Getting down to earth with the local food movement is the
fruit of a powerful educational initiative that sprouts on a western
Virginia mountaintop and spreads its roots far beyond the Alleghenies.
Welcome to the Allegheny Mountain School, �an
experiential fellowship program designed to serve our region�s communities
in developing a more secure food system,� its tagline says. As one of its
senior fellows succinctly puts it, the school teaches �the power to do good
through food.�
With a core mission not unlike
that of an electric cooperative, Allegheny Mountain School essentially works
to promote self-empowerment. But instead of delivering electricity through
consumer ownership, the multi-phase educational program teaches its fellows
ways of empowering others to produce their own healthy food, and thereby
improve quality of life. It�s
propelling a magical momentum by teaching students and teachers alike how to
produce real
― and delicious
― results.
The Allegheny Mountain School�s disciplined approach to
training consists of two phases. The formative first phase lasts six months,
from April to November, on village campuses in Highland County, at an
elevation of 4,200 feet. The enrollment is limited to fewer than a dozen
fellows. A staff and variety of workshop instructors support the fellows as
they study sustainable food cultivation, and restorative, nourishing
traditions.
In the second phase, senior fellows work a year for
partner nonprofit organizations in Highland, the Shenandoah Valley and
Charlottesville. They aim to satisfy a vision of promoting environmentally
and economically healthy communities where foods grow close to where people
live, and nutritious, fresh food is available to all. The fellows develop
community gardens, teach cooking and nutrition, and advocate sustainable
land use.
On Allegheny Mountain are cabins, gardens, and sprawling
grounds featuring upper and lower campuses one-third-mile apart. The upper
campus consists of kitchens, dining hall, dormitories and meeting
facilities. A log cabin with loft serves as a library and studio. Then,
there are kitchen and experimental gardens. The lower campus features larger
gardens, chicken coop, bee house, tool sheds, root cellar, outdoor classroom
and hoop house.
Gardens on the upper and lower campuses serve as outdoor
classrooms where fellows not only grow most of their own food, but learn
best growing practices and community leadership skills. The hoop house,
filled with vegetables growing on the ground and vertically, helps sustain
the fellows� food-growing efforts beyond frost and during fall and winter
high-elevation chill. Before the seminal six-month program�s November
commencement, fellows host a public presentation of their individual
research projects.
Looking back on Allegheny Mountain School�s first-phase
experience, one fellow says the school teaches far more than how to grow
food.
�I
will admit that when I first joined the Allegheny Mountain School fellowship
program a little part of me was running away from the traditional career
path of a nine-to-five office job,� says Emily Melvin, a senior fellow. �But
as I learned about the mission of the school and the power to do good
through food, I became a passionate champion of education through gardening.
Now I�m running a full and steady sprint towards something I genuinely
believe in.�
Melvin�s high energy level typifies the powerful human
force behind the Allegheny Mountain School�s positive impact on communities
beyond Highland County. Ellen Butchart, program director, explains that
phase-two fellows have been assigned to projects where they are making a
positive difference in the Shenandoah Valley and elsewhere in the region.
�Our mission is to train fellows
to work on projects that increase access to healthy food in a variety of
communities,� Butchart enthuses. �Phase one is only a piece of that story
and only a part of the impact we have.�
For instance, graduate fellow Lisa Millette has noted
significant growth in the number of children who are learning about local
food at Project GROWS, a community farm and educational facility in Verona
where she works alongside other fellows. More than quadruple the number of
children visited the teaching farm, and its food production more than
tripled, from 2012 to 2013 with the help of Allegheny Mountain School.
�Without our partnership with
Allegheny Mountain School, none of this would be possible and Project GROWS
impact on the children and youth in our community, while being essential,
would be much smaller,� says Ryan Blosser, executive director of Project
GROWS.
In collaboration with Staunton Creative Community Fund,
the Valley Conservation Council has launched a food entrepreneurial loan
program that was the brainchild of Charlie Aller, an Allegheny Mountain
School fellow.
Another fellow, Cabell Hodges, ran a market garden with
New Community Project residents in Harrisonburg that supplied produce to a
number of local restaurants and used proceeds to raise homes for new
immigrant families and the homeless. Senior fellow Ian Sawyer is working
there this year with homeless people on issues of food security and shelter,
as well as teaching residents how to grow food for sale. New Community
Project Harrisonburg �combines sustainable agriculture with groundbreaking
backyard environmental projects and outreach to the community,� its website
says.
The Highland Center, a nonprofit in Monterey, serves as
fiscal sponsor and program manager of the Allegheny Mountain School. In its
16th year, The Highland Center�s Farmer�s Market saw a huge increase in
sales last year � due to the increase in availability of local meat and
bi-weekly demonstrations by the fellows on sustainable food practices.
The Highland Center�s employee
and Allegheny Mountain School graduate Jessa Fowler has seen a huge increase
in the success of food-related school workshops, programming and community
participation. �Allegheny Mountain School has both long-term and direct
impacts to the center,� explains Betty Mitchell, executive director of The
Highland Center. �In 2013, as a senior fellow, Jessa worked as local foods
coordinator for The Highland Center. Her work enabled us to expand our
relationship with the school, build a school garden and renovate a forgotten
greenhouse, and launch a website
― faces-of-farmers.org
― helping connect producers to consumers. We
were thrilled with Jessa�s work, and she is now the Highland Center�s youth
and local foods coordinator.�
Fowler points out that the
fellows in themselves are a community asset.
�It�s amazing how the fellows can really expand
what we can do in a small place
― from demonstrating how to prepare fresh,
healthy foods at the farmer�s market, sharing innovative research projects
and ideas or simply adding younger energy to our community.�
The Allegheny Mountain School is helping reverse a
longtime trend of a declining and aging populace in Highland, says Lloyd
Bird, president of The Highland Center. �Allegheny Mountain School reverses
our trend of population decrease,� Bird says. �It brings youth, positive
energy and excitement for life to our area.�
�Another measure of Allegheny
Mountain School�s impact is the fact that many projects the fellows helped
launch have received funding to sustain them,� Butchart says. �Five of our
fellows from last year have been hired back as staff at the organizations
where they worked.� They include Trevor Piersol, Allegheny Mountain School
project manager; Kayla MacLachlan, school program manager; Lisa Millette,
Project Grows programs manager, Jenna Clark, Project Grows director of
operations; and Fowler.
Butchart is excited that Allegheny Mountain School is
once again working with a number of partner organizations. Senior fellows
have been assigned to several nonprofit organizations that are either in
Highland or within driving distance.
She said that this year, senior fellow Mandy Henkler is
working on new nutrition programs at the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank in
Verona.
�The impact on the community has
already shown to be very positive with the work past senior fellows
accomplished, and we hope to continue on with the tradition to make small
positive changes with a large ripple effect,� Henkler says.
Whitney Newton McDermott works at City Schoolyard Gardens
in Charlottesville, which manages gardens and teaches garden curriculum in
all the local elementary schools and the middle school.
At Valley Conservation Council, Kate Hopkins is working
on agriculture projects centered on protecting farmland and improving its
health for food production in partnership with Mary Baldwin College. Ben
Samuelson, Emily Melvin and Trevor Piersol are helping build a center for
garden curriculum development, located on The Virginia School for the Deaf
and the Blind campus, for teachers throughout the state (please see related
story, page 34.)
�And,
we will continue working with the Highland schools this year, as Paul
Krysik, the new Allegheny Mountain School village manager works alongside
The Highland Center�s youth and local foods coordinator, Jessa Fowler, to
teach cooking and nutrition to local high school students,� Butchart says.
�In Staunton, we are working in partnership with Mary Baldwin College and
their environmental education graduate program and Staunton City Schools. At
Project Grows in Verona, fellows are working specifically on garden
curriculum and activities to combat childhood obesity.
�We
are interested in helping institutions develop more sustainable and local
food for their cafeterias. In addition, we will continue to bring workshops
to the communities we work in whenever we can,� she says.
In Richmond last year, a fellow was instrumental in
teaching nutrition, ecology and economics to all age groups at Byrd House
Market, Grace Arents Community Garden and Byrd House Farmlet that comprise
the William Byrd Community House. The fellow developed a sustainable farmlet
for people who utilize the social service agency, Butchart said.
As fellows complete their training on Allegheny Mountain
and complete their yearlong second-phase training, a large part of the work
involves utilizing community leadership skills to help negotiate with local
residents to help work gardens.
�Who knew that experiencing
working situations at the Allegheny Mountain School would teach them to be
diplomats?� Butchart said. �What a wonderful way to engage people of
different generations, by bringing people together around food and teaching
them how to be a culture together.�
The Allegheny Mountain School experience is geared toward
helping fellows find successful career paths. During their second phase,
fellows develop portfolios that become the foundations of in-depth resumes.
�The broader long-term impact of
the program is the positive energy, diverse backgrounds and curiosity for
the natural world that the phase-one fellows bring to our community,� The
Highland Center�s Mitchell says. �We love the fact that Highland holds a
special place in their hearts, although their placements might take them
beyond Highland. In the past month one of the inaugural fellows purchased
property in Highland. Another, Sarah Collins, is working at The Highland
Center as our community projects coordinator.�
Highland Board of Supervisors member David Blanchard took
one of the public tours of the campuses that the school has hosted on many
occasions. �I think it�s an asset to the county to bring young folks in
here,� he said of Allegheny Mountain School. �I think it�s good.�
In April, a new group of fellows will arrive, and another
season on the mountain begins. The school advertises through websites and
radio. For information about the school, and to apply for enrollment, please
access alleghenymountainschool.org. Tour information may be obtained by
calling 540-468-2300 or emailing [email protected].
John Bruce is Highland County community news editor for
The Recorder newspaper of Bath and Highland counties
(therecorderonline.com). He has covered the Allegheny Mountain School since
its inception.
Healthy Foods Are Focus of Garden-Based Project
The Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind (VSDB)
Educational Farm is taking shape in Staunton, thanks to help from the
Allegheny Mountain School. A school project team consisting of senior
fellows Emily Melvin and Ben Samuelson, under the direction of Trevor
Piersol, project manager, is tackling the job.
Once completed, the farm will serve as a regional hub for
classes, resources, and curricula related to garden-based education for
schoolteachers across Virginia, Piersol explains. �In 2014 we plan to host
our first summer course for educators on how to build and utilize school
gardens. Other projects will include working with VSDB teachers and students
to expand the school�s garden-based education program, as well as hosting a
series of workshops and events for the local community.�
Piersol was involved in the early stages of the project
in 2013 as an Allegheny Mountain School senior fellow. He was asked to serve
as project manager on completion of his fellowship.
�I
have been excited about this project from the beginning because I
wholeheartedly believe that when we integrate growing food into the way we
teach and learn, we all become healthier, happier people. The benefits of
garden-based education are wide-ranging and far-reaching, especially for
children,� he says.
The VSDB Educational Farm came about when Nancy
Armstrong, VSDB superintendent, approached Allegheny Mountain School with
the idea to use a part of the VSDB lower campus for an educational farm,
Piersol says.
�Together we came up with a
vision to use the farm as a center for garden-based education,� he says. �We
plan to bring in experts on garden-based education from around the state to
teach the workshops at our farm. Because this is a new project we are still
developing the structure of our programming,� he says.
Piersol, 26, is a Richmond native who earned a bachelor�s
degree from the University of Virginia before graduating from the Allegheny
Mountain School fellowship program in 2013. He is a practicing permaculture
designer and educator. He received a permaculture design teaching
certificate from the Permaculture Wellness Institute in Staunton.
�Permaculture is a design science
that enables us to build systems that both meet human needs and improve the
health of the planet,� he explains. �We will be using permaculture design
extensively in the development of the VSDB Educational Farm.�
Team member Emily Melvin says she is impressed by the
project�s possibilities. �I am a part of this effort because of its huge
potential to reach out and benefit many different groups and communities in
the area,� Melvin says. �The VSDB project will provide hands-on experiential
education not only to deaf and blind students, but also to teachers and the
surrounding community. It�s a wonderful opportunity to use garden-based
education to teach people about nourishing their minds as well as bodies.�
For his part, Ben Samuelson is ecstatic over his new job
with the VSDB project.
�This new site needs a lot of
action to get the soil up to scratch,� he says.
�I saw that I would probably
thrive with a project like this, and it happens that a dream of mine is to
start a farm. There are a quite a few programs where people with my
qualifications can get experience teaching and directing young people in
community and outdoor courses. But, it is very, very difficult to get a shot
at building up a farm from scratch and also have the support that we do with
the VSDB project.�
To learn about VSDB, please access vsdb.k12.va.us.
