Service Learning

L:
 
Early - Feb, 2011 - Started work on a saturday cleaning the chicken coop.  Then harvested eggs from the hens.

total: 8 hrs.

Mid - Feb, 2011 - Helped set fence posts for new goat pen

total: 8 hrs.

Mid - Feb, 2011 - Helped take down 300 feet of old fence

total: 8 hrs.

Late - Feb, 2011 - Came back and helped move large compost pile.  Harvested some more eggs.

total: 6 hrs.

March, 2011 - Prepared raised beds for garden.  Pulled weeds out.  Harvested eggs.

total: 4 hrs.

Mid - March, 2011 - Started to plant strawberries in beds.  Harvested eggs

total: 4 hrs.

Late - April, 2011 - Helped plant tomatoes, herbs, and other crops.

total: 5 hrs.

Early May, 2011 - Harvested eggs, observed newborn goats, & cleaned out barn

total: 7 hrs.

GRAND TOTAL - 50 hrs.


Contact - Betty Joseph
(951) 769 - 4510

I:

     The most important thing that I learned from this experience is that Sustainability is a full-time job that eventually becomes your life.  It starts out fairly easy, then gets more and more involved and hard as you get closer to achieving it.  Despite this, the physical work required to be sustainable is highly rewarding.  It may not be glamorous, but in the end you can see and feel that it is completely worth it.  The reason why is that as you start being sustainable, you become more aware of your habits and attempt to break or reform the bad ones. 
     Yet, as you break away from conventional means of aqquiring food and energy, you start to see what you are truly capable of as the weeks go by.  After my first egg harvest, I had around 3 dozen eggs.  At the end of packaging them, I actually looked at what I did and was shocked at how much I had accomplished in one day.  What one person does in one day can feed a family for a week.

A:

     This helped me answer my E.Q. in the sense that it taught me what it truly means to be sustainable without any sugar-coating or beating around the bush like many of the written sources did.  I realized that if I just preached about issues or showed simple steps towards sustainability, then the people I was informing would end up either indifferent or shocked at how much work sustainability can really be once you get deeply into it.  The only way I see that could possibly tell people how it is as closely as possible to reality and still convince them to be sustainable would be to list the pros and cons with explanations for each.

Ten Hour SL Check

I am doing my service learning on a sustainable organic chicken farm with a woman named Betty Joseph and her husband.

So far, I have completed 10 hours working for her.

I have been gathering eggs that she sells and eats, taking care of the goats that she raises for meat, and building a new enclosure in order to make room for some more meat goats and some milking goats.

I have learned about some of the maintenance required in order to live a sustainable lifestyle.  It is more work than I previously thought in order to achieve a means of, in this case, attaining food.  That could be a downside to living sustainably.  However, I feel that it is a rewarding king of work.  The reason why is that as you work, you get to directly see the progress made and observe as your rewards come into being.  It gives you a strong sense of achievement and makes you feel useful.  This can be one of the benefits to sustainable living.

Service Learning