From an early age I’ve been fascinated with food. Why do we eat what we eat? I wondered what unprepared foods looked like. How they tasted and worked together for nutrition. Where they came from. How they are sustained. For me this blossomed a passion for sustainability. How sustainable is one of the most important systems that we know? Food …
My name is Adam, I grew up in Santa Cruz county, in Aptos. My family was a pioneer family before the turn of the century in Aromas, California, where my Great grandfather Homer Marshall, ran a self- service station and a grocery store. In 1951, my Great Uncle Dolan took over the store and gas station. My grandfather was not …
By Lindsay Campbell March 2, 2020 At Homeless Garden Project, seeds are planted and lives are transformed. Michael Laffoon has a vivid memory of the day he decided to piece his life back together. “I literally woke up in my van and I thought ‘I can’t do this anymore because I’m going to die,’” he says. “It was just an overwhelming …
By ALISHA GREEN December 10, 2019 Adam Marshall remembers fondly the time he spent as a kid on his grandfather’s ranch in Watsonville. That’s where he learned how much he enjoyed labor-intensive work. He dreamed of carrying on his grandfather’s commitment to helping others in need without an expectation of anything in return—as Marshall recently explained to a riveted audience …
Not too long ago, I was in a marriage living in a home with my husband and children, and my mom lived close by. My dad died when I was twelve, and my mom and I have always been very close since then. I was married for fourteen years and have been through a lot with my husband. Addiction was …
I never guessed that when I grew up, I would actually experience homelessness. I was the picture of success at a young age, having started working at 15 and loving it. I went into banking at 19 and by 25 years old, I was a top-performing Store Manager in a Wells Fargo branch in San Jose. And then, completely shocking …
Stories from our Volunteers: 2018 Volunteer Appreciation Claire Gallegos: A Place of Power and Beauty The power and the beauty of the farm is hard to understand until you’ve walked on the soil and experienced it yourself. Both seeds and friendships are planted here and it’s an honor to be able to witness and experience them growing alongside each other. …
Good evening, everyone, and thank you so much for being here in support of the Homeless Garden Project holiday store. All of us on the Homeless Garden Project crew that have been working diligently over the past several months to create these exciting gifts are very proud of what we have to offer in our store. We hope you enjoy …
Over the past 12 years, staff and faculty at the UCSC Blum Center on Poverty, Social Enterprise, and Participatory Governance have worked with HGP to document trainee growth and the transformative power of the farm. In addition to asking trainees to complete questionnaires at the beginning and end of their participation in the program, we have also been working to …
My name is Jessica and this is my truth. I always knew that my chronic homelessness had a thin line between being caused by chance and by circumstance. What started by circumstance created a pattern in my life that consisted of bad choices and hard decisions. A lot of it can also depend on your stance of whether or not …
