An Up and Down Week: The Beach Episode

The CSE summer interns, Thom, and Ashlynn walk alongside a massive, recently installed rain garden, led by Assistant Professor and Project Engineer Julie Wildschut.

Hello again, everyone!

If you’ve been following our rotation closely, you’ll know this week was meant to be Curtis’s blog post. But since he’s been sick, I’ve taken on this week. So buckle up, this one was an interesting one.

Monday

We started the week off strong with a visit to Calvin University, where we met with Campus Sustainability Program Coordinator and Director of the Sustainability Fellows Cohort Tom Hartzell, who led our tour. 

We learned about the Plaster Creek Stewards, a group of community members and Calvin staff, students, and faculty committed to restoring and maintaining the Plaster Creek watershed. Among their projects, they’ve engineered and researched rain gardens as one route to storm water management. The result is an amazing addition to an otherwise barren parking lot.

We also toured the Calvin Ecosystem Preserve & Native Gardens, and visited their native plant greenhouse and new tree nursery, which supply much of the surrounding area and campus.

The greenhouse at Calvin University’s native plant nursery.

Finally, we visited the community garden, before ending our visit and moving on to our next destination… Lake Michigan Beach in Holland. 

We spent about an hour splashing around, enjoying the sun, and getting some ice cream. 

After a long ride home, we settled in with high hopes of working on the farm the next day.

Tuesday

Monday night, Albion was drenched in several inches of rain. The farm was thoroughly underwater again – and the bugs were rampant. 

Morale was low as we harvested what we could: zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers, and greens. After this, we spent the rest of our time at the community garden, which compared to the farm, was high and dry. 

It was hard to see the farm like this. After all of our work to remediate the damage done by rain earlier in the summer, replanting and defensive measures to keep animals out, for everything to end up a swamp was a hard pill to swallow. 

But this, as our supervisors reminded us, is the reality of farming. We can’t control the weather, the animals, or the success of our plants – but we can manage the damage, make the best out of a disappointing situation, and learn for the future.

The student farm, aisles flooded and looking green.

Wednesday

On this day, I was driving to an appointment at home while the rest of the interns helped out at the community garden. 

So, as we take this break from our regularly scheduled programming, I’d like to take a moment to talk about this summer and all I have learned as an AmeriCorps intern with CSE – considering this is my last blog post this summer. 

This position has been an opportunity to meditate on privilege, both in terms of what it means to have easy access to food, but in terms of what it means to do this job. This is a position that pays us to serve and live here over the summer – to do work that benefits us, this community, and gives us skills and the opportunity to take on projects that interest us.

Although our Curtis was sick, and unable to come along on the trip to Calvin, we happened to meet a red-eared slider named Curtis while we were there!

Not only has this been an opportunity to learn and grow as a student and as a part of the community, but also just as a person. I’ve made some great memories with this team, and taken some important steps towards personal growth that I couldn’t have without the benefit of a flexible schedule and understanding supervisors. 

Thank you, to our readers, supporters, and my fellow interns – I’m so happy I got to spend this summer with you all. :)

Thursday

Sustainability Coordinator Ashlynn Reed smiles with a head of bok choy.

On Thursday, we started out at the farm again. The flooding wasn’t much better than it was Tuesday, but to avoid feeling as stuck as we did then, we made lists: of everything the rain took, of what needed to be harvested, weeded, and other of whatever other tasks could be approached with our last few weeks.

The direction this gave us helped move us out of our muddy slump – and the rest of the morning went by in a soggy, buggy flash. 

After this, we got a quick tour of Thom’s garden – and Ashlynn got to take home a beautiful bunch of bok choy as a reward.

Friday

This was a relatively standard day – we began by harvesting some veggies from Thom’s garden, then weeded several rows at the community garden before helping out at the food pantry in the afternoon. 

With so little to mention here, I think it would be interesting to leave off on a note of my personal experiences with food assistance programs. 

It strikes me that accepting assistance from these services can come with a lot of stigma, embarrassment, and hesitation. But it’s also true that these programs help more people than one might think, and even if you haven’t needed to, it’s likely that someone you know or love has. 

When I was a kid, my family used WIC (women, infants, and children) to help provide for us after we were born. I have great memories of the foods we used to get, many of which were strange or knock off brands. 

The interns and other volunteers hand out food at the weekly Tuesday distribution in the Wesley Hall parking lot.

People need these programs. Food is a human right, and there is no shame in doing what you need to do to make sure you and your family get the nutrition they need. I’m thrilled that I’ve had the opportunity to work with the Community Table of Albion as they facilitate this in this community – and I hope I get to make more memories with them.

Thank you for reading – have a great rest of your summer! :)