Local group trains volunteers to grow their own food in community garden at BREC’s Howell Community Park

By Avery White
Louisiana State University

 It’s said that produce grown in your backyard tastes better than store-bought. What if the food is grown in your local community garden?

A local group, called Baton Roots, is working to make sure that residents of North Baton Rouge at least have the second option.

Baton Roots hosts a program called Sow Good Saturdays once a month at BREC’s Howell Community Park and invites residents to take part in the upkeep and harvest of their urban community garden. This project is an offshoot of the Walls Project, a local community organization that works within the community to enrich and beautify neighborhoods through service projects.

The garden features various raised beds and an inground garden, used throughout the year for different produce, depending on the season. Colorful metal sculptures spell out Baton Roots and mark the spot where the crops grow. Volunteers gathered in gardening gloves with wheelbarrows and shovels in hand one recent Saturday as they prepared the beds for a seasonal change.

Sow Good Saturdays has a twofold mission, according to founder Mitchell Provensal: to educate local generations on the skill of farming and help combat the ongoing food access issues plaguing the North Baton Rouge community. North Baton Rouge has struggled for years from a lack of accessible grocery stores selling fresh produce. Many residents only have access to corner stores. Because of this, Baton Roots has worked to make sure the community garden is successful in growing fresh produce. North Baton Rouge residents can visit the garden, harvest vegetables and other produce and keep what they need for free whenever they want.

 “In our city, North Baton Rouge, there’s food access issues, not a lot of grocery stores, plenty of corner stores with lots of processed packaged stuff, and we wanted to grow food right where people need it, reduce some access barriers,” Provensal said.

Baton Roots recruits students at Baton Rouge High School and surrounding neighborhoods to work in the gardens for Sow Good Saturdays to teach them skills on maintaining the raised beds, planting the crops, and other basic agricultural skills.

“The average age of a farmer is 58, and like 1% of the population farms, and that population is aging out,” Provencal said. “So, we need young people to be exposed to agriculture.”

Since launching the community garden in January 2019 as a Martin Luther King Jr. service project through the Walls Project, the garden and its volunteer base have slowly grown year by year, weekend by weekend, as dozens of volunteers show up once a month to work.

Many of the Sow Good volunteers are students from local schools. Still, others are Baton Rouge residents looking for ways to help their community and expose themselves and family to farming skills.

“My involvement is mainly to expose my daughter to something different so she can start to get familiarized with a different lifestyle you don’t see very much in today’s kids’ lives,” said Nick Papalaskaris, a volunteer who brought his daughter. “You know, just trying to help and support in any way I can.”

Although the main event of Sow Good Saturdays is the garden work, the day also features yoga classes on the sunny grass and a cooking demonstration by the American Heart Association, using vegetables and other produce harvested directly from the garden.

By partnering with Baton Roots, the Heart Association wants to demonstrate simple ways to eat healthy and use the produce from the garden. Every month staff members prepare a new meal,  using only two or three ingredients, for guests to sample. The goal is to show visitors how easy it is to eat healthily when they get their hands on fresh produce. February's meal was chicken noodle soup and hummus vegetable snacks.

“It also gives them control of their health. Instead of us just telling them what to do, they can actually have a hands-on experience,” the Heart Association’s nutrition educator, Staci Mitchell, said. “I think it builds confidence when you can take things from the ground and actually make something of it that tastes good. It builds their confidence.”

Baton Roots also has introduced a new apprenticeship program to train new people in the field of agriculture, another way the organization hopes to encourage more people to pursue farming. Apprentices are trained in everything agriculture from best farming practices to garden maintenance before being moved into permanent, full-time jobs.

“I was looking for ways to just get involved, be a more active part of my community, have an impact, and this seemed like a good way to do that,” new apprentice Tarek Dalton said. “It's kind of the most fun I’ve had doing work in my life.”

Baton Roots meets at Howell Park for Sow Good Saturdays every first Saturday of the month, volunteers can show up to help out and learn about farming. The group also hosts Friday sessions at the garden for regular bed maintenance for community volunteers, as well. For more information, those looking to volunteer can visit Baton Roots’ website or call (225) 434-0515.
______________________________________________________
This story was reported and written by a student with the support of the non-profit Louisiana Collegiate News Collaborative, a coalition of eight universities led by LSU and funded by the Henry Luce and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundations.