Truck Farm Phoenix, the Valley’s own mobile community farm, stretched its legs –ahem, wheels – Tuesday and showed the Valley a look at the stuff of which it is made. Began in New York in 2009 by documentary filmmaker Ian Cheney of Wicked Delicate, a Truck Farm (literally, a garden cultivated in the bed of a truck) presents the community with a look at urban agriculture, creating a way for kids and adults to easily learn how sustainable vegetation can not only grow but actually thrive in the city, desert or just about anywhere. On Tuesday, Natalie Morris of Community Food Connections accomplished just such an enterprise, bringing Truck Farm Phoenix to BASIS School in north Peoria. While the event first focused on the 6th grade biology class as they learned about nutrition this week, children of all ages soon dashed to the truck in hoards, gathering around the truck bed, feeling the plants, asking questions about the composted soil, desert gardening or about growing their own gardens at home.

Natalie Morris teaching the kids how to garden
“We wanted to educate kids about where food comes from,” said 6th grade BASIS biology teacher Kristine Low. “We also wanted to educate them about nutritious foods and help to make them aware of how to make a garden at home.”
As fascinated fingers picked some of the organic vegetation and remarked on the difference between the taste of plants grown with chemicals and the taste of plants cultivated without, Morris explained the process of farming, from where to find seeds that grow in a desert climate (Truck Farm Phoenix’s are from Native Seeds/SEARCH and Seed Savers Exchange, two organizations that assist the renewal of native crops and the fortifying of U.S. soils, climate and well-being), to how to properly tend a garden to even the fact that one can discover so much already growing in their own backyards. Needless to say, the adults as well as the children were enthralled by the concept, already devising their own urban farming ideas. Job well done? Well, though the truck can’t answer for us, we won’t be surprised if we see little gardens popping up everywhere from now on. For more information, click here.
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