Growing SEED

It has been a busy four-plus months since our last post!  We shouldn’t have been surprised that talking more and more about SEED and the automated system with more and more folks generated more and more questions.

What exactly is it? How does it work?  What’s in it? Who can use it?  Among others.

It was difficult to answer some queries simply because there was no assembled package.  But there was also the matter of sharing too much and having an idea appropriated before we even got it off the ground (literally!).  So, we began further developing the SEED project kit so that we could answer some of those questions without losing the more proprietary elements.

The kit, which is run on Arduino, is receiving a lot of interest and we have taken it on the road.  One of the highlights of the last month was an invitation to share SEED at the Food Day LA showcase at Los Angeles City Hall.

“But still,” you ask, “what is SEED?”   SEED is —

TRAINING and ENTREPRENEURSHIP – The future-forward job skills participants learn can be transferred to work in larger food/agriculture technology companies, neighborhood small farms, or their own enterprises, and each participant learns how to install resource-conserving systems that reduce waste and expenses.  Our goal is to provide this training as a key opportunity for traditionally hard-to-employ groups such as youth, veterans or previously incarcerated community members.

STEM EDUCATION and AGRICULTURE TECHNOLOGY – South Los Angeles, like many low-income communities, is often ignored in terms of technology and innovation.  So, we’re working to tap into the agriculture technology and robotics market – an industry projected to grow to $16 billion by 2020.

WORKSHOPS – Our current workshop curriculum educates community members in food security and production topics such as permaculture gardening, food preparation and preservation, health and nutrition and food distribution, along with job training to prepare residents for work in the emerging “green economy.”  STEM sessions focus on: assembly and utilization of low-cost technologies; garden and farm development; explorations of computer coding; soil management; permaculture; and, business development.

FOOD SECURITY and SUSTAINABILITY – SEED engages residents in the citizen science and food system innovation that increases access to fresh produce. Importantly, our participant farmers analyze scientific and engineering processes to understand the complexities of our globe’s food and ecological sustainability challenges.

We know that is still a lot of words — and little visual — but we hope you will stay tuned as we complete development of the growing kit and eventually make it available to the public!   Oh, and if you’d like to see the kit in person, we’ll be at the DTLA Mini Maker Faire December 2nd.

Lot 666

It has been awhile, but there has been a “lot” of activity (pun intended)!  The Ghettostead continues to develop and grow.  This year, it will include two farmers along with an additional raised bed and co-working activities.  We’ll post more on that soon.  But, you may be wondering about the title of this post…

You remember that lot of land we were working to acquire?  Well, there’s strength in numbers, and we’ve collaborated with some folks to takeover two parcels at the site.  We’re happy to report that the group is halfway there!  Thanks to the assistance of staff in the offices of CD8, our group gained access to city-owned Lot 666.  Broadchester Farms is on its way!

Now, some folks laugh (and some gasp) when they hear the designation of the lot.  But, we say “awesome!”   We decided it’s time to re-appropriate this “scary” number, especially when we learned a few things about it.  The best of which is, 666 symbolizes Carbon 12 — you know, 6 protons, 6 neutrons, 6 electrons — the foundation of life on earth!

Pretty auspicious, right?  Seems we’re set to get some amazing produce!

Failure is like…

…a word that gets used far too often as a motivator for change or some instructive path to success.

Lately, I’ve been surrounded by people talking about failure. They find comfort in quotes about failure being necessary to reach a goal.  They seek permission to fail. They worry that they are not making or building anything of consequence.  They lament that they are not achieving this or that plan.

Well, I won’t ever give someone blanket permission to fail, and I’ll argue that what we often call failure is sometimes not.  On the point of making things, I say pick something and do it.  Start something.  Make something.  Grow something.  If it helps people in some way, even better.  (I’ll like you more.)  On the point of achieving this or that plan I ask, “Are you moving a plan forward?” It’s not even “are you moving THE plan forward?”  Because THE plan often changes.  (The fact that it shifts is usually what makes you think you are failing.)

Now…it is important to distinguish between a plan and the goal.  The goal, that’s the thing you choose, and it doesn’t change.  That is the “eyes on the prize”.

We have a goal for OriginalGreen: food justice and food security in South Los Angeles.

How we achieve this is a consistent strategy: create a healthy community food system, empower low-income food entrepreneurs, increase access to fresh food.  But there have been a bunch of variables and incompletes along the way, including loss of land and lack of resources.

The thing is, I’ve never conceived of these incompletes as failure, even if some folks consider them the traditional definition: “lack of success”. They’ve been opportunities to learn and get the thing right.  And that’s why I don’t buy into the vaunted “cult of failure” discussed all over the Net, in start-up culture and entrepreneurial philosophy.

Moving towards a goal and not reaching it the first, second, or even tenth leap, is not failure.  It is moving towards a goal.  It’s taking all the steps.  Even those times you hit it out of the park, you still have to run the bases to validate the effort.

Now that home&community is the closest to opening the co-working homestead, is connected to 67,000 square feet of growing space, and has technological help for our open tools platform, I look back on getting here and see the incompletes, the almosts, the detours.  Actually, I saw them pretty clearly when they were happening, but none seemed negative to me.  They are simply the 100 things that won’t work and needed to be figured out.

So, no “embracing failure” or “failing forward” or “failing fast” for me, OriginalGreen or home&community.  We’ll stick with trial and error, process, making, doing, collaborating, risking.  Failure is too easy, and it doesn’t get people fed.

As always, the garden and farm offer a great metaphor for failure and risk.  A garden is the ultimate laboratory for goal-seeking and learning from mistakes.  You don’t fail in the garden; you don’t founder on the farm.  You learn and then you keep growing.