Fresh veggies are on the menu for many Indiana Wesleyan University students thank to the college’s Alliance Garden program.
The program began four years ago and has grown to include two gardens and four student interns.
“We were able to get some funding from a charitable foundation to start hiring student interns and have a garden for IWU,” said Grace Miller, professor of biology at IWU. “It’s a kind of educational training garden and our dream is to help people on campus understand more about sustainable agriculture and gardening, where food comes, eating healthier and just being part of a larger network of Marion Community Gardens.”
Miller said the garden project has expanded in recent years to accommodate a growing interest in the program.
“This year, we have an intern manager and an assistant manager and then four interns that work under them,” she said. “We’ve expanded in the last four year from having just one garden on the corner of 46th and Race Street to now having a lot that is just off of 38th Street.”
In fact, the number of students applying to be garden interns has shot up thanks to heightened interest. The interns are paid a stipend to mind the gardens and teach workshops on subjects like canning, pickling and raising chickens.
“It’s increasing every year, last year the applications for the garden interns more than tripled than the year before,” Miller said. “I think there’s an interest and students want to learn more about food production and gardening. There are a lot of things that interest students that may not know much about gardening but would like to start learning in this context. I think just in general it gives the students a better idea of growing food and how much work goes into that.”
Hannah Combs, a junior at IWU, is one of the interns this summer.
“My freshmen year I had to take a lab science class for gen ed requirements and I took Dr. Miller’s Crops and Society class,” Combs said. “She talks a lot in that class about sustainable agriculture practices and using that as a mean of achieving social justice. I thought that was really cool. I’ve gardened in the past at home with my parents, but I really wanted to be involved in the Alliance garden because I appreciate the community aspect of it and also the sustainability aspect.”
Combs, who is studying writing, said working in the garden has led to new culinary delights.
“I’ve never grown so much of my own food before and so I’m just figuring out new recipes. There are a lot of things we’ve planted that I’ve never had before. That was really cool,” she said. “I found that I really like beets. I don’t think I’d ever had them before. Once you pull up beets, they’re done. They don’t come back the next year so once we pulled up our last beets I was super sad.”
Along with new foods, Combs said has also learned a new appreciation for the hard work that goes into raising and harvesting food.
“I think that we’re pretty far removed from our food in general,” she said. “We can just go to a store and buy a case of tomatoes and we don’t know really think about the work that had gone into that, the people who had to spend hours of sweat planting those and picking those. I think just knowing about your food can just give you a better appreciation for humans in general. It makes you a nicer person.”
The produce the students harvest is made available to the student body and the community.
“Last week, they put a little table up in the student center and made $120 in donations in just one lunch period,” Miller said. “The students and staff are interested in freshly made salsa and freshly made jellies and jams. It’s mainly just the produce, we have huge watermelons and cantaloupes that are ready now and they know it’s locally grown. As far as sustainability and green initiatives, you’re not paying a lot for this watermelon to be transported from Iowa.”
The Alliance Gardens are also in connection with the Marion Community Gardens stand at the local farmers market and local food pantries.
“We also take a lot of our vegetables and produce to Victory Acres, which is in Upland,” Miller said. “They have CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) there and we also donate to the Marion Community Garden Association farm stand every Saturday morning during the summer months for the farmer’s market in the Tree of Life parking lot. We help them raise money for their gardens. Any food we have left over we’ve given to St. Martin’s food pantry and Grant County Rescue Mission.”
Miller said she would like for the IWU program to become even more involved in the community.
“Our idea is to become more involved in the community surrounding the university. We try to get to know our neighbors to try to see if they would like some of our vegetables and just sit and visit with them. We also want our interns to be involved, they volunteered with some of the other Marion Community Gardens to get to know those garden managers and learn what they’re doing inside Marion and not just stay on campus.”
To encourage community participation, the IWU Alliance Gardens are holding a harvest party on Sept. 27.
“We’re having a big harvest party on Sept. 27 at the 46th Street garden, which is open to the whole public,” Miller said. “We’ll have apple dunking, cider press, popcorn, just games and you can walk through our garden.”