Growin’ Dat in Nola

Left+to+right%3A+Ashley+Fogg%2C+Shannon+McDuff%2C+Calleen+Ferris%2C+Megan+Roberts%2C+Anais+Dutton%2C+Jordan+Niles%2C+Krista+Sawyer%2C+Eric+Crosby%2C+Syndney+Bullard%2C+Kali+Covell

courtesy of Badger Alternative Breaks

Left to right: Ashley Fogg, Shannon McDuff, Calleen Ferris, Megan Roberts, Anais Dutton, Jordan Niles, Krista Sawyer, Eric Crosby, Syndney Bullard, Kali Covell

Inclement weather gave a group of Johnson students a couple of extra sunny days in New Orleans when they were there for a week-long service trip as part of the Badger Alternative Breaks program.

Seniors Shannon McDuff and Kali Covell led the group of 10, whose focus this year was on hunger and food insecurity.

“I thought it would be really amazing to take a look at growing food and sustainable farming and urban farming,” McDuff said.

McDuff spent the summer researching various sites and projects before ultimately deciding on Grow Dat, a seven-acre site in New Orleans’ City Park with a two-acre sustainable farm.

According to its website, Grow Dat grows and harvests 25,000 pounds of fresh produce on average. Seventy percent is sold at their in-house farm stand and at other farmers’ markets, all run by its youth employees. The other 30 percent goes to low-income residents with minimal access to fresh food through the Shared Harvest program.

While on the farm, students spent their days weeding and replanting, and even helping set up for a fundraising event that took place the weekend they left. While they were hard at work in the sun, a group of local elementary school students helped in the greenhouse and worked on character building in the afternoons.

“You do what they need you to do,” McDuff said. “Even if you don’t like weeding, if the site needs you to do it, then that’s what you do.”

One goal of sustainable farming is to build a thriving system that stimulates microbiological activity and promotes growth without the use of chemical-based fertilizers. Through their farming duties, students learned firsthand how to compost, cover crop, companion plant and crop rotate to encourage soil health.

The award-winning “eco campus” was designed and built by students and staff from the Tulane School of Architecture. Seven retrofitted shipping containers house the offices, teaching kitchen, produce handling area and cold storage, among other things.

Grow Dat’s farm is also home to a birding corridor that protects and generates essential habitats for local and migratory birds. Underneath the large wooden “birdwalk” is a landscape feature called a bioswale that filters and manages excess runoff water, draining it directly into the bayou.

Although group members said the farm was beautiful, Calleen Ferris’ favorite part was working with the animals at Animal Rescue New Orleans, where the group spent a day volunteering before getting dirt under their nails at the farm.

“I loved ARNO and working with the animals,” Ferris said. “There’s definitely power in numbers and we got to help a lot.”

As a part of each year’s service trip, students are allowed one “cultural day” to explore and experience the city. McDuff said that although the day isn’t a no-holds-barred free-for-all, they still got to have fun taking a haunted history tour, visiting the Mardi Gras Museum, going to Jackson Square and even enduring the line at Café du Monde for their world-famous Beignets.

Jackson Square is an area in the French Quarter where France officially turned Louisiana over to the United States with a flag-raising ceremony, following the Louisiana Purchase earlier that year.

The group doesn’t get any direct funding from the college, so McDuff said they sold magazine subscriptions and chocolate bars, and they held “food nights” in some of the dormitories. Some members even started GoFundMe initiatives to cover their parts of the trip.

A nor’easter moved in right when the group was scheduled to return from New Orleans and caused several flights to be cancelled, keeping the group members there until Monday, or even Tuesday for some.

Despite leaving warm, sunny weather to come back to a blizzard, McDuff and Ferris said they were both happy to be back in Vermont after a successful service trip.