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A Trip to Food for Lane County

Her Campus Placeholder Avatar Lily Tong
Her Campus Placeholder Avatar Charmaine Ng
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Oregon chapter.


I cannot explain how frustrating it is to learn about nature while confined in a packed, dim lecture hall. I find myself gazing out the window at the trees and daydreaming about being in the sun. So you can imagine how elated I was to hear that my Environmental Studies 203 class was required to go gardening one Saturday at one of the FOOD for Lane County gardens. I have always been pretty comfortable in dirt. When I was in elementary school, I collected worms as pets, and in my second year of college, I still love picking them up to freak out my friends. 
 

I had been ready to garden since the beginning of the term, and in week 7, it was finally time. Waking up at eight in the morning on a Saturday was easy knowing what was ahead. I got my grubbiest clothes on and headed out. 
 
FOOD for Lane County is a wonderful program that distributes food to people in need. Most of the food comes from donations; however, they also have three gardens for producing and harvesting food: Churchill, Grassroots, and the Youth farm. Each garden has specified volunteer hours. My class volunteered at Churchill on that gloomy Saturday morning, which is about fifteen minutes away from campus. I was pleased with the nice setup, and volunteers scattered everywhere, happily working away on the plants. 
 

I instantly claimed the job of harvesting bok choy since I had recently recieved a bag of bok choy seeds in the mail from my plant-expert uncle. With no hesitation, I kneeled in the dirt and dug my bare hands in. And so it began, cutting one plant, then another, and another. It wasn’t quite the messy adventure that I had expected. But as I made small talk with other volunteers and found my harvesting rhythm, this experience turned out better than I had expected. It was almost meditative. I was calm, I felt connected with the earth, and I knew I was volunteering for a great cause. I moved seamlessly on to prepping the plant bed, planting onions, and finally to harvesting spinach until suddenly it was time to go. I could not believe how quickly the day had gone. We had been there for three hours, but it felt like only one.
 
Gathering in a circle, our class asked one of the garden’s employees questions for our required essay. But I only had one question: How soon can I come back?

(Photo Credit: John Loo)

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A University of Oregon junior and San Francisco native, Charmaine Ng loves authentic noodle dishes and will always opt for Asian and Italian cuisine when pressed to choose a restaurant. She is a self-proclaimed "noodler," someone who uses her noodle to collaborate with others and bring big ideas to life. She interns for a student-run full-service ad agency, blogs for a wedding and event planning company, and runs the UO Muggle Quidditch League. In her spare time, she sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps - and dabbles in social media and blogging, her two biggest passions. Her quirkiness isn't apparent at first, but then she starts talking about packaging design and making funny faces, and you wonder what happened to that shy Asian girl you first met. With ambition bursting beyond the campus walls, Charmaine can't wait to graduate and work for an agency, company, or publication in community outreach efforts using social media.