Et cetera : NCCC Cedar 6 Food For Thought

Kola & Brandon water the indoor garden to help prepare the seedlings to grow before transplanting

Amanda and Arthur move ceiling tiles in preparation for a sprinkler system to be installed.

Minihoop houses built by Cedar 6 to be put in local gardens for Cultivate Hope in Cedar Rapids, IA

Cedar 6 with the finished hand washing stations to be put through Feed Iowa First gardens

By: Victoria Haddad

AmeriCorps NCCC team Cedar 6 is serving with Matthew 25, Feed Iowa First and HACAP until May 1st. The team is assisting with planting vegetable seeds for local gardens. These seeds will eventually be harvested to help feed the Iowa low income residents in the community.

So far Cedar 6 has assisted in planting 14,200 seeds in a hoop house. Also, they have been raking, cleaning, and prepping the outdoor gardens to get them ready for the planting process. Cedar 6 has furthermore disassembled 17 pallets, installed 4 sets of growing lights, and sanded 800 feet of wood flooring inside the Matthew 25 building. Constructing 12 hand washing stations, and repairing 15 mini hoop houses have also been on the agenda. The corps members began to seal and construct a mushroom area in the basement, cut 8 raised beds of asparagus, and transplanted 3 trays of sprouted plants. Lastly in the first two weeks, they built one storage bin for staff kitchen, and sprouted 200 individual seeds.

By helping out Sonia who is the founder of Feed Iowa First she gave us insight about how energy correlates into food and by keeping it local it minimizes cost as well as energy. "It was great to get to know Sonia because she was so down to earth and realistic. Sonia is not really different from any of us but her work helps produce thousands of dollars’ worth of food," said Arthur, Service Learning Initiator NCCC corps member.