Day 1 of volunteering at JBG!

                Today our group woke up, made our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and headed off to Johnson’s Backyard Garden. No pictures on their website could have prepared me for the first view of the farm. The farm was more beautiful and larger than I had imagined. The owner and creator of the farm met us there. Brenton Johnson’s  story was amazing. Just like the name of his farm sounds, he started in his backyard. He stared selling extra vegetables from his garden at a farmers’ market and was successful just from selling his extra vegetables. He wanted to follow his passion for farming so he bought some land outside of Austin and the backyard garden grew. The farm has been growing exponentially since to the point where he is able to farm 200 plus acres on his organic farm and has 40 plus workers.

After meeting Brenton, we weeded with a field worker named Hunter. We weeded garlic, parsley, and spring salad mix. It was amazing to see so many different vegetables growing and see the drastic difference between the way they farm at JBG and how the couple at Maggie’s Farm (our mini break site) farmed. JBG was on a much large scale, and they used more tractors and other machines than they did at Maggie’s Farm. Weeding brought exhaustion, hunger, and sunburn. Back at the FUM Family Center, cold showers awaited us. The FUM Family Center also had a large industrial kitchen and for dinner on Monday we made spaghetti. We ate our dinner on a card table in the upstairs gym, and we were able to see the sun setting on the capitol as we ate and reflected on our first day of volunteering. After dinner we went to Amy’s Ice Cream Creations! It was delicious and was a great way to end our long day.