Kevin Abourezk
ICT
MACY, Neb. – A light rain sprinkles rows and rows of corn, beans, cucumbers, flowers. A man and a woman walk through the mud, their boots sloshing, as they stop periodically to point out and name specific plants, their faces beaming with pride.
It’s a week before the big harvest, and Suzi French and Ricardo Ariza are here to offer a reporter a tour of their pride and joy – the Umoⁿhoⁿ Nation Public Schools student garden.
“Look at how beautiful it is,” French said. “This by far is the biggest dream I ever had.”
French’s “dream” is a garden planted and tended primarily by students, first planted three years ago. Back then it was a one-acre plot. Today, the garden takes up seven acres, or more than five football fields.
For a small town with no grocery store, the garden is an oasis in a food desert and has become a model nationally for tribes seeking to practice sustainable agricultural and food sovereignty.
For the students, it provides an opportunity to learn agricultural skills, entrepreneurship and customer service – tools that school officials hope will propel them into successful careers in whatever fields they choose.
“It provides opportunities to not only teach the students how to have relationships with plants but also to be able to serve their community and give back,” said Ariza, a career specialist with Jobs for America’s Graduates.
The garden has drawn the attention of tribes and tribal schools across the country, and many tribal and school leaders have visited Umoⁿhoⁿ Nation Public Schools to learn about the garden. They’ve come from as far as Guatemala, Alaska and Hawai’i and as near as Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa.
The students and their advisors have even been invited to participate in salmon harvests in Alaska, and Ariza said he’s hopeful the student garden might become a vehicle for recreating ancient trade routes between tribes. He said school and tribal leaders from other tribal nations often tell him that they’ve wanted to establish student gardens of their own but never quite got around to doing it.
“We’ve been blessed to host other nations that have heard about what we’re doing,” he said. “They often say they’ve talked about this for years but you’re actually doing it.”
The work isn’t easy, and students and school staff must be willing to wake up early each morning and carry five-gallon buckets of water from a spigot to the garden.
To beat the heat, gardening days start at 8 a.m. and outside work is usually done by noon, followed by a half-hour lunch and then educational sessions in drone technology, culture, language, art and culinary methods.
The task is enormous: the garden produces 300 cucumbers a day, as well as 500 pumpkins, 1,500 tomato plants and 1,500 pepper plants a year. All told, students cultivate and harvest more than 25,000 plants each growing season.
And the work doesn’t stop once harvest is finished. Students and staff then must sell or donate fresh produce to the community and process produce for consumption later. They freeze-dry and dehydrate fruits and vegetables like tomatoes, apples and strawberries and process 100 jars of pickles.
Ariza said the school has big plans for the future, including creating a processing center replete with freeze dryers, dehydrators, freezers, stoves, canning equipment and coolers. School officials have visited processing centers to learn more about what it would take to build such a facility.
“The funding is a big part of that,” he said.
The school also hopes to eventually raise small livestock such as chickens, goats and sheep.
The school hosts three farmers markets a week under a canopy outside the school. Students and staff also provide a meal – bean and corn soup, vegetable soup and bread – during the Omaha Tribe’s annual summer powwow.
The school provides produce to the local senior center and jail, and shares produce with the school cafeteria and a student-run cafe inside the school called the Bluestem Cafe. The school also provides cornhusks to the Native American Church for use in ceremonies.
The lessons are numerous, Ariza said.
“Many of these students had never experienced employment,” he said.
The students get paid $10.50 an hour for garden work. Ariza said students typically reinvest those funds in the community.
In addition, in order to cash their checks, students are taught how to open a checking account, which requires them to gather tribal or state identification cards, birth certificates and social security cards.
Ariza said gardening is a powerful form of experiential learning.
“Get them out of that classroom. Get them out of those chairs,” he said. “That’s the way of the future and we’re doing that.”
Richard Valentino, a cultural educator for the school, said gardening and sharing produce with the community has taught many students how to communicate with others. He said some of the students struggled to talk to adults or their peers before working in the gardening.
“Now every morning, you see them enjoying themselves, breaking out of their shell, being comfortable around a lot of our people,” he said.
Several students interviewed by ICT said they initially got involved in gardening work to earn money but came to enjoy the work and learned many lessons.
Destin Parker, 14, said it was exciting earning his first paycheck, which he used to travel to Oklahoma for a basketball tournament.
Kaijahlynn Miller, 14, said the most difficult parts were the heat and carrying five-gallon buckets of water.
“It’s really good,” she said. “It’s been exhausting.”
Eventually, she has grown to love the plants.
“It feels nice seeing them grow,” she said. “I feel like they were just like little babies. Then they got bigger.”
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