Friday Morning

Courtney, Maggie, Liz, and the chickens

Today we walked to a woman named Barbara’s house. She lives a couple blocks from the Jo, and recently opened her home to four chickens to provide fresh eggs for her family. Ruby, Dr. Henny Penny, Olympia and Ardy were her four very cute chickens. She showed us how to hold them and taught us all about the coop they built and how she feeds them.

Barbara shows Sofia and Maggie
the composting bins

They were only 7 weeks old, so they had not began to lay eggs yet but soon will develop into a functioning source of fresh eggs. She houses them in her small backyard in the city, and she also has small boxes of vegetable plants growing there too. She and her family are also planning on starting beehives next year.

Emmy finally catches a chicken

We found out lots of the benefits of having chickens besides eggs. Their poop makes a great addition to compost, they eat all the bugs and tame the grass in the backyard, and they’re very fun to watch.

Thursday Afternoon and Evening

In front of the murals at Growing Power

Today we went to Growing Power and The Plant. The group received a tour from a full time employee that started as a youth volunteer. At Growing Power, we each did different activities such as weeding, composting and sifting. They were building a chicken coop for incoming chickens, had a dog, a cat, and goats, Billy Ray and Little Debbie. They had recently started aquaponics which is a way of growing plants from the waste of fish in water. The Growing Power sells their food to restaurants that then give them their scraps to make compost making a full circle.

Immediately after we headed to The Plant for a tour of the four floored building, which was the old Peer Foods meat packing building. The tour guide was a youth educator from a nonprofit organization teaching youths about sustainability.

Kyle shows us the aquaponics system at The Plant

At the Plant there was an outside garden, mushroom growing inside and aquaponics. Additionally The Plant has multiple tenants and plans for new tenants, a bakery, a pie shop and a brewery. Not all of their plans have been accomplished because it is an ongoing product. The Plant is committed to not having any waste. They use a close loop system and they are connected to everyone in the building. The close loop system consists of a reuseable energy system powered by waste and products that the tenants offer them. They reuse all the different parts of the previous meat packing plant. One of their many goals is to create jobs for the community that the meat packing plant eliminated when they closed down.

Sofia, Sarah, and Alyssa enjoy dinner
with the RSCJs

For dinner tonight, we drove to Hyde Park to eat with the RSCJ. The RSCJ created a delicious spaghetti dinner that was planned to be in their beautiful garden, but it started to rain, so we ate inside. After dinner, we had a spirited conversation about a variety of unusual topics.

More Wednesday Photos

In the morning, we visited City Farm. Here are some pictures of our work there.

Sarah, Carrie-Anne, Maggie, and Liz
arriving at City Farm

You can see that City Farm really
is right in the middle of the city

Crops and hoop houses at City Farm

Dave gives us a tour of City Farm

City Farm uses every bit of available
space to plant a variety of vegetables

Sarah hard at work weeding

Alyssa, Sofia, and Gabbie take a break
from weeding to smile for the camera

Dirty gloves!

Our carrot rows after weeding

Proud of all our hard work

In the afternoon, Josephinum teacher Steve introduced us to the school's garden, where we planted some seeds, transplanted tomatoes, and picked vegetables for dinner.

Getting to know the Jo's school garden

Alyssa transplants a tomato plant

Carrie-Anne and Liz watch lettuce
for dinner

Courtney untangles bean vines

Emmy prepares the soil for planting

Maggie and Liz harvest lettuce

Maggie plants garlic chive seeds

Sarah pauses in her planting

Sofia and Gabbie untangle bean vines

After dinner, we took the L downtown, where we visited Grant Park, Millennium Park, and the Navy Pier.

Waiting for the L

At Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park

Approaching the Bean

Cool view from under the Bean

Walking along the Navy Pier

The Ferris Wheel

Under the Ferris wheel

View from the Ferris wheel

Another view from the Ferris wheel

Alyssa waits for the fireworks to start

The fireworks with the Chicago skyline in the background

Watching the fireworks

Wednesday Night and Thursday Morning

Reflecting in "The Bean"

This evening, we took the train downtown to visit some of the famous Chicago sights. We visited Millennium Park and “The Bean” as well as Navy Pier.  After some refreshing Ben & Jerry’s, we all rode the ferris wheel and the swings, and went shopping for souvenirs. Watching the fireworks at the Pier was a great way to end the day and although we were very tired we still had room for a late night snack.

Fireworks at Navy Pier

On Thursday morning, we watched the movie King Corn.  The documentary centered around two men who moved out to Iowa to grow corn and investigate the current farming system.  As a result of the movie, we learned that almost all foods in America are made of corn or corn syrup. In our reflection after the movie, we discussed the pros and cons of government farming subsidies as well as the effects of corn on the health of our society.

Wednesday

Weeding carrot beds at City Farm

This morning, we visited the City Farm, which is an acre of land in the middle of the city. The city allows these farmers to use their land and fire hydrants to water their plants. During our (rainy) tour, people found many things interesting and memorable. These include how some restaurants donate their vegetable scraps to the farmers to use as compost for the soil. This really helps the crops grow. In return, the farmers sometimes donate their vegetables back to the restaurants. Surprisingly, there were a lot of different types of vegetables being grown on the farm, including beets, carrots, radishes, cilantro, cucumbers, green beans, yellow beans, tomatoes, etc.

The chicken coop at City Farm

There is also a bee keeper that keeps her bees there, which helps pollinates the plants. There were 12 chickens on the farm, which will soon lay about an egg a day. After our tour, we pitched our hands in by weeding out two beds that carrots had recently been planted in. The weeds grow faster than the carrots, so it was necessary to take them out so that they don't take over the beds.

In the afternoon after lunch, we helped out in the school's garden. We picked lettuce, green beans, carrots, and radishes. We planted tomatoes, spinach, chives, flowers, parsley and basil. We also performed a few plant transplants and untangled bean plants.

Josephinum teacher Steve introduces us
to the school garden

After planting, watering and washing the vegetables, we went over to the nuns' house next to the school to give them cabbage. They really enjoyed seeing us and appreciated our hard work.

Tonight we will be going to Navy Pier and Millennium Park and watching fireworks.

More Tuesday Photos

Cheryl took some great pictures during our visit to the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

Washing our hands before we pack food

Emmy, Liz, and Courtney suit up

Maggie prepares to label the bags

Sofia tapes shut the packed boxes

Tuesday Afternoon

Emmy and Courtney make mac & cheese
as Alyssa looks on

This afternoon we had a guest speaker, Mari Gallaghar, who has conducted research on food deserts in multiple cities and the impact on their communities. Her visit enhanced our knowledge on food deserts and opened our eyes to new insights about them. After her visit we had some downtime to reflect on what we learned and what we were about to go out and do. We all prepared to go out in to a local food desert and shop for a dinner. We were broken into two families or groups and had a total of ten dollars to spend for our dinner.

One group made macaroni, mash potatoes, and a salad with cucumbers. The other group made french toast and eggs with half a banana. Both groups made their dinners under a budget of ten dollars. But both groups meals were lacking in protein and fresh vegetables.

We learned a lot today. Mari taught us the basics about food deserts. A food desert is an area where fresh produce is hard to come by. There were more fringes, or drug stores, and less mainstream stores, or grocery stores. During the shopping activity, it was frustrating to find any store because there were barely any, and we were hungry. It was also sad to see how many schools and apartment buildings there were without grocery stores nearby and also how many people thought that buying junk food for dinner was normal. Though sad, today was a very interesting and educational experience!

Maggie and Sofia cook French toast.