KALAMAZOO, MI – Construction isn’t scheduled to begin on Kalamazoo Valley
Community College’s new Healthy Living Campus until spring of next year. But the first
classes could start rolling out as soon as the first quarter of 2014, said
Marilyn Schlack, president of KVCC.

The green-shaded area are the parcels donated by Bronson Methodist Hospital for a new Healthy Living campus being developed by Kalamazoo Valley Community College. The hospital is in orange.Map courtesy of KVCC

“We see ourselves having a great opportunity to start doing
something around the vision of the new campus,” said Schlack. “In 2014, we will start rolling things out and
showing how they’re connected to what we’re trying to do.”

Among the early offerings: Classes on hoophouse growing,
which can extend the growing season in colder climates, and a food safety
technician program that KVCC is currently developing with the city of Battle
Creek, Schlack said.

While the campus is being built, these courses would be
offered at KVCC’s other campuses, as well as at Bronson Healthcare,
which is one of the partners in the new venture, along with Kalamazoo Community
Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, Schlack said.

The food services technician program would be designed to
meet the increased regulatory demands of the Food Safety Modernization Act of
2011, which was passed after a series of outbreaks of food-borne illnesses in
the 2000s. It aims to shift the emphasis on food regulation from responding to
contamination to preventing it.

“The idea is to not only create entrepreneurs, but create
technicians that can work for the big companies – the Meijers and the Ciscos
and the big farms,” said Schlack. “You have small farmers that can’t afford to
have a food safety technician, but they could share that cost. We think there’s
going to be a job market that’s not being met at this time.”

The KVCC Board of Trustees approved the new venture in May and the new $42 million downtown campus was announced in July. Bronson Healthcare donated 13.3 acres of land to the project located within the Edison Neighborhood.

The partners have said they will not seek millages or bonds to finance the
project. The three will be putting up the money themselves, as well as seeking
national, state and private gifts and grants. Construction of the new campus is expected to begin in spring 2014.

In fact, KVCC was one of just five public universities or
community colleges whose capital outlay planning requests were approved this year. Gov. Rick Snyder approved its capital outlay
request of $6 million toward the Healthy Living Campus as part of Public Act
102. The request still would need separate legislative approval for a
construction authorization before KVCC received the money from the state.

The genesis for the Healthy Living Campus came several years
earlier, Schlack said, when the community college was trying to figure out how
to expand into an underserved area and “help people that didn’t have access to
nutritional food not only understand it but have access and then learn that it
could be prepared in a way that they would find appealing.

“The more we talked and the more we learned about what was
going on, we said, ‘Here’s an opportunity to do something a little differently,’ ” she said.

Schlack and other KVCC officials worked with Rick Foster, director
of the Institute for Greening Michigan at Michigan State University. They made
several exploratory visits to Detroit to see the work being done there with
urban farming and community gardens and how it might be translated to Kalamazoo.

Three facilities are
planned. KVCC will develop one for food production and
distribution, a second for nursing, allied health and culinary programs,
and the third will be a new psychiatric clinic for Kalamazoo Community Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services. 

The link between food and physical and mental health has
only become more apparent in recent years, Schlack said.

“There’s two parts on it: It’s not just food. It’s the opportunity
to work,” Schlack said, citing programs in Amsterdam and Cleveland. “You give
that person value again. When you have value, you’re more interested in taking
care of yourself.”

Schlack also cited universities such as Tulane in Louisiana,
which mandated that its medical students take a nutritional course at a culinary
school, and the Harvard School of Public Health, which is collaborating with
the Culinary Institute of America.

“I’m thinking to myself: This is where it is,” Schlack said.

Schlack also said she hopes to be able to include area elementary
schools in the new venture.

“Studies have shown that children really get excited about
what they grow. That’s why we see this new campus as an educational
destination: How food is processed, how it’s grown,” Schlack said.

In a healthier version of Willy Wonka’s garden paradise, all
the landscaping at the new campus will be centered around food.

“All the landscaping, our intention is, is going to be
food-related – for birds and people,” Schlack said. “Instead of just having
bushes, you’ll have blueberry bushes. Instead of just having trees, you’ll have
apple trees.”

That way, children who might not ever have occasion to visit
a farm can see how food is grown.

“I find that exciting. I have people ask me: You’re an
educational institution: Is this really going to be educational? Absolutely. This
is all about education,” Schlack said.

The community college also is taking a collaborative
approach in the initial development stages — asking everyone from local chefs and Southwest
Michigan growers and food processors to church groups to provide input on the
project.

“We’re inviting in different groups to talk about what the
vision is and how we can help them,” Schlack said.

“One, we see the synergies of working together – not overlapping,
leveraging what we have, and being able to serve, especially some of the smaller,
emerging farm efforts to be successful and get their foods to market and have a
market,” she said.

Earlier in September, KVCC also met with the state
Department of Agriculture, which suggested that the area could use a
distribution link to help bridge the gap between small entrepreneurs and their potential
markets. It’s possible the community college may be able to provide that link
via the new campus, Schlack said.

“One of the things they’re recommending is that the county
or the city think about having an incubator, an innovation center for people
who work in the Can-Do Kitchen,” she said. “They need an interim space to get
their products to market … We’re talking about how can we work together to
make that happen and complement what’s happening on the new campus.”

“My real hope is that
we have people who will stay in our community, become young entrepreneurs. My
hope is that we will touch people who live in areas that can only go to a fast,
convenience center and a get a bottle of pop and chips instead of a fresh apple
— that we find ways of distribution. My hope is that we become a prototype for
other communities to emulate,” said Schlack. “And my hope is that we spur a kind of
economic development that really demonstrates that healthy living and foods and
working together can make a difference in a community.”

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AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) – Fruit, vegetables and herbs will soon be planted at Capitol Park near Maine’s State House, under a new state law.

The law that went into effect last week directs the state to plant edible landscaping in the Augusta park.

Democratic Rep. Craig Hickman of Winthrop was the bill’s sponsor.

Hickman says in a statement that the landscaping will be paid for through private and public funds and will be added as the money becomes available.

The Paris Farmer’s Union is donating seeds and Hickman’s farm fields in Winthrop will provide edible perennials.

Hickman hopes the edible landscaping will raise awareness for the local food movement, encourage others to plant their own food gardens and educate children that visit the State House.

Landscaping is expected to begin next spring.

(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

This green manure was drill-seeded so that the entire field benefits from soil protection, increased organic matter and a bonus of nitrogen. (SHNS photo courtesy Maureen Gilmer)

These beautiful purple flowers are from a strain of hairy vetch under analysis by the USDA for improved green manure varieties. (SHNS photo courtesy Maureen Gilmer)

Long before the advent of synthetic plant foods, farmers had only two ways to make their fields more fertile. One method was to spread manure from livestock, which proved a labor-intensive method that dates back to the dawn of agriculture. The other option, known as “green manure,” doesn’t use real manure at all, but provides even better results.

Early on, farmers learned that their crops grew better where clover was present. Science later explained this phenomenon as nitrogen fixation, which is prevalent among all members of the pea family, particularly a group known as legumes. With these crops, nitrogen is not obtained from the soil like with other plants. Instead, these species draw atmospheric nitrogen into their leaves and send it down into the roots where it moves out into the surrounding soil.

Somebody got the bright idea of sowing clover all over a crop field in the fall so it could build up nitrogen over the winter months. By spring, these plants were rich with nitrogen throughout their stems and roots. When the time came to start the new garden, the cover crop was tilled into the ground so it decomposed, thereby infusing the soil with fresh organic matter and a bonus dose of nitrogen. This practice caught on and became known as “green manure.”

Today, sowing green-manure cover crops in the fall is a big part of organic gardening for the same reason it was practiced before commercial fertilizers. It works better for larger gardens where a tiller is used. The power of a tiller or rotovator is needed to chop the plants up as it turns the ground.

Green manure is an excellent way to improve soil on a larger site. Consecutive years of green-manuring have helped turn very poor soils into rich ground. It’s a super problem-solver where gardens are being created in heavy clay because, for example, the deep rooting of green-manure plants helps open up dense subsoils.

Those with newly built homes on infertile earth, on cut and fill sites, and on former forest ground, will find the ground lacking in nutrients. To make it suitable for vegetable crops and landscaping in the future, plant a cover crop this fall.

A great resource for learning all the benefits of green manure is GreenCoverSeed.com. This Nebraska-based website is focused on organic-market gardeners. It details some of the most common legumes, such as hairy vetch and crimson clover. Each plant has an extensive fact sheet.

Above all, the company offers seed for the amazing “Nitro radish” (Raphanus sativus), which produces such a deep fat root that it’s ideal for opening up superheavy clays. This is an alternative to what farmers call “deep tillage” for the enhanced drainage done with tractors and specialty implements.

Planting Nitro radish directly into the remnants of this year’s crops achieves similar results without disturbing the soil in a process called “bio-drilling.” The main root can reach 20 inches long, and its smaller taproot goes down 6 feet. Residues of this plant are well-known to release many nutrients, adding as much as 100 pounds of nitrogen per acre in the spring.

As your garden fizzles in these shorter days of fall, consider sowing an experimental crop on your garden ground. It’s the lazy gardener’s path to fertility. Green manures don’t let your ground lie fallow all winter, but enrich it.

Maureen Gilmer is an author, horticulturist and landscape designer. Learn more at www.MoPlants.com. Contact her at mogilmer@yahoo.com or P.O. Box 891, Morongo Valley, CA 92256.