“Food, food, food – it all comes back to food. Being able to grow your own food, understanding where your food comes from and having access to good, healthy food.” Max Kee tells me this as we walk around a two acre plot of land on which he and his fellow workers are cultivating vegetable and herb crops for a second year. Max, and fellow-CSU Chico classmates and friends Dresden Holden, Francine Stuelpnagel and Lee Callendar founded the Chico-based group known as GRUB in 2007. GRUB stands for Growing Resourcefully Uniting Bellies.
“It started with a bike ride…Well, it started with three of us wanting to attend a sustainability conference in Santa Barbara in the spring of 2007 and realizing that it would be counter-productive to drive a car to a sustainability conference. So we decided to ride – and on the way we talked a lot about what it meant to be sustainable and how best to be engaged in solution-oriented sustainability. And as we talked we kept coming back to food.” Max is walking me through fields where irrigation lines are being set up by two people, while others are seeding llong straight furrows and still another comes along behind the seeders and top-dresses with a layer of rich, dark fine compost. The sun is already warm early on this May morning and the next field over is already producing strawberries, while another field has asparagus plants now gone to fern. “When we got to the conference, Francine and Dresden attended a workshop led by a woman from San Jose, who had started a cooperative vegtable and fruit sharing program by cooperatively gardening in people’s unused back-yard space. Francine and Dresden were so fired-up, that our bike ride home from the conference was all about how to start such a cooperative of our own.” I should note that while Francine and Lee, a married couple, had always intended to start their own vegetable garden, none of GRUB’s founding four had any gardening or agricultural background or education to speak of. I should also note the importance of the bike ride in the inception and evolution of GRUB: it all started with a bike ride and all aspects of GRUB continue through bike rides as the primary sources of transportation, beasts of burden and, of course, fun.
From there, Max, Dresden, Francine and Lee decided on the name GRUB and put an ad in the Chico News & Review calling for unused back-yard space which could be used to grow vegetables and herbs, the produce from which would be shared with the landowners. The day after the ad ran the group had 40 phone calls. From those noble and glowing beginnings, GRUB was born. And as garden endeavors have a tendency to do when you add love, water and hard-work – GRUB has grown vigorously.
Today, GRUB has five distinct branches to its work: the cooperative vegetable, herb and fruit growing/collecting and distribution program; a regional fruit tree registration program; an organics recycling program; an educational outreach program in the local preschools; and finally, a community outreach and educational program. The organization has three full-time Grubsters, as they call themselves: Max, Francine and Lee (Dresden has since taken another sustainability-related job at CSU Chico). GRUB also has two CSU Chico student interns each semester, 100 or so total volunteers helping out in myriad ways with each of the different GRUB programs throughout the year, and they are about to hire their first full-time employee to work on the garden co-op.
GRUB’s year-round weekly vegetable, herb, fruit and sometimes flower-filled box pick up by their CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) membership base is definitely their signature program at this point. GRUB has 15-20 year-round members, but increase their memberships as they move toward summer and peak production in the gardens. They will have upwards of 80 in the peak summer months. They are currently accepting summer membership applications and forms are available on-line: www.grubchico.org.
The first CSA farm in the United States was started in 1984 by Robyn Van En at Indian Line Farm in Massachusetts, and there are now more than a thousand across North America. Each one is different from its size to its mission, but all offer ‘shares’ in their production and most are run organically. Consumers pay for shares before the growing season and then receive a portion of the farm’s production. Farms with animals may also offer shares in eggs, milk or meat, while others offer fruit, flowers, herbs or bread in addition to the standard vegetable produce. The idea came to the US from Germany, Switzerland and Japan, where the concept of Community Supported Agriculture developed in the 1960s.
while GRUB started their weekly vegetable shares by gardening in donated back-yard space, they now grow almost all of their produce on two separate 2-acre plots of farmland in Chico. The logistics of planning, preparing, planting, maintaining, harvesting and problem-solving in just two locations was far and away more efficient for the Grubsters. This is nicely illustrated in the space of the one hour that Max and I walk around one of the 2 -acre GRUB plots: Lee has to repair a leak in an irrigation line and Francine sets, checks and traps at least one gopher in the field, two women are seeding long rows that have been prepared and another woman follows behind tamping the seeds in and top-dressing with a layer of rich, dark compost. Never a dull moment.
GRUB CSA shares are ready for pick-up at their farm on Dayton road every Wednesday from 4 – 6 pm. Signs point you to a barn behind the old farm house that the Grubsters call home. Tables are filled with wooden crates and baskets overflowing with the week’s harvest, chalk boards cheerfully announce how many of each item members can add to their box. Francine has set out flowers and a basket of sugar snap peas for snacking on as you select your shares the Wednesday that my daughter and I visit pick-up. My daughter keeps asking for more of the peas, and “Could I please have two of the carrots also?” she asks. Members picking up their boxes chat with each other and with the Grubsters there helping. This connection between grower and consumer – the two-way relationship, and sense of trust and resposibility that it builds – is at the heart of the CSA concept and at the heart of GRUB. Max tells me the story of one member who arrived for a weekly pick-up with her young daughter. In the harvest that week, among other things, was fresh spinach. The member took her fresh spinach with some doubt, put the her shares of fresh produce on the back seat next to her daughter and wondered all the way home how she could prepare the spinach or even hide the spinach in some recipe so that her daughter might eat it. But when she got home, her questions were answered. Her daughter had nibbled on the spinach all the way home and none was left. For those who have similar questions on delicious preparations, GRUB CSA membership includes a weekly email newsletter with garden news as well as recipe ideas for some of the week’s harvest.
The fruit tree registration program was one of the first programs that GRUB got off the ground from the beginning. When they originally called for backyard gardening space, they also called for the uncollected fruit off of people’s fruit trees to include in the weekly CSA shares so that the fruit does not go to waste. The week I visited the gardens, Loquats from regional trees were being featured in the shares. They currently have somewhere around 50 trees as well as city trees that they pick from – ranging from orange, apple, grapefruit, plum and persimmon. If you are interested in finding out about registering fruit trees that you can’t keep up with, send GRUB an email: grubchico@yahoo.com.
Stemming from the idea of resourceful use or re-use of what would otherwise go to waste is another of GRUB’s programs – the Organics Recycling Program. One of the things that GRUB is in constant need of is compost for their fields. One of the things they are constantly producing is yard waste – from weeds to grass clippings, to shrub and tree prunings. Likewise, their personal households – like all of ours – is also constantly producing green waste from the kitchen – vegetable and fruit peelings and ends, egg shells, coffee grinds, etc. So, like many of us, they started a compost pile. But they – in the way that they do – took it up a notch and started what is now a 3-times-weekly green waste collection program from Chico area restaurants, the kitchens at which also produce a HUGE amount of green waste. The participating restaurants include The Red Tavern, Bustolinis, Upper Crust Bakery, T Bar, Empire Coffee among others, all of whom carefully separate their kitchen waste into what is and is not appropriate for composting. The Grubsters then collect the waste BY BIKE and take it to their compost pile for ultimate re-use on their gardens and crops.
Another of the things the Grubsters resourcefully reuse is their rapidly accumulating knowledge and experience, which they reuse in two ways – the first being an educational outreach program with preschool aged children. Two of the GRUB roommates work on this program solely through a grant from the the First 5 Association of California (www.f5ac.org). These Grubsters are working each week in 12 regional preschools for a period of 18 months. With the active involvement of the children, the Grubsters have planned, built and planted vegetable garden plots at each of the preschools. They then work with the kids each week on maintenance, weeding, watering and harvesting. Talking, working and teaching-through doing as they go.
Finally, as GRUB has grown, people’s interest in what they do has grown and they increasingly take part in general community educational outreach including a series of composting workshops held through the Associated Students organization at CSU Chico and speaking to local gardening and horticulture groups. For instance, a few weeks ago, they spoke about GRUB and composting at the Butte Rose Society’s regular monthly meeting.
For the future? Max, Francine and Lee see even more growth from the conceptual seeds they have planted. Last winter they built a small greenhouse and were able to start their own seeds for a good portion of the vegetable crops. They are getting some bigger and more efficient bikes for handling the Organics Recycling program, they are considering whether to take more land, they hope to do even more community outreach. They are growing, they are resourceful, they are uniting and they are inspiring (I know – the next word was supposed to be Bellies) to me and to the community they are blessing with their ideas, hard work and enthusiasm. Now that is good GRUB.
In a North State Garden is a radio- and web-based outreach program of the Gateway Science Museum – Exploring the Natural History of the North State, based in Chico, CA. In a North State Garden celebrates the art, craft and science of home gardening in California’s North State region, and is conceived, written, photographed and hosted by Jennifer Jewell – all rights reserved jewellgarden.com. In A North State Garden airs on Northstate Public Radio KCHO/KFPR radio, Saturday mornings at 7:34 AM Pacific time and Sunday morning at 8:34 AM Pacific time. Podcasts of past shows are available here.
