Photo from Flickr/mamichan. Creative Commons.
The most recent NYTimes magazine had a piece about Alexandra Reau, a Michigan teen who turned her family’s backyard into a mini-farm:
“Now in its second season, her Garden to Go C.S.A. (community-supported agriculture) grows for 14 members, who pay $100 to $175 for two months of just-picked vegetables and herbs. While her peers are hanging out at Molly’s Mystic Freeze and working out the moves to that Miley Cyrus video, she’s flicking potato-beetle larvae off of leaves in her V-neck T-shirt and denim capris, a barrette keeping her hair out of her demurely made-up eyes. Who says the face of American farming is a 57-year-old man with a John Deere cap?”
Should we promote projects like this as an alternative to the typical teen summer job at the mall? What other ideas do you have for a productive summer?
This is amazing and we should definitely promote projects like this! I'd love to donate to Alexandra and if a kid wanted to do something similar in TX, I'd possibly be willing to donate land for the project.