Alex Beyer4/30/11Dr. Donna ChollettCulture, Food, and AgricultureService Learning Project Individual PaperThis project has just been a whirlwind of trial, error, and learning. Nobody expected the Native Garden service learning project to be as broad as it was, with us three groups shoved out into the world of research, and finding a ton of information. In the initial stages, we were struggling under the weight of everything we had learned, wondering how on earth we were going to pull it all together coherently. It was not that we did not have enough information, but rather we had too much. I believe bits and pieces began falling into place once we started conversing with the other groups. At this point in time, we had most of our research completed, and discussing with other groups about the challenges we faced helped us to begin organizing all we had learned. There is so much we have put into this project, Lyndsey, Keni and I, and infinitely more we have gotten out of it. I can’t talk about what I have done and researched without mentioning my group members, because I would have been utterly lost without them. They are wonderful and dedicated people, and have simply been a pleasure to work with. In the very beginning stages, when I had just checked out Enduring Seeds by Gary Paul Nabhan, I started to think that perhaps I had gotten in a little over my head. Nabhan mentioned several different tribes, and each one had different ways of saving seeds. Which tribes were the ones that were from the Morris area? It was remarkable, how much one chain leads to another. The Lakota are currently on a reservation in South Dakota, but they are originally from Minnesota, so are they the tribe whose practices we should emulate? It turned out that the Lakota were not originally farmers either; they were hunters and gatherers, who adapted farming practices to survive European colonization. So did that mean that their farming practices were not traditional? As I did more research, I began wondering whether or not we had the right to create a Native garden. There is such a rich history, spread out across thousands of years and many tribes, with a more recent tragic history. When Francis Betteyloun spoke to us, he put those fears at ease, by stating that it was intention, and how we did this garden ourselves, that made it native. Each tribe had their own way of gardening, and so there is not a true native way. If we were respectful, our design could be considered native, and we would not have to worry.My research took me places I never expected to go, with the peak of my learning occurring at the Indigenous Farming Conference. Being at a hub of native knowledge, participating in talks about local food and talking to people who have done what we were researching, was very invigorating. I was meeting the people who wrote the books I read, such as Winona LaDuke, and listening to them speak passionately about food and organic farming. I learned from Robert Alexander, an Amish farmer, how to build my own farm garden of various sizes, including one that is almost precisely the dimensions of the Native Garden plot. This was incredibly helpful in giving me a sense of scale in how labor intensive the garden would be.I got to learn about Permaculture from Bill Wilson and Emigdio Ballon, who explained how Permaculture and indigenous farming are tied together. Permaculture is what native people have been doing for thousands of years, and that Permaculture is a way of life. Permaculture is about our relationship to everything, where wastes become resources, the environment is restored, and the least change is made to the greatest effect. It aims to culturally improve the world, and encourage crop sharing across local communities. Biodiversity is heavily emphasized, with intercropping being the key component of Permaculture farming, much like thethree sisters, or a medicine wheel garden. Emigdio Ballon summed up everything for me with a few simple words. “The world has sped up, the American people are fast. The Indian people arestill walking, and it should be that way. Americans are too used to their cars, and have forgottenhow to use their legs.” The idea with the Native Garden, is perhaps that someone can walk out there, and rediscover their legs, and slow down for awhile.I created the design for the garden, and I initially, I wanted to closely follow the keyhole design that Daniel Halsey showed us at the Indigenous Farming Conference, as well the herb spirals he had accompanying them. The idea was that crops that would be ready for harvest earlier in the year would be closest at hand, and so you could harvest them first. Crops that were ready for harvest later in the year would be behind those, and so it placed little effort on the grower. After showing my initial, rough design to my group, Keni suggested a Medicine Wheel garden design, so I went back to the drawing board, and created the rough draft of our final garden design. There was originally more variety in our garden, but they were scrapped in favor of a much more simplistic three sisters plot to accompany the Medicine Wheel garden. The threesisters I learned are not native to this area, but were instead introduced by a southern tribe, but keeps the idea of Permaculture within the garden, through intercropping. The Medicine Wheel garden has twenty different kinds of prairie plant, and intercrops them all. The Native Garden holds an amazing amount of potential when it gets off the ground, andwith spring planting this year, we can hit the ground running. I do not plan to stay in Morris overthe summer, due to poor planning on my part, but I plan to stay in Morris in 2012 and 2013, and work with Morris Healthy Eating to assist in any way I can to make sure this project stays afloat. I know manpower is currently one of the issues with keeping all three gardens maintained over the summer, so I wish to assist with that in the future. I am very excited to see what the Native Garden evolves into, and I have a number of ideas of what this can become. One thing that must be kept in mind is that the Native Garden is right next to the Student Organic Gardening Club garden, and the Morris community garden. We need to be considerate of their needs as well, andwork with each other to make all three gardens succeed.The Native Garden will hopefully expand in size, to mutually share the two acre space with the other