Orchard Curriculum launched at four Southern California schools

We figured that if McDonalds could contribute to public school curriculum, well...so can Common Vision. We are very proud to announce that we just launched the first unit in our Orchard Curriculum at four Southern California elementary schools: Carthay, Palms, Round Meadow and Vista del Valle.

Thanks to your support, Common Vision’s week-long unit on decomposers features the California Education and Environment Initiative (EEI) Curriculum as a base and includes hands-on compost and mulching exercises in the orchard. Now, in addition to leaving a wake of fruit forests in food deserts, we are also leaving behind lesson plans straight out of the book of life itself.

For example, orchard learning activities include composting and mulching, when students are introduced to the deep ecological reasons for maintaining soil health. Our juicy curriculum transforms school orchards into living classrooms right in the heart of the city. Now, that is some serious schweetness!!!

California is currently poised to lead the nation in environmental literacy with the Education and Environment Initiative (EEI), a national model designed to help prepare today’s students to become future scientists, economists, and green technology leaders. The K-12th grade curriculum is comprised of 85 units teaching select Science and History-Social Science academic standards. Each EEI Curriculum unit teaches these standards to mastery using a unique set of California Environmental Principles and Concepts. The curriculum was created to bring education about the environment into the primary and secondary classrooms of more than 1,000 school districts serving over 6 million students throughout California.

Thank you so very much for an incredible orchard day at Carthay! We were so very impressed with your team - they worked so hard and so efficiently and with such kindness. It was absolutely amazing - as soon as tree (or vine : ) trimmings dropped to the Earth another team member was there to haul it away - all six dumpsters full!

And I can't believe how quickly the mountain of mulch was moved, and the grapes pruned and everything else expertly pruned and fed - it was a beautiful day and we thank you for it. It is such a HUGE help to have Common Vision come to Carthay each year - our fruit trees anchor our garden. With the care you provide these trees will preserve it for many years and many generations of students to come. Thank you for the amazing work you do.

- Teresa Dahl, Sustainability Schoolyard Ombudsman, Los Angeles Unified School District and Cathay Elementary Garden Coordinator

Massive gratitude to EnrichLA for keeping Markham’s orchard juicy

It’s not every day that the flagship of our biofueled fleet gets a chance to play the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but our visit to Markham Middle School was one such auspicious occasion. On this visit, we returned to prune and feed the trees, improve the irrigation system, and create colorful orchard signs with the students. It was great to see an entire 6th grade science class outside using the orchard as a living laboratory!

First planted on Fruit Tree Tour 2007, this 30-tree orchard is producing tons of free, fresh juicy fruit. We want to express gratitude to EnrichLA for being the group on the ground who makes sure that Markham’s orchard gets enough to drink during the hot Southern California summers. 

EnrichLA is an environmental non-profit focused on adding edible school gardens to public schools. Their gardens are inexpensive, promote community involvement, encourage respect for the planet, act as outdoor classrooms, cheer up school campuses, help students build a good work ethic, and promote thoughtful and healthy eating habits. Needless to say, we are perfectly aligned!

Student innovation and drip irrigation at Crenshaw High in LA

The orchard Crenshaw High is more like a food forest than most school orchards. Rather than rows of trees in an otherwise manicured schoolyard, this more natural-looking ecosystem features multiple levels of canopy, permaculture style. In that spirit, some students, aware that water is too precious to waste, transformed a leaky water pipe into flood irrigation for their orchard by digging a drainage from the leak to the trees.

Originally planted by Community Services Unlimited (CSU)  in 2003, there are now about 55 mature fruit trees at Crenshaw High including mango, sapote, Chilean wine palm, loquats, figs and all sorts of tasty tropical and subtropical fruits. We’ve been hearing about this orchard for years and really wanting to make it a stop on Fruit Tree Tour.

Many thanks to Crenshaw for inviting us to stop by and unload a bus-load of Common Vision-strength lovin’. It was a fast and furious half-day stop where we were able to put their entire food forest on drip irrigation thanks to engaged, helpful students.

Healthy Food Map features Common Vision orchards in South LA

> Download the Health Food Map

It was a perfect storm of sustainability on the day that the Common Vision caravan visited Normandie Avenue Elementary. That same day, our perennial partner, Community Services Unlimited (CSU), launched their new Healthy Food Map heralding the end of South LA’s status as a food desert.
 

To get the word out about the launch of CSU'S Healthy Food Map, 50 local cyclists pedaled their way to stops on the map, including our thriving 50-tree orchard at Normandie Avenue Elementary. The combo of 50 energized cyclists, 50 thriving fruit trees and a busload of Common Visionaires was 100% EPIC, and a sign of good things to come!
 
The Healthy Food Map shows residents of South LA where local, fresh, organic food is now available nearby–everywhere from urban farm stands to school orchards like the one Common Vision and CSU planted at Normandie Avenue Elementary way back in 2005.
 
It was also amazing to work side-by-side again with master gardener Ned Boyer who has been helping take care of the Normandie Avenue Elementary orchard since it was first planted back in 2005. The school created a living classroom by installing a perfect circle of permanent benches in their thriving school orchard.  When asked how the trees are doing, Leo Buc exclaimed, “Their apples are cranking!”

Vista del Valle teams up with Sustainable Clairmont to teach Orchard Curriculum

Can you believe that some of the first students that we worked with at Vista del Valle Elementary are now in college? The orchard that they planted is thriving, especially if you love apples and apricots! Over the past eight years, their school orchard come to define campus culture; and the staff is completely committed to having Common Vision come back to help care for their fruit trees and roll out our Orchard Curriculum.

Working with Sustainable Clairemont, Vista del Valle Elementary wants to set a statewide example of how effective an Orchard Curriculum can be in helping young minds deeply understand the earth sciences, social studies and language arts that they study in the classroom. Their local goal is to create collaborative models within their community to increase eco-literacy at every school in Clairemont. What a beautiful ripple effect!

Sustainable Claremont was formed to provide educational resources, to engage in advocacy, and to take actions that move their entire city towards sustainability, not only within Claremont but beyond its borders. They are a non-profit organization independent of the City who work in close cooperation with it and with other organizations such as Common Vision.

It is immeasurably rewarding to be welcomed back year after year to Vista de Valle, one of our most successful school orchards by far! We really loved this visit when a Vista del Valle volunteer came up and told us that her kids, now in college, had attended school there and still talk about the day that the Common Vision caravan first pulled onto campus.

How many elementary school programs did you still talk about at college? Your support made this magic possible. Thank you!!!

EPIC Urban Farm and Orchard in Long Beach

We are honored and humbled at the opportunity to collaborate with the Long Beach Community Action Project at their cosmic-class Spring Street Farm, an urban, organic teaching farm and farm stand. The farm "mitigates blight and boasts row farming; demonstration plots; a farm stand for produce sales; a chicken yard; and a rain garden.” 

Located in a neighborhood next to an oil field, this place is pumping out fresh fruit and veggies like it’s everybody’s business. And it is. Spring Street Farm Stand serves the local community by providing a place to procure fresh, local, organic produce. Better still, they accept food stamps and hire local youth. BOOM! 

Ready to really rock your reality? Spring Street Farm, a tiny 1.5 acre agricultural oasis in the middle of industrial Long Beach, also has its own families of ducks, geese and chicken that help keep the scourge of suburbia from encroaching on the farm, lawn grass.

It gets better. Long Beach Community Action Partnership distributes an astonishing amount of food grown at the farm to the community through awesome neighborhood networks. If you ever find yourself in Long Beach, stop by and prepare to be inspired. And how is the 40-tree orchard Common Vision planted at Spring Street Farm on Fruit Tree Tour in 2011? According to Michael Flynn it’s “super thriving!”

We recommend checking out their blog, The Farm Desk, or following Spring Street Farm Project on Facebook.

No Orchard Left Behind

Here’s an interesting tidbit for all you contemporary anthropologists following the emergence of post-modern School Orchard Movement in California. Common Vision’s collaboration with Planting Justice is proof positive that orchards can outlive institutions, and keep communities together in the process.

Case in point is a school orchard planted back in 2008 at Explore College Preparatory Middle School in Oakland. Sadly, the school has since closed due to funding cuts. In the case of this school closing, there was an orchard left behind, and a community that came together to care for it. Feeling good yet?

This 20-tree fruity oasis is not your average urban orchard either. It is situated on a steep slope perfect for a swale to soak up rainwater. We really love putting our permaculture skills to work whenever the landscape allows. On this visit, we installed a new drip irrigation system to help the community easily keep up on watering, especially during the East Bay’s warmer (ahem) months.

And it gets even better. Since the school closed, our friends at Planting Justice stepped in and set up a program to host work parties and alert neighbors when fruit is ripe and ready for the picking. Planting Justice is a non-profit organization based in Oakland, CA dedicated to food justice, economic justice, and sustainable local food systems.

They are the first organization of their kind to combine ecological training and urban food production with a grassroots door-to-door organizing model.  They make sure that urban orchards grow deep roots in their local community.

So, when you donate to Common Vision, or any group in the School Orchard Movement, you really are leaving behind a living legacy that creates community, and that’s gotta feel good!

Engaging Underground Allies

In the past 3 years Common Vision has worked with GreenFriends to develop a permaculture design the 380-acre property of the MA Center in Castro Valley.

Under the guidance of Dr. Elaine Ingham, expert in soil microlife, we have been working to create a rich soil that functions biologically like a forest soil. Forests have the most complex populations of microorganism dominated by fungi as opposed to grassy hillsides which are have much simpler populations that are primarily bacterial.

By adding over 450 cubic yards of decomposing wood chips, inoculated with a great diversity of microorganisms and fed with fungal foods (like fish and seaweed), we are quickly building a forest-like soil. The result of this bottom-up approach is much healthier trees, deeper penetrating root systems, lower watering needs, and little to no fertilizing needs.

We will keep you abreast of further developments.

Orchard Care Collaboration

During our time in LA we spent a Saturday engaged in a day of orchard care continuing the 5-year annual collaboration between Common Vision's traveling caravan and Community Services Unlimited's local nonprofit in South Central LA. Started 30 years ago as a branch of the Black Panthers focused on bringing healthy food to the neighborhood, CSU has been active in South Central building gardens, educating youth and creating community. In 2004 CSU completed a Community Food Assessment that analyzed the socioeconomic factors that led to insufficient accessibility to nutritious food in their neighborhood. Common Vision’s collaboration with CSU began in 2005 when the veggie oil caravan came through and helped to install two schoolyard orchards. The rest is history. . . Find out more in this short film . . . .

185 Apple Trees at the MA Center!

This Valentine's Day also marked the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the MA Center and the first planting event of Fruit Tree Tour 2009. Common Vision has been working with international environmental organization, GreenFriends, to design the MA Center landscape as a model of sustainability. After focusing the fall and winter on rainwater harvesting strategies and reforestation plantings, the MA Center was ready to expand their orchards.

With a goal of 500 trees this year, the Common Vision team helped plant 185 apple trees in the first planting event of the tour. It is likely that the tour will return in April for another community planting.



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900 trees at the MA Center

Common Vision has been supporting the GreenFriends Tree Planting Project this winter in a reforestation project that has planted over 900 trees so far. This project integrates permaculture water catchment strategies that will help to water this forest through its life.



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Catching the Rain, Growing a Forest

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Common Vision, recently orchestrated a momentous workshop at the MA Center in Castro Valley with international environmental organization GreenFriends. Geoff Lawton, considered by many to be the world’s best Permaculture Designer and Teacher, flew from Australia to teach this 3-day course titled “Permaculture and Reforestation: Harvesting Rainwater, Growing Food Forests, and Planting Ecosystems.” Over fifty course participants, including MA Center Residents and environmentalist from across California and Oregon, learned from Geoff how to harvest thousands of gallons of water in the landscape, design a resilient ecosystem, generate soil fertility, and produce food and timber in abundance.

The MA Center has almost 400 acres under its stewardship. Over 150 of these acres are treeless with a clay soil that has been compacted from at least a half century of intensive and insensitive cattle grazing practices. The compacted clay coupled with the lack of trees makes the ground very susceptible to slumps and slides in the rainy season. Yet, by the end of the summer the hillsides are crusted over with a think shell of dry, hardened clay. Deer, pigs, gophers, and voles graze and burrow for any food sources remaining at the end of the harsh, dry summer.

During the 3-day workshop, Geoff made clear that in order to grow trees on these hillsides we need to “fast-track” an ecological regeneration. While nature may take hundreds or thousands of year’s to recovery in this area, human beings can support the successive unfolding ecological processes and see recovery in less than a decade. First step, says Geoff, is water design. Without water there is no life. Before the cutting of trees and soil compaction by the cattle, this land was a living sponge that soaked rainfall into the ground. Currently the majority of rainfall tends runs fast along the surface into the valley and out to sea.

To help soak water into the landscape, Geoff led the group on an exercise to site, survey, and dig a massive ditch on contour (level no slope up or down) to catch rainwater running down the slopes, slow it down, spread it out, and soak it into the hillside. With the help of Rusty Davis and his excavator, the course dug over 500ft of this on-contour trench, known in permaculture as a swale. With each rain, even if it be moderate, the swale will sink over 10,000 gallons of water into the soil. This water slowly travels under the soil, and remains available throughout the summer for trees to drink and grow.

The MA Center is becoming a model of sustainable design for ecological regeneration and reforesting Bay Area hillsides. We are learning that through knowledge of how ecosystems evolve and a willingness to support nature’s processes, human beings can truly be a positive force in the environment. Common Vision looks forward to supporting the GreenFriends planting trees with diverse people from across the Bay Area and to inspire the larger community into compassionate action for Mother Nature.

Green-LA features Common Vision

Green LA is a non profit dedicated to unifying the environmental movement in Los Angeles. They strive to illuminate the vast spread of environmental organizations and projects at work in the city while promoting cooperation and broader grassroots participation. Green LA featured Common Vision in their five-minute trailer that is launching their project.

Reforestation with the National Forest Service

As May gave way to June, most of Northern California was experiencing summer. Meanwhile Common Vision and members of the National Forest Service traveled together up to nearly 8000 ft where the last snows were just melting and where just a few short years ago fire torched the forest.

16 Volunteers from San Francisco, Grass Valley, Sacramento, Mendocino, and LA came together to replant 4 acres of the burn site and reconnect with our ability to heal ourselves and the earth. Our team planted over 1,000 red fir, white fir, and sugar pine trees to jumpstart the forest’s recovery from a 2006 wildfire.

The planting became even more of an adventure when the planters were joined by unexpected rain-clouds. Not to be deterred from reaching the day’s goal, planters donned trash-bags as ponchos and planted on!

The experience was so positive for both the Common visionaries and the Forest Service that Vicki Stoll, partnership coordinator for the Forest Service, urged the Common Vision staff to work towards inviting groups of urban youth to a planting project in 2009! We look forward to continuing stewardship of public lands and to help expand this collaboration to more organizations and tree planting enthusiasts!

Thank you to the National Forest Service and to all the reforestation participants for caring for our national treasure and for creating such a memorable experience! Special Thanks to Viki and Paul who were diligent in making this project happen. Your dedication to the forest is inspiring. Thank You!

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Common Vision invites Geoff Lawton

On August 8-10th, world renowned Permaculture designer Geoff Lawton, will be joining Common Vision to teach a Permaculture and Reforestation course. Geoff is director of the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia, a master of harvesting rainwater in the landscape, and a frequent co-teacher with Bill Mollison. He has been invited by governments, NGOs, businesses, and communities in 27 different countries to teach, restore damaged ecosystems, and direct sustainable design projects. In case you haven't heard of Geoff's work, we would like to share the power and impact that his water-harvesting knowledge has had. Check out "Greening the Desert" below, it will boggle your mind...

CV Crew Supports GreenFriends

In Castro Valley, just southeast of Oakland, an international humanitarian and spiritual leader Amritananda Mayi has a center on several hundred acres of grassy hillsides. As part of her Green Friends initiative (which plants 100,000 saplings along the coast India each year) she has begun a campaign to plant trees in the United States starting with the center’s grounds. Just after Fruit Tree Tour ended, 5 Common Vision crew members brought the fruit tree grafting skill that they developed on tour to propagate 108 apple and pear trees to support the project. The grafted trees will be used as part of a fund raiser to support the reforestation effort in the Castro Valley hills.

Permaculture Hillside Transformation

In the eastern hills of Oakland, Common Vision joined forces with three classes at Merritt to transform a steep hillside into a permaculture food forest with 108 fruit trees! Before trees were planted a team of pickaxers and shovelers built swales, long on-contour ditches, designed to harvest 1000’s of gallons of rainwater and store it deep in the hillside. Over 75 Common Vision crew and Merritt College students worked all day, accompanied by the drums, to plant the widest spread of tree varieties in Fruit Tree Tour history. Jujubes, almonds, chestnuts, pluots, figs, apples, pears, plums, peaches, apricots, nectarines, and persimmons will soon watch the sunset over Oakland. Video created by Annapurna.

Biggest Planting in Tour History!

In a historic planting day, Common Vision teamed up with members of Serna Village to plant a record-breaking 105 fruit trees! Serna Village is a thriving community that serves as long-term housing for families that have struggled with homelessness. With master gardeners, Village community members, and organizations like First Five of Sacramento, the day of planting and celebration yielded an amazing nutritional resource for the over 200 kids living at the village. After a powerful day of working, learning and laughing together, fruit trees now surround the co-housing units.

In a few years this place of growth and new beginnings for the 83 families who live there, will have the beauty, health, and abundance of a wide variety of fruit trees. Leo Buc, veggie mechanic and mathematician estimates in six years, the trees will produce 2 and ½ tons of fruit, roughly equivalent to the weight of 875 gallons of vegetable oil or 1 unloaded veggie-powered soil-hauling dump truck. In this video Annapurna shows the planting, planning, and celebration that went into this momentous collaboration.

The making of a Schoolyard Orchard

What does it take to transform a schoolyard? This video created by tour veteran Annapurna takes us on the journey of planting an urban orchard at Jonas Salk Tech High from the perspective of the Fruit Tree Tour behind the scenes team--from the soil donation yard to planting site. Common Vision had the honor to work with a dynamic urban agriculture educational project, Soil Born Farms, on this planting. Catch a glimpse of how Common Vision joins forces with local organizations to meaningfully connect with students, schools, and communities.

A New Fruit Corridor in LA

Last Week, Fruit Tree Tour joined forces with the Green Ambassadors, a group comprised of 60 Los Angeles high school students dedicated to environmental leadership, to plant 70 fruit trees in a school and neighborhood in Lawndale (in LA). On Monday the Green Ambassadors learned how to plant fruit trees by planting over 30 banana, fig, peach, nectarine, apple, citrus, guava, and avocado trees on the new Environmental Charter High School campus. Over the course of the week, the ambassadors canvassed their new neighborhood to find ways to expand the shade, fruit, and oxygen of their new orchard into the surrounding residents’ lives. On Saturday, to the beat of the drums, the students and the Common Vision tree planters saw another 40 trees into the ground.