School in 2008, Alberto joined a volunteer service club called Youth Mentors and Educators (YME) that introduced him to restoring the Richmond High garden. The garden behind the campus had not been in used in over 10 years. Alberto worked as an assistant to Park Guthrie, the founder and previous Executive Director of Urban Tilth, and Jesse Kurtz-Nichol, a former teacher at Richmond High. Together, the trio laid the foundation to expand Urban Tilth throughout Richmond. Alberto is now the Project Manager at the AdamsCrest Farm located on a sunny slope in East Richmond.

Alberto's curiosity for nature grew throughout his childhood. As a kid, Alberto's family moved between the Bay Area and Central Valley because of housing costs. His parents would commute to San Francisco. "I think moving around allowed me to be more outdoorsy. I made friends but I never had a consistency in relationships. I found my consistency in outdoors because it was always there," says Alberto. But his interest in wildlife and plant biology and insects was not exactly matched by his peers or even teachers; Alberto found that schools focused on math and English too much as traditional sources for careers. People who had interests in decay, insects, and the outdoors were outcasted. "I didn't mind seeing the gross, food composting and breaking down or seeing gnats around fruit and little larvae." It was

through Urban Tilth, Alberto finally had a formal outlet to discovering the science behind agriculture...READ MORE

This month at Washington's Edible Education garden was filled with nutrition lessons using garden produce, Resiliency groups, outdoor garden lessons and preparing for Spring with starting new seedlings. 

With the weather being unpredictable we have many garden lessons inside. Students were introduced to some new vegetables like Swiss chard and kale. We made massage kale salad, stir fry and also just prepared Swiss chard raw with a little lemon juice and salt. 

For some time now, I have been providing garden snacks to students when they come to spend their recess in the garden. They know that when there is a bowl or plate of something at the end of our long table that it is intended for them. On one particular day however, I was running behind schedule and was cutting the blooms and long stems off of some mustard greens so they would continue to grow and not go to seed. In the process, I haphazardly set the cuttings down on the table, near the end (where I typically set out the garden snack). The recess bell rang and the kids came running into the garden as usual. Before I had time to realize I had not cleaned up after myself and removed the cuttings from the table, the students were chomping the blooms, leaves and all of the mustard greens as if they were potato chips. I was stunned! Mustard greens are spicy and bitter, (a bit like wasabi) and needs a bit of cooking for my tastes, but these kids were having at it, raw and all, and asking for more. 

There is something about being connected to your food source that inspires openness and tolerance to trying new things. Even mustard greens. I would not have believed it if I had not seen it with my own eyes, but now I know... the way to get kids to eat nutritious food, is to simply show them where it comes from and put it in front of them. 


If you have been following the Edible Education Garden and would like to get involved as a volunteer, we welcome the help. If interested, please contact Kelli, at kelli@urbantilth.org 
-Kelli Cochran-Barram