Food

Guest post by UW Farm manager Perry Acworth

Wearing calf-high rubber boots, knit hats, gloves and full foul weather gear - overalls and hooded jackets - two farmers, keeping 6 feet apart if not more, commence transplanting hardened-off, 2-inch high multi-colored Swiss chard. Rain, and then hail, falls the entire day from gray, swiftly moving, cloudy skies. Two times the sun managed to come out, offering a brief break in the downpour.

What do you think of when you hear the word soil? When assistant professor Brittany Johnson asks students this question at the start of her Introductory Soils course, words like "dirty," "life," "brown," and "nutrients" come to mind. But soil is much more complex than that, Johnson says.

This Fall, UW Recycling staff once again guest-taught students in the Nutritional Sciences 302 Food Systems class - led by faculty members Yona Sipos and Jennifer Otten - regarding the composting process and how to sort compostable materials on campus.

The UW American Indian Studies Department and Na’ah Illahee Fund invite Individual, Panel, or Workshop abstracts for the “Living Breath of wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ” Indigenous Foods Symposium to be held on May 1 & 2, 2020 at the University of Washington’s wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ Intellectual House.

Submissions are due on January 20, 2020.

This Spring, UW Recycling staff guest-taught students in the Nutritional Sciences 302 Food Systems class - led by faculty member Yona Sipos - regarding the composting process and how to sort compostable materials on campus. The students were then given an assignment to think about ways the University of Washington could reduce food waste. 

We've included a selection of the student thoughts below:

The UW Food Pantry, "Any Hungry Husky," is hiring a student position which will work collaboratively with the leadership of the UW Food Pantry, the UW Farm, and Housing and Food Services (HFS) to develop and implement a strategy and processes to supply the Food Pantry with food grown on The Farm and remaining from Housing and Food Service locations.

How often do you sit down to a meal and think about the journey it took to arrive in front of you? Like most of us, probably not that often. In the age of take-out meals and cheap frozen dinners, it’s easy to disregard thinking about where your food comes from, where it goes, and who it affects.

As food moves from farm to table, it affects everyone in the system. From the farmers to the consumers, and everyone else along the way, issues of food justice and food sovereignty greatly impact communities all around the world.

It’s Sunday afternoon, and you’re stuck next to the spinach bags in the produce aisle at the grocery store. You can’t move, and you realize: you aren’t the only UW student meal prepping on a sunday night. You resolve to discover new ways of acquiring your bananas and spinach, but luckily for you, we’ve already done the work for you!

Had you been around the wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ  – Intellectual House last Monday evening, you may have stopped in your tracks and been lured inside by the inviting scent of fresh basil and lavender. This year's Spring Humble Feast was not only a community-oriented educational dinner, but also a treat for the senses.

There's a little-known space in the HUB, all the way to the back of the ASUW offices. There, you'll find a tiny room with crates full of dried fruits, granola, green lentils, and tea lining the walls, soft music playing in the background, and friendly staff asking, "How has your day been going?"

You might forget for just a minute that you’re still on campus.