Greenbrier Elementary students with their sweet potato slips 

March came in like a lamb with sunny skies heralding spring weather, but it went out like a lion with a tornado warning and wild winds. That's not the only weather folklore The Farmers’ Almanac highlights related to the third month of the year. “So many mists in March you see, so many frosts in May will be” and “As it rains in March, so it rains in June," will have us waiting for another few months to find out how the weather affects our 2022 harvests.

In the meantime, we won't be fooling around in April. Next comes a pivotal month for the Spring Seedling project and the first season of planting at the CATEC garden. It will also be the perfect time to visit Jefferson School African American Heritage Center to view the Picturing Climate Justice exhibit with your friends and family. And we'll all hope that April showers bring beautiful May flowers.

Seedlings Are Coming

The 2022 Spring Seedling Project at Cultivate is underway! 

Each year we engage Buford Middle School students in starting, caring for and distributing thousands of vegetable seedlings across community gardens and local growers. This year, we are partnering with the new Buford Urban Farming program for our growing project. 

Students have been planting and caring for thousands of tiny seedlings for the past 5 weeks and wow are they looking great! Students have been watering and thinning beautiful herbs, early spring crops, summer crops and flowers.  With the weather getting warmer, crops are preparing to be put in the hoop house and replaced in the classroom with hundreds of flower starts. Keep an eye out for our Spring Seedling Project Flier for community days where you can come get seedlings to start your growing season! 

Jackson-Via Elementary students closely inspecting the progress of their pea plants

The Black Panther Party Free Breakfast Program 

Did you know that the head of the FBI declared The Black Panther Party Free Breakfast Program the biggest threat to the internal security of America in 1969? Did you know that the Black Panthers are the reason the U.S. serves free breakfast to all public school students today? Black History Month may be over, but the legacy of the Black Panther’s radical politics is worth remembering all year round. 

The Black Panther Party (BPP) was founded in 1966 with the goal to end police brutality in Oakland. But as the party grew, so did push back by the government. To strengthen the party and improve their public image, the Panthers deployed various social programs that served and uplifted black communities across the country. Free Breakfast For School Children became arguably their most effective program.

Picturing Climate Justice 

In the summer of 2021, Cultivate Charlottesville hosted nine youth food justice interns who engaged in a range of food justice-related activities. One activity—Operation Save Buford Garden— provided interns the opportunity to apply photovoice methods in order to describe what the Buford garden means to them and their community. The interns took photographs, crafted statements, and overlaid their contributions over a map of the garden. 

This project was a form of learning as well as advocacy, as it provided a forum to help policymakers and community members better understand the importance of the Buford Garden in light of proposed changes to Buford Middle School’s configuration. 

The youth interns’ contributions are shown in this exhibit, overlaid on Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Fifeville, where the Buford Garden is located. 

The Picturing Climate Justice invitation and the overlaid maps

Together we can move Charlottesville from a foodie city to a food-E(quity) place for ALL residents!

For more information or to join Food Justice Network full team meetings, contact Gabby Levet at gabby@cultivatecharlottesville.org

Here are a few of the titles we're reading and a film we're going to see:

How I Got My Job: From Making Artisanal Jam to Public Service at SF City Hall and Beyond, Shakirah Smiley, Eater

Is Michelle Wu America’s Food Justice Mayor?, Steve Holt, Civil Eats

UDSA Food Nutrition Services Farm to School Program E-newsletter: The Dirt 

At Cultivate Charlottesville we believe that working together to grow gardens, share food and power, and advocate for just systems cultivates a healthy community for all. 

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