competition where students were given a certain amount of fake money to buy the fresh ingredients to make their special salsas. The students had to be creative in making unique salsa while still making sure they had enough money to buy all the ingredients for their salsa. The kids had tons of fun making salsa and many of them were surprised how good their salsa turned out. For instance, a few students challenged themselves by putting less common ingredients such as black beans or pineapple in their salsa and still ended up loving it! We were really impressed that almost all the students liked their salsa – we learned it is almost impossible to make bad salsa from fresh ingredients!

Throughout the summer we learned about a community that is different than our own. We realized how everyone in Cedar-Riverside seems to know each other and how connected they are to their community. Even though we were out of our comfort zone a little at first we were able to make new friends and learn new things, not to mention becoming all-star dishwashers and building our resumes!