Left: LC students are testing a variety of plants, including these tropical ones, in the aquaponics project, which also aims to grow catfish to marketable size.
Jessica Mader ’12 harvests lettuce grown via aquaponics, which uses fish waste as fertilizer. She weighed the lettuce and root balls to determine the total biomass produced.
Below: Patrick Brown ’10 did an internship with Lynchburg Grows during his last semester at LC and parlayed his love of all things green into a full-time job there. He spent most of his internship pruning roses bushes, and now enjoys harvest- ing them.
didn’t know anything about where my food came from,” she said. “I learned that large- scale faming is harmful to our environment in so many ways.” At Lynchburg Grows, she got to practice small-scale farming and learn that working with people with special needs is “amazing.”
Inner peace
Patrick Brown ’10 did an internship with Lynchburg Grows during his last semester at lc and found his calling. He is now one of four full-time employees there and calls himself a jack-of-all-trades. He rises early to harvest lettuce and spinach
and sweats through the hot hours of pruning roses, weeding beds, and replacing glass in the greenhouses. “I just love being outside,” he said. “I love
growing vegetables.” Pat said he enjoys work- ing with people with special needs, especially when he sees them learn new skills and do them on their own. Pat’s internship involved taming roses that
had been left untended for more than a decade. The once prized flowers had literally grown
through the roof. He pruned and whacked and pulled out dead roots. He composted the roses and put down newspaper and wood- chips between the beds. He watered and nurtured them. To continue the work he had grown to
love, when Pat graduated from lc he willingly moved into an unoccupied 1963 Airstream parked on the Lynchburg Grows property. He had electricity but no running water so showers were a bit tricky in an unheated building during the winter months. For Pat, that was all part of the joy of the
place. “I’ve learned how to survive on my own,” he said. He has also learned to eat better and says he has gained “a healthier lifestyle physically and mentally.” Pat has become so enamored with vegetable
growing that he and fellow worker Aaron Lee have started their own garden in the city and are selling sweet potatoes and okra on the side. The next project looming at Lynchburg Grows is construction of one or two small
“sustainability houses” for interns to live in — a step up from the Airstream. Pat could even imagine living in one of them. “I can’t see myself anywhere else right now,” he said.
Spring 2012 LC MAGAZINE 29
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