Fruits of Labor

When we had an initial farmers market planning meeting, one of the things that was said was that "A market is successful when it becomes a destination." I have kind of been using that as my mantra for the summer as i plan larger events for every first Saturdays of July-November. Today i was talking to a lady on the phone who comes to the farm often and she actually said that the Farm has become a destination for her family. Even though she has not been to markets yet this year, the farm is a destination for her and, by way of the equation, it means that the farm is considered successful, so the fact that she actually said "destination", was really encouraging for me. Unfortunately i will not be here through the Market season to see if the fruits of my labor will bring more and more people on first Saturdays, but such is life i guess.

I have been teaching service learning workshops with the teens, this week was the second group i taught. This time around was really exhilarating. We have discussion questions in the beginning of the session, do the service project, then do some reflective mapping afterwards. The past two weeks, the to different groups of teens have gone to the Red Hook Senior Center to help serve food to the seniors. So in the beginning we talked about service and how the learning a really important part of it. I learned that most teens have not done any community service type work in their lives! I was surprised then really exited to be a part of some of their first experiences with community service because doing community service as a youth was one of the things that has molded me the most in the way i think about people, the things i know, and how i have envisioned my future. So we go to the senior center the first week and the supervisors had us preparing fork, spoon, knife combos. I thought it was a little menial but everyone was totally engaged and talking to each other and we figured out a little system part way into it utilizing the skills people were best at or enjoyed in the process of prep-ing utensil combos. We served the seniors and everyone was generally enjoying the experience and even wanted to stay for lunch so they could talk with the seniors. We debriefed afterwards and did a connections chart about all the possible effects of our work on the seniors, ourselves, our team and the world.
This week I went to the senior center again with a different group. This time we did some gardening. We brought compost to put on the tomatoes they are already growing and then we found a little weedy patch, weeded it, and planted some Nasturtium flower seeds we brought. Hopefully they will grow quickly and the youth will walk by sometimes and see the flowers growing there and think of it as a reminder and symbol of giving back to their community. We went in and served the food to the seniors and one youth, Rayquan said that it was actually more challenging than he thought it was going to be. So it was really nice to see them fully engaged. No one complained, people saw neighbors at the senior center which hopefully helps them put a face to who "old people" are to a community. Unfortunately we did not get to debrief about the day because of scheduling conflicts but i think it was a really valuable experience. It was even valuable for me as i have had almost no experience with senior issues. It helped me broaden my perspective on who vulnerable and valuable populations are and i was able to put faces on elderly people as a population which i have never really thought about as the older people i come in contact with are my family and i never really put family members in social boxes...which is another interesting thing to think about (another time) about why that is...

Other things I have been thinking about but are works in progress that i just need to get down here in writing:

7. how race plays out when the staff and market goers are majority-white and the youth employees and community are mostly people of color.

1. how I will function in the real world of work (timeliness, working on a computer, self-setting goals, etc.)

2. this burnt-out feeling that i am in a battle with

10. the "intern" role and how i can fully be fulfilled in it when it is on short term basis and i do not necessarily get to see my work come to fruition in the longer term AND the constraints of programming

5. whether i am interested in/ have it in me to facilitate teen programming (in the future)?

3. if I could live in NYC in my future. Is it overwhelming or always fun? dunno which side of the fence I'm on about that one.

8. Who's going to take over my responsibilities when i leave and will they do it right? will they use my system? Should i even care?

The hard thing about most of these questions is that they may be unanswerable and only time will know the answers. So I'll be patient.