Personal Motivation/Story

Personal Connection

I did not grow up particularly connected to agriculture. I grew up in Bellingham, where the suburban lifestyle often means that people are focused on their own personal gardens, rather than actually producing food. This idea is rooted in my own privilege, as my family was able to not consider deeply where our food was coming from.

Generally, working in the garden at home was a chore and working in the school garden was a rarity. In secondary school, I never got a chance to engage in agricultural work, as my school cut out any sort of garden programming. Instead, I focused on traditional academics. 

When I was in college, agriculture was a distant memory from my primary school days. I focused on my program and took my own classes, all while feeling rather hopeless and dejected. No matter what, I felt so impotent and at the whim of those more powerful than I. During the summer of 2023, I was facing unemployment and desperately started searching for a seasonal job. I found a listing on WWU's job board for "Urban Farm Crew Members" and decided to apply. To my surprise, I got the job and began working at two small, urban farms in Bellingham alongside four women. These farms were City Sprouts and York Community Farm, both of which operated with a mission of mitigating food insecurity in the county. 

At first, the job was daunting and overwhelming. But over time, the long hours in the sun spent harvesting, weeding, planting, and laughing became a sacred ritual. As I learned more about farming and community support, my feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness began to subside, making way for genuine excitement and dreams of the future I could create. In watching seeds grow from small sprouts to full fledged food sources and seeing how our world balances itself if it is only allowed to, I was inspired to integrate this independence and stewardship into my personal and professional life. 

Agriculture and education overlap significantly, with the virtues of patience, care, and structure going together well. With these ideas, I felt motivated to begin designing ways of integrating agricultural practices, ideas, and experiences into my future classrooms, as a manner of connecting students with a hopeful, empowering experience.