My name is Miriam Cooksey, and I am serving with United General District 304 as an AmeriCorps VISTA Summer Associate for 10 weeks before I go to college. Alongside other VISTA Volunteers, I’ve spent most of my service with the Concrete Farm to School program. Situated on the school campus, this program has also allowed us to explore many elements of farming and working with a small and close-knit community to support food access. It has been an amazing opportunity to learn what it truly means to care for the land, and all the difficulties and joys that come with that. But it has also been a wonderful chance to meet new people daily through volunteer days, outreach opportunities, and most consistently, at our weekly farmstand.  

For the two days each week in the summer that the donation-based farmstand is open, our workdays are broken up with charming and fun interactions with all the different people who find their way to our little stand. We harvest, wash and pack, and set out the farmstand produce in the morning, and then take it down in the evening. We all take turns serving the customers and get to chat with whoever ends up stopping by; locals who show up every week to check out our latest harvest, children who are sent in by their parents, and even the odd questioning stranger who saw our sign by the road and decided to check it out. Most often we see people who interact with this program in other ways as well, teachers whose students worked in the garden during the school year, volunteers who help out on Thursday mornings, families whose kids helped grow the plants that produced this food and now get to see the results of their hard work. 

These quick interactions at the farm stand are one of the primary ways in which we, too, can see the results of our hard work. We can see how the act of harvesting a tomato – snipping ripe fruit from drooping vine – becomes the ability to share this harvest with others, we can see how the roots that are planted during the school year thrive and grow through families during the summer. We can see the unique opportunity this farm has been given to provide fresh produce to the community without the pressure of finances, with just the joy of being able to learn and share. Days on the farm can feel somewhat removed from the people who could share in its bounty, so during these small moments I really feel the impact Farm to School has in this community and how many people’s lives have been touched by its teaching, its work, and its healthy food.