Service Learning Project

I volunteered at Edmonds Community College’s Campus Community Farm for two hours (2pm-4pm) on November 13th. According to Edmonds Community College, “The goal of the campus community farm is to bring a diverse array of students, faculty, and staff around sustainable living practices and take advantage of an under-utilized space”. During the event, our goal was to get as many plants as we could out of the bad weather. We gathered ripe tomatoes for harvest, gave the rotten tomatoes to the worms, cut down and cleared the tomato plants, and trimmed large herbal bushes. I included photos of the vegetables we gathered and a selfie of me and my new community service friend in the pouring rain haha. Throughout the whole experience while I soaked in the rain, I just wanted to give props out to everyone who had worked so hard to develop the community farm. It takes a lot of hard work and commitment to not only build and create a farm, but to maintain the farm. So I felt good to be helping out and giving back to my school and community by working with others as a team to accomplish tasks in two hours that one individual could only accomplish in a whole day. Our instructor did mention that there were plan ts in the farm that are not native to Washington state but were introduced for plantations. In class, I learned about introduced and native species. A native species is a species that is indigenous to the area. An introduced species is a species that has been placed in an area by human action.

Questions:

1. After picking up rotten tomatoes all around the ground, I saw lots of tomato skin. Why do tomatoes “shed”?  
2. What else can worms eat besides tomatoes?
3. I noticed a clay oven in the back of the garden. Who uses it? When do people use it? Are students allowed to come learn how to cook with it?
4. What did the words in the roof above the oven mean? (they were not in English)