Week 10

Tuesday 06/01/10

The project presentation at the Community Garden was an interesting one. It was amazing how the different groups applied the seven assessment steps. The various group assessments go a long way to tell us how important a community nutrition professional is to the society. For example our team discovery of adolescent female’s deficiency in iron, vitamin A, protein and calcium will go a long way to improve the health of these adolescent especially in the case of iron due to blood loss as a result of menstrual cycle and also at that age, calcium is important for strong bone formation. In a nut shell, I must say the assessments from all groups were impressive. Our group garden looked great as I saw broccoli, soy bean and strawberries grow for the first time in my life.

Donating our produce to the School Lunch Program was a good thing to do since it will set an example for other community gardeners to support the health of our young ones.

Thursday 06/03/10

Thursday was an interesting day as I found some classmates trying to meet the deadline. There was only one printer working at the Grover Center computer lab on that day and to compound issues, it got jammed and you could see the desperation in our eyes. However, it was restored and we managed to print our work.

Saturday 06/05/10

Our group planned to be at the Framers Market at 10am but I got there a bit late as I had difficulties starting my car. I however managed to get there after a friend gave me his car. There were a lot of people present and I wondered if I could see my friends. After wandering for about three minutes we finally met. They had bought some apples and strawberries by then and they informed we get some cherries. Amazingly, we bought yellow cherries. I have always thought cherries were either red or black. Our salad will be very colorful and I cannot wait to see the look on our classmates faces when the salad is brought out to be served. We were pleased to have Laura’s mother come with us and she offered some advice too. Our group will meet in my house to prepare the peanut butter soup on Tuesday.

This class has enlightened me extremely. Apart from discussing food insecurity issues and other measures that are being put in place to combat it, the tree planting and gardening experience has been an eye opener and it brought back pleasant and challenging memories. I will not hesitate to recommend this class to anyone, especially students who interested in advocating and combating food insecurity and hunger. I hope this class is mounted next year so I can experience what goes on in dairy farm.