Schenectady students hear from the ‘Father of Urban Agriculture’
“I grew up on Maryland,” he said. “I’m the son of sharecroppers in South Carolina. We’ve been farming, my family, 400 straight years.”
By Spencer Conlin
Spectrum News
Mar. 24, 2022
Excerpt:
After playing professional basketball, Allen returned to his roots. He bought and restored six greenhouses and the land they sat on in Milwaukee, where he planted and grew vegetables to help feed the surrounding communities.
It’s a story he tells in his children’s book “Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table.”
“Why should we be shipping food outside the country or from California or other places far away when we can grow a large percentage of food in our own cities and states?” he said.
Rebekka Henriksen oversees Schenectady’s Farm to School Program, which has brought gardens to schools around the district.
“I always want guests that look like our students that they can see themselves in,” Henriksen said. “Connect kids to nutrition to access to healthy foods, as well as giving them opportunities of those wonderful hands-on lessons that they only really get working in a space, getting their hands dirty.”
Henriksen and her students use vermicomposting to sustain the gardens at school.
