To top it all off, the whole PICA crew went on a camping trip to Big Basin in the beginning of the quarter and it was quite a hoot! Although we only spent one night there, we packed in setting up, eating, fireside storytelling, smores, and an epic ten-mile hike at 5 in the morning all in two days! Many thanks to Mira Michelle and Bethany Hecht for making it all happen!

The first Saturday Workday was amazing. The day was colored by an abundance of students, food and garden fun! There was quite a turnout of people, and we exceeded what we had expected to accomplish in the garden and propagation area!  Since then, we knew we had to double dig as many beds as we could before the early rains came, and over the first several weeks we finished just in time! It was a challenge to start off the year with part of our leadership team missing, but thankfully we recently recruited our compost coordinator (Kai Lewis), Saturday workday meals coordinator (Loren), weekday meals coordinator (Forrest  Verde-Green), and events coordinator(Lydia) to complete our crew.

The PICA garden is not just about performing tasks in order to augment and beautify the garden, it is there both as a learning tool and as a means to strengthen our community.

Be it on the Saturday Workday or the Thursday Seminar, there is a certain kind of unexplainable magic about sitting with three other people, planting collard starts, or turning a warm pile of compost with the crimson sunset beside us,and a hot delicious meal awaiting us. Most importantly, the magic is in establishing meaningful connections with each other through our collective learning, our common college experience, and our common human experience. The Sustainable Living Center provides a space for this magic to exist in abundance, and I am forever grateful to be a part of such a program.

Sheila Coll is PICA’s Propagation Coordinator extraordinaire and a Leadership Team member

This is my second year in PICA and my first year in PICA Leadership. I have to admit how strange it is living on campus again and working in the office as PICA’s CUIP (Chancellor’s Undergrauate Intern); my understanding of the program is very different now that I play a role in its continuation. Another, and perhaps more important shift, is that of my own understanding of the world at large. It speaks well for UCSC that despite service cuts, undergraduates can learn enough about law, global politics, and environmental history to re-frame their own role in society.

There is a growing dissatisfaction among undergraduates for environmentalism that focuses only on individuals’ consumptive choices without questioning the inequitable distribution systems that provide (or limit) those choices in the first place. As the social and environmental impacts of the current food system become increasingly visible, the arbitrary distinctions between environmentalists and social justice activists become increasingly meaningless. This shift in thinking is spreading, eclipsing contentment with eco-labels and home compost buckets. People are a part of their ecosystem and our health is directly tied to the land that we grow on; there is something fundamentally wrong with a society that treats fictitious legal entities better than its own people and the earth that feeds them.

It is my sincerest wish to bring the Program in Community and Agroecology closer into contact with the soil outside our greenhouse so that we can learn to germinate in the real world. Competition is a destructive interaction that does not benefit any organism unable to move beyond it, but a resistant/resiliant community is one with broad variations between individuals in a broad swathe of interacting niches. A smart group of people communicates with the other groups of people, especially when they care about a movement that will affect the state of the content on everyone’s plate.

Interact with PICA. Help us build a poly-culture that can support diversity rather than monoculture that requires assimilation into a specific PICA identity. It is always the right time for PICAns to wander out of the Foundational Roots sandbox, but all I can do is leave the gate open. Come over and digaround in the food system with us through academics or Saturday workays. Whether you dig in the literal or metaphysical sense, I promise we know how to share our lunches and will let you play with any of the toys we pull out of the garden shed.

Andrew Holstedt is the PICA program’s illustrious Chancellor’s Undergraduate Intern

PICA has gotten off to a wonderful start this year. It’s hard to believe that it’s almost winter break, given all of the fantastic things that the PICA residential community has fit in to the last 2 months! Even before move-in happened, the staff and a couple of returning PICAns from last year began planning how best to help cultivate a strong community of sustainably-minded students from the ground up. Starting right at the beginning of Fall quarter, new PICAns were welcomed, in true PICA style, with a home-cooked Welcome Dinner full of wonderful food and the start of many great friendships and conversations to come. The next day, almost the entire PICA residential community, 32 students in all, were lead by Mira Michelle, PICA’s Residential Coordinator, on a retreat to Big Basin, with the goal of building community, visioning what they want their community to be, and having an awesome time together in the wondrous forest. All of this was accomplished and so much more. The students came back with a new sense of community, an understanding of what the PICA program is about, and a true grasp of the fact that the PICA community truly is what you make it.

Thanks to the talents of an amazing group of students who comprise PICA’s Leadership Team, and the wonderful participation of students who live at PICA, as well as students from all walks of campus life, PICA has been bursting at the seams all quarter with a plethora of sustainable living activities and experiences, all of which are free of charge and most of which are open to any students on campus. PICA has hosted at least four Saturday Garden Workdays, as well as several visits from College Eight Core Course students, who have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in organic gardening as part of their Service Learning project. PICA, along with several gracious and talented facilitators, has also hosted three workshops this quarter: Solar Cooking; Canning; and, Sri Lankan Cooking. All of these workshops were really well attended and thoroughly enjoyed by all. PICA also held its final Fall Garden Party, which included a Cob Oven Cook-Off event, which was the culmination of a student-led Cob Building class held last Spring quarter at the Sustainable Living Center as part of the Student Environmental Center’s Green Building Campaign.  PICA students have participated in the Farm’s Harvest Festival and the Practical Activism Conference, and also hosted a Student Garden Market Cart. This small-scale farmers’ market provides a venue in which all student gardens on campus are invited to participate by providing produce and flowers grown by students in campus gardens to be offered free of charge to students, and student gardeners gain the opportunity to outreach to the campus community about the campus gardens and sustainability issues in general.

I feel lucky to be a part of such a vibrant and dynamic community here at PICA, one in which issues of sustainability, social justice, and global food systems are contemplated, discussed, and digested, all against a backdrop of students engaged in organic gardening, composting, and homegrown community meals.  The best part of my job as PICA’s Program Assistant is getting to interact with students who are as excited as I am about the prospect of being a part of the change we want to see in the world of food systems, sustainability and social justice. I am confident that if anyone can bring about a sea change in those arenas, it is these students who, full of energy, gumption, and the passion of their convictions, can accomplish anything they put their hearts and minds to.

Bethany Hecht is the Program Assistant for the Sustainable Living Center and the PICA Program 

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On October 9, 2011, thanks to the PICA Program, 15 of us enjoyed a lovely SUNNY day experimenting with Solar Cooking in the PICA Commons. I enlisted fellow solar cooking maven, Ann Shelley to assist, and between us we had five different solar cookers to experiment with. These ranged from fancy (kind of expensive) manufactured varieties, to one made from a foil lined windshield shade! (Alas, we did not have a pizza box cooker, which has some good reports.) We baked ginger snap cookies and soft pretzels for noshing. We also did research with boiling water in quart canning jars, cooking carrots, asparagus and eggs in dry and wet environments in each cooker and we charted the results. All but the windshield cooker achieved success in cooking the test items eventually and everyone thought it would cook with a little tweaking to get the angles right for maximizing the sun, and the cooking chamber right, for capturing the heat (we used an inflated clear Baking Bag).

For many links, comments, and photos I invite you to visit our class site: https://sites.google.com/site/anncatherinessolarcooking/home

Solar cookers work on the same kinds of timing as a crock pot. Slow…or slower.

In our hottest solar oven, cookies baked in 20 minutes, slightly less than twice what they would have required in a preheated, purchased fuel oven. In other ovens, they took 45 minutes. All tasty in the end. So, like so many things, solar cooking is an exercise in preparation, forethought, and participation in your life as a part of the earth’s natural day.

For we, the privileged, there is choice in cooking fuels. In many parts of the world there is only wood, and that resource is becoming scarce, its use a burden on the environment. For the women (it is truly mostly the women) who trek miles to get the wood, to stoop over the fire and breathe the smoke, to cook daily their families basic grain or bean or kernel, solar ovens are a lifesaver.

Our PICA class was a visceral exploration and discovery of what this earth offers the attuned. It is a full tilt delight to go off in the morning to work or play, with a pot of beans, or casserole, in a solar cooker pointed at the hottest spot of the day (that’s where the awareness comes  in), and come home to have them ready to eat and still hot. Which is what I did for our Barley Tofu dinner last week.

Barley Tofu

½ cup pearled barley

8 ounces (or more) sliced mushrooms (optional, but delish)

1 ½ cups water

1 pound medium/soft tofu

⅛ cup olive oil

1 packet dry onion soup or onion dip mix

pinch paprika

In a wide (skillet sized) baking casserole with lid, put the barley, mushrooms and water. Slice the tofu onto this, drizzle over it the olive oil, sprinkle over dry onion soup/dip packet, then paprika, cover and bake.

Solar: 4 hours at peak sun

Gas or Electric Oven: 350 degrees, 2 hours.

Catherine Banghart and her husband, David, have been living off-grid and experimenting with solar cookers   for 28 years. All of their electricity is from solar panels with battery storage.

We accomplished so much together as a community. I want to give a special acknowledgement to our outstanding leadership team who worked so hard to help make it all happen, Dora Bromme, Anthony Garza, Irene Van Riper, Kim Koller, Simone Albuqueque and Ryan Ableson. Together with the vibrant PICA residential community, here are some of the wonderful things we accomplished this year.

PICA participated in the Earth Summit and provided the opportunity for the larger campus community to propagate culinary herbs. Mint, lemon balm and oregano were taken home in recycled containers to window sills and back steps across Santa Cruz. In April, we hosted a group of alternative medical students at the PICA garden and taught them the wonders of preparing a garden bed, how to build a hot steamy compost pile and how to use plants to support health and wellbeing. PICA helped facilitate three Student Garden Market Carts every quarter with the direction and support of our CUIP Intern. We partnered with the Community Agroecology Network (CAN) and participated in the Fair Trade Market Place. In the spring, CAN brought up a group of youth leaders from Central America. There was a wonderful exchange that happened as the youth leaders taught us traditional tamale making and then learned about making compost at PICA. We also a participated in Practical Activism Conference, the Sustainability Fair, the Winter Sustainability Retreat, the Day by the Bay Alumni Event, the Strengthening the Roots Conference, the Strawberry and Justice Festival and the end of the year Sustainability Celebration as well many other collaborative events.

PICA also hosted regular workdays every Saturday and we all got to feast together on the amazing organic lunches provided. The residents at PICA also shared in community meals together three nights a week. The Thursday PICA Seminar Class (ENVS 91F/191F) was full to the brim as students from beyond PICA came to learn about our gardens and get their hands in the dirt. The Tuesday PICA Community Seminar course ran each quarter and PICA residents were able to implement the projects they wanted to see happen in their community. These projects included creating a new native plants bed in the A-quad of the Village and putting on a recycled papermaking workshop.

PICA offered three free workshops on sustainable living skills each quarter. These fabulous workshops included Fermentation, Vegan Dessert Making, Fruit Tree Pruning, Permaculture Design and more! In all, it was a remarkable year and I am grateful to all of the students who made it possible with their dedication, passion and inspiration. I am wishing you all a wonderful summer.

Warmly,
Mira

Mira Michelle is the wonderful and talented PICA Residential Coordinator. She joined the PICA staff this year and has been working closely with the leadership team to plan sustainability events,  foster cross campus collaborations, and support community.

“Sustainability, as Gliessman defines it, is an approach to life based on treating the land in an ecologically sound way…’It’s about healthy food, healthy land, and healthy people,’ he says.”

Uncommon People/Steve Gliessman: Planting the roots of agroecology deep in Santa Cruz
By Guy Lasnier

Our illustrious SLC Director, Steve Gliessman, was recently featured in the UCSC Review. While it features him (and a picture of the PICA garden!) it tells a great story of the important work we are all doing together as a team. Read more here.

The answer is as long or short as your interest allows. The easy answer is that we are building an aquaponics system. The longer answer starts with Alan Chadwick in the late 60s, continues through CASFS, CAN, PICA, and more. This campus has always been a place where we have experimented with the human relationship to food and how it is produced. From the Vitalist leanings of Biodynamics that Chadwick transplanted to UC Santa Cruz stemmed an increased interest in the science of the physical systems and inter-relationships that nurture the organisms that we call food.

Our hole in the ground, our aquaponics project, intends to mimic the nitrogen cycle that happens between the plants and animals in wetlands. Fish waste is taken up by plants’ roots, bacteria break down the waste, and plants filter out the water. This creates a co-generative cycle where the only inputs are the sun and food for the aquatic organisms. In China, rice paddies with tilapia provide farmers with both fish and grain; whereas, the final manifestation of our project will provide a learning opportunity for visitors at the Sustainable Living Center, vegetables, and provide a home to native invertebrates and mosquito fish.

We are an interdisciplinary group of students participating in the Education for Sustainable Living Program and funded by Measure 43, a student passed initiative that funds projects and events involving the food system. Hopefully the project will not only create a way for people on campus to learn about the nitrogen cycle, but will help its participants learn about alternative urban agriculture in a hands-on way.

Andrew Holstedt worked with Alex Ireland to lead an ESLP Action Research Team this spring. Andrew has been a PICA resident and will return next year as the CUIP intern, continuing to develop the aquaponics project and engage students in the PICA community.

Before I came to PICA, and more so, to UCSC, I placed no thought of sustainable food systems between myself and what I ate at all. Coming from a house where produce was alien to the ordinary dinner night, I found quickly as I came to PICA that the way I was eating was completely wrong. Living in PICA my first year, I slowly became integrated into the food movement, picking up across the dinner table all of the elements of sustainable food practice I was missing out on. With the tri-weeknight community meals system, I immersed myself in the practice of cooking with whole foods, though I have to tell you, when I first arrived at PICA, I didn’t really know how to cook anything. My second year I began going to the farmer’s market more for my produce and in taking the job as the community meals coordinator, I forced myself to learn new ways of cooking or preparing whatever we had thriving in our garden at that time, challenging myself to create something new and exciting for each Saturday garden workday. This year, I’ve come to find that not only am I cooking with more whole foods and I’ve fostered a newfound knowledge of each fruit or veggie we’ve been given by our wonderful garden, I’ve also found that I am now more conscious than I ever was about the origin of the food I choose to put into my body and others.

PICA has grown on me over the years, and I’ve finally been able to realize just what a great program we have here at UCSC, and just how unique it is from anything else I’ve come across in my years here. Anyone can participate in our Saturday workdays, but I’ve found that living in PICA is so rewarding in the long run that I’m glad I’ve contributed to much of the culture that lives on after it is built and modified by each year of new and returned residents.

Dora Bromme, the PICA community meals coordinator, serves up amazing and delicious meals for the PICA residents and volunteers at the Saturday garden workdays. She is also an active member of the PICA leadership team.

 

Alive in flavor,

lasting with micro bacteria as the “savior.”

Milk turns to cheese with lactobacilli.

Omega 3’s fight disease.

Fermies may attract the wormies,

but they help me digest and prevent scurvy!

Let’s make a crock of sauerkraut,

Bake a loaf of sourdough,

Drink a glass of wine with cheese you know!

All is in the transition from life to death.

Honor the living with a new colony.

You don’t want life to be a monopoly.

So let’s be conscious when we eat our yogurt and oatmeal and for breakfast,

Sandwich with tempeh, pickles and the rest of it!

When the sun sets and dinner is served miso and beer will make me warm and sooth my nerves.

I am grateful for life and I am grateful for all that dies,

I am grateful for the micro bacteria in the skies!

Vanessa Faryan has been an inspired PICA community resident this year. She taught several fermentation workshops, was a Compost Ranger, and cultivated food and community in the garden.

Carson Watts is a Student Environmental Center intern with the Green Building Campaign. He is spending his summer leading rafting trips but will return for one final day to finish the cob oven and bake pizza in it!