The Durham Inner-city Gardeners at SEEDS are pumped to host the RIC family this year in the Bull City, aka Durham, NC.  We are working with Stone Circles, the Wayne Food Initiative, and Anathoth Community Garden to put together RIC 2010.

DIG is a program that brings youth and adults together to learn from each other.  Over the winter, the DIG program is made up of a core group of year-round youth coordinators who solidify their leadership skills and hone their gardening knowledge.  As spring approaches, we throw off our winter layers, unfold from the slow pace we adopted in the cold weather, and get ready to share skills with a new crew of youth who join us for the main growing season.  The garden is a setting where we learn about more than growing food and nutritious cooking.  We learn from each other about mindfulness, business skills, leadership, public speaking, youth empowerment, and creative self-expression.

The bulk of our work happens on Saturdays.  Some of the DIG youth go to market to sell the fresh produce we’ve grown, some work outside in the garden preparing beds for spring vegetables like carrots, sugar snap peas, and lettuce, and some work inside in the kitchen.  Pots bubbling and steaming on the stove, smells wafting up from the oven—the Durham Inner-city Gardeners know how to grow good food, cook good food, and eat good food.  We can’t wait to share it with y’all during RIC this July 21-25!  RIC gives us a chance to put a face on the food justice work being done by other young people around the country, to build our skills and to create connections that last from year to year.  We care for our garden so that our garden can feed our bodies and minds.  RIC is like a garden in which we are the plants—as we grow and care for each other at RIC, we bear ideas, transformation, and inspiration.

Kavanah Ramsier