Hi, My name is Ya Queera I am 14. Everyone calls me Ya-Ya! This is me holding one of our first watermelon. I really like this picture because I am in it, I actually sheet mulched the bed that this watermelon is planted on, and I LOVE WATERMELON!!! I am a freshman at SMSA (Sport & Medical Sciences Academy). Angel and Precious took this picture of me. As you can see I am in my pajamas because it was chilly this morning and I just woke up and came to GROW. Ya Queera A.K.A. Keera B.K.A. Ya-Ya That's all folks...3....2....1.... Our first watermelon!

Guess what? Weeding time!

Hey this is me Angel who been weeding since the program started I don't like weeding but I offer so that was my job for 45min I weeded the weeds that were growing between the bed of collard and chard. While we were weeding, Rickyon and I saw a rat. After everybody was done with their job except me then they started helping me weed. Then we all saw a red tail hawk.

shucking corn at Foodshare

Sorting corn at Foodshare Foodshare is a place that feeds the hungry. They give food to the people that need it very much. They load up trucks and they go to different places. The people who need the food come out with bags and pick up their own food. They get food to different places and some foods get donated from different organizations and farms. I think that Foodshare is really great for the community and the people that are hungry. I think that the people at Foodshare volunteer because they have nothing to and they want to use their time wisely and some just want to help those in need of food. I will probably do it next year again. –rickyon smith

Talking with David Yandow from Fowler Co. at the Regional Market

Taking a tour  

Look at those beautiful vegetables... 

Ya-Ya's Input on the LSFM

What’s happening lately people? Me nothing, but exploring some new parts of the Laurel street Farmers Market! Did you miss me? It’s me the one and only, member of the Grow Hartford Youth Group, Ya-Ya and I am here to tell you about the LSFM website. This web site is very informative, but very dull! I learned a lot from it, but it was boring and it didn’t catch my attention. The mission of The Laurel Street Farmers Market is: To foster a community farmers market that attracts and reflects diversity and enthusiasm of a healthy Hartford by providing a diverse array of vegetables, herbs, and value-added products to fill Hartford's need for fresh, local, culturally diverse foods. To provide healthy food to educate and empower a healthy community. To provide local farmers, growers, and value-added producers with a direct marketing opportunity. To provide a community gathering place and forum for sharing arts and information. WOW! This is amazing and true, I know because I work at the market and we do exactly what the mission says. Not just the Grow Stand, but the rest of the farmers or gardeners too! The website gives a lot of helpful information to people that don’t have flyers or that don’t know about the only Saturday Farmers Market in Hartford. I think the website could be improved by adding more excitement. Like if we were to add some of the pictures we take at the market or some bright colors.

The crew looks on at a tray FULL of capped honey! How heavy is it? 

Bee keeper Jeff Schultz conducted a great workshop on beekeeping forhte GROW crew at Holcomb Farm where his bees make honey for us to sell at the Laurel St. Farmers Market. 

Thesesa demonstrates how to use the smoker to calm the bees 

The day with Jeff Schulz

Hi my name is Precious and we went to Holcomb farm and we met up with Jeff Schulz. Jeff works with bees for a living, he handles them and makes the honey to sell. Jeff sells the honey, and we also brought some to sell at our farmers market on Laurel Street. Jeff used his materials to show us how he gets the honey out of the honeycombs. Me, Theresa, and Ya Queera tasted the wax that they make the combs out of. It smells like it would taste good but I’m telling you it does not. During the day Jeff had let me put on his bee suit. He said that usually he doesn’t wear the suit because it’s too hot and he said "would you want to sit in that suit for two or three hour in a 90° weather" . It was fun!

Kid’s Day at The Laurel Street Farmers Market

The kid’s day at the market was fun. I got to paint children’s faces, and also they made seed necklaces .But most of the kids wanted to get their face painted not make a necklace. There were different tables. There was a lady who sold candy apples and popcorn. The lady with the exotic birds came with her kids. I have one of the bird’s feathers. I think that the kid’s day was a good day for the farmers market because it seem that since we had the kids day there were more kids coming then the usual days but over all the day came out to be one of the best days of the farmers market. There where a boy representing (OPP) junior art makers, he sold greeting cards. (OPP )also had made us a sign that said grow Hartford and they made it out with there own hands. By: Precious a.k.a Naomi Kids Day

When The Moon Hits Your Eye...

I think that a whole food is the food that you make at home because you don’t get it out of a can. And I think that processed food is the food you get from the store and from places like Wendy’s. I think the whole food is better then a processed because it tastes much better the processed foods. The pizza we made was nasty to me because I never made a home made pizza but to other people it was probably good. The extra work we did to make the pizza was fun. Last but not least, the food in the cans had a lot of things I couldn’t pronounce the name of. I don’t think that I would make home made pizza at home.

Whole Food Pizza

Fresh Pizza ingredients On Friday (aug.12) we cooked a pizza in the Underwood kitchen. When we were cooking the pizza in the morning; we had to harvest tomato and peppers. It was hard to tell if they were ready. They were big but they weren’t ready then we went to harvest chard and eggplant. I never had eggplant and chard on a pizza before. The jobs that we had in order to cook the pizza, many of us had to chop the tomato, some of us had to cut chard and eggplant. We work together to stir the pot of tomato sauce. The pizza tasted very good. But it didn’t taste better then the Tonys. The pizza was really fresh. The pizza was really good. I will try to make a pizza at home. rickyon smith

Ya-Ya's Big Debut!!!

Hi! My name is Ya Queera, but if you know me or my name is too hard call me Ya-Ya! On Saturday, August 13,2005, at our Farmers Market a group of children from The Upper Albany Neighborhood Collaborative was interviewing some of our Grow Hartford Crew Members because it was Kid’s Day at the Market. I, Ya-Ya, was one of the lucky members along with Angel L. and Clifford L. A girl named Kiara interviewed me. She was a little nervous, but she did an overall great job. They only asked me questions about the Laurel St. Farmers Market. One question in particular and I quote “ How long have you been working and preparing for the Farmers Market?” I replied with, “ I have been working with Grow Hartford since the second week in May, I had to start late because of a family emergency, but I have been working in the Farmers Market since June 9th!” They asked me three questions and none of them were hard at all because I know what I do and I am known to explain things very well. I didn’t find out a lot about their program, but from what I know I would have liked to joined it in my earlier years when I wanted to do a Broadcasting class at my old school, Edwin A. Gibson Danville, VA. To be truthful I have never watched the public TV stations, but I have passed by them occasionally. I don’t know if they are a good way to learn about the community because I have never watched them, but my grandmother puts a lot of their church programs on those channels, so maybe it is a good way to learn about your community! That’s all folks…3…2…1…

Personal Accountability

What does personal accountability mean? Personal accountability means a person who takes responsibility for their own action. When you are at work personal accountability means that if you did some thing that you were not supposed to do you own up to it and. I did that instead saying that it was not me. When I hold myself accountable for something I feel good about myself for doing that. I have never held myself accountable for some thing that I have done before this summer. Yes I like the standard of personal accountability because people will own up to what they do. by. Clifford Laurore

Values by Angel

A value is something you desire or admire. Where I come from our value is to always represent. Something personal that I value is my family and my money. One of our program values is to come on time and prepared. I agree with that value because we are going to get a violation if we don’t come prepared. It is important to be on time and prepared because it doesn't effect our work for the day. I think violations are bad because sometimes it gets you frustrated when you don’t want to but sometimes people deserve it.

A Successful Community Garden Tour!

The Watkinson Garden As part of Eat In Act Out Week the GROW Crew participated in a Community Garden Tour with The Knox Parks Foundation. Rachel Lindsay from Wesleyan University took these wonderful photos. Members of the community joined us to see three gardens and the GROW garden. After, we gathered in the shade to enjoy a snack prepared by the GROW youth. Fresh pesto, tomatillo salsa, and tomato cucumber salad made with ingredients from our garden were a hit. Even though the youth crew thought the pesto tasted like soap when we sampled it after we made it...They gobbeled it down after the tour when our other guests raved about it! Here is what Rickyon has to say about the day. - Shannon The garden tour was really interesting. We went to a lot of different places. I have not been to any other garden but the one that I work in. There were a lot of people there. When I went to the Watkinson garden people were saying that they have different varieties of fruits and vegetables. Many people thought that the Watkinson garden was really big. I thought that the other garden was really big. There were many people on the tour that I can’t remember their names. The people that were on the tour thought that the GROW Garden was really organized and had lots of vegetables. Many people said that is was great that people that work at GROW for 2 years had their own (garden)beds. ~Rickyon Smith

Touring the GROW garden 

NIles Street in Bloom

The Niles Street Garden Hello, my name is YaQueera. On Thursday, August 4,2005, my group Grow Hartford, some of the Knox Park employees, some Hartford Food System employees, and a few people from the community went on a Community Garden Tour associated with Knox Park. - I think these gardens add more positive things about the community and make the community a better place. I think If we have more garden in Hartford people would stop think bad things about the community because I think gardens make some place look good. Yes I would garden if there were one near my house. I don’t know anyone who has a community garden but when I was in Haiti I had my own little garden I only had two things growing it was the corn and the beans. - clivens Laurore

The Watkinson Garden 

The Evergreen Garden 

Take The Local Challenge

The "local challenge" was a taste test. We had people eating local vegetables and some conventional veggies. They would eat one and then tell the tastes and the texture, appearance. We set up and we had many people to come to our challenge. Over all the challenge was good many people said that the local grown food was better and also many people already new what was the local grown and the conventional. THE PERSON WHO CAME UP WITH THE IDEA OF THE CHALLENGE WAS: YA-YA Precious We held our challenge outside of La Paloma Sabanera cofee shop. This family owned Puerto Rican Bookstore and coffee shop is well liked by the crew...maybe is has something to do with free hot chocolate on rainy days... Shannon

Straight talk

Straight talk - Straight talk helps use because when we have a problem in the group we talk about it on Fridays and when we don’t have something to talk about we show our appreciations. When we started straight talk it seemed like we always had something to say but now that the program is almost over we don’t have that much to say about each other. I can tell you it helps us get along with each other much better. Also we have rules in straight talk 1. Be kind, which means you have to be nice to the person, you are talking to. 2. Call it as you see it this means when you have a problem you have to explain what happened. I am not going to tell you all the rules because that is going to talk all day. ~ Theresa vail~

Our visit to F.R.E.S.H. New London

Yesturday we went to New London to visit F.R.E.S.H. It was fun and interesting. The kids there made us feel welcomed. It is their first year with their program and we had alot to share. After viewing thier gardening we went to the beach. The water was cold but most of us got in.it was beautiful in New London. Thanks FRESH for the trip to new london!

EAT IN,ACT OUT WEEK BY Ya-Ya

Eat In, Act Out Week was organized by a youth group in Boston, Mass. called The Food Project's Mini project BLAST. For Eat in, Act out Week we made a book with blank pages, set up a table at The Laurel Street Farmers Market, got everyone's input, and each person that came over learned about Eat In, Act In Week and wrote their thougts in the book. Overall about 35 people signed the book while shopping at the Grow Hartford Stand. Our crew really brought a lot of curious people to the EatIn, Act Out Week Information Table. The book worked out very well, but I wish we had a little more time to present it to people and get more comments. We thought of an idea that would get more attention than just making a book... we,The Grow Crew, want to present this book of comments to the Mayor of Hartford,CT. That brought a little more atttention to my,Ya-Ya, table because some people really believe they were helping make a difference for their community. One of the comments posted by Bill was this was a very good idea!

ITS TIME

Hey everybody its about that time! Here at GROW we are preparing our soil to get ready for next year. Alot of things are going on. Some of those things are a huge harvest, cover cropping, and our farmers market. Farmers market has been a success. We had over two hundred people come to visit us so keep posted. JERICA SANDIFORD

onion harvest!

Today is August 10th and we just finished a huge onoin harvest. Altogether we harvested over about 200 pounds. Some we took home, some we sold at farmers market and some we cooked with. Our onions this year was a great sell out! jerica sandiford

Ya-Ya's Input on the LSFM

What’s happening lately people? Me nothing, but exploring some new parts of the Laurel street Farmers Market! Did you miss me? It’s me the one and only, member of the Grow Hartford Youth Group, Ya-Ya and I am here to tell you about the LSFM website. This web site is very informative, but very dull! I learned a lot from it, but it was boring and it didn’t catch my attention. The mission of The Laurel Street Farmers Market is: To foster a community farmers market that attracts and reflects diversity and enthusiasm of a healthy Hartford by providing a diverse array of vegetables, herbs, and value-added products to fill Hartford's need for fresh, local, culturally diverse foods. To provide healthy food to educate and empower a healthy community. To provide local farmers, growers, and value-added producers with a direct marketing opportunity. To provide a community gathering place and forum for sharing arts and information. WOW! This is amazing and true, I know because I work at the market and we do exactly what the mission says. Not just the Grow Stand, but the rest of the farmers or gardeners too! The website gives a lot of helpful information to people that don’t have flyers or that don’t know about the only Saturday Farmers Market in Hartford. I think the website could be improved by adding more excitement. Like if we were to add some of the pictures we take at the market or some bright colors.