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Mabelvale Garden Update »Mabelvale Garden Update This past week, Karl Heinbockel and fellow Delta Garden Study interns have had the opportunity to escape the fluorescent lights of the office and work in the bright sunshine at the Mabelvale Magnet Middle School gardens and greenhouse. In spite of the oppressive heat, there is still much to do to prepare for the coming school year at Mabelvale Magnet Middle School. We are removing the residue from last year's crops (and weeds!) and replacing them with a buckwheat cover crop to revitalize the soil. The buckwheat cover crop suppresses weed growth and once tilled in will add important organic material back into the soil. This allows new plants the ample nutrients necessary to blossom with great vigor. Healthy soil has been our focus this summer. In the fall, we will concentrate our efforts at producing a variety of food crops with the help of our students at Mabelvale! In the coming weeks, we will be continuing to clean up and organize the garden and greenhouse spaces so that this school year will be a great one for Delta Garden Study's showcase garden - Mabelvale!

FrontPage Article »See the Progress on our New Gardens! Don't forget to visit our Garden Schools’ webpages for pictures and stories about the progress of our new gardens. Liana, Kevin, Ryan and Cale have been busy developing their sites, planting a late summer garden, and getting to know their communities. Many thanks to all of their community members who have donated materials, equipment and labor!

About The Delta Garden Study »About The Delta Garden Study The Delta Garden Study is a $2 million research study funded by the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service designed to prevent childhood obesity and social risk behaviors, and improve academic achievement, in middle school children in the Delta and Central regions of Arkansas.

Garden Program Specialist

Ryan Norman

Farming wasn’t a part of my life until my senior year of college at Hendrix. I was definitely what you would call an academic, and intended to go law school after graduation. But then I chanced upon this collection of essays by Wendell Berry. Berry is a farmer poet in Kentucky that writes about the cultural and ecological shifts in America since WWII. His writing illuminates the complex web of connections between the failing health of our citizens, the ecological degradation of land, and the social fragmentation of our society. The unifying problem—and conversely, the potentially unifying solution—is food. By changing our food culture, we can make headway on so many different problems at once. After I realized that, I decided instead of going to law school I would learn how to farm. After completing internships at Dripping Springs Gardens and Horsepower Organics, I came back to Fayetteville and helped establish the Walker Park Community Garden. And now I get to do this work full time as a Garden Program Specialist at Harrisburg Middle School! I’m looking forward to working closely with students in the garden and getting to pass on the vision that’s inspired me so much the last five years.