By NANCY VORIS
Indiana Correspondent

EDINBURGH, Ind. — Hsergay Lynn used a hoe and a tap of her foot to mound the soft dirt into hills, ready to plant potatoes.

It was the first day of planting at the Atterbury Job Corps Center’s student garden, where students volunteer their free time to learn garden basics and grow produce including potatoes, green beans, cucumbers, broccoli, tomatoes, onions, peppers, cabbage, squash, melons and herbs.

Lynn, a resident of Akron, Ohio, studying security and business technology at the training center, remembers helping in her father’s garden in their native Thailand. The produce the family grew was about the same as the center’s garden.

“But no broccoli,” she said. “We also grew peanuts at home.”
Last year the garden saved the school’s kitchen about $200 a week.

The Job Corps exists to train unemployable young people ages 16-24 for work, said Jim Hemmelgarn, business and community liaison for the center. With a network of schools across the country, the Job Corps is the nation’s largest residential education and vocational training program, and is under the direction of the U.S. Department of Labor.

“The Job Corps is a very holistic program, and we’re very concerned about the whole person,” he said. “The garden is a way they can use their free time besides playing video games.

“One student was so interested last year that he is considering going into an agricultural career.”

The idea for the garden started early in 2009 when AJCC Director Charles Singleteary was looking for a staff member to help start a garden. Deb Bowling, who helps place students in internships in area businesses, was already thinking of starting a garden with her students.

She knew she had a pro on her side in her husband Mike, who grew up on a farm in West Virginia.

“I thought I’d just be feeding the wildlife,” she said of last summer’s harvest, “but this little garden surprised everybody.”

The Bowlings totally adopted the garden, using their own funds and equipment to start the quarter-acre project on the school’s property. Most of the students work in the garden on a voluntary basis, though some are required to work service hours for disciplinary reasons. One student serving those hours, however, was won over to the agrarian lifestyle.

“When his time was done, he wouldn’t leave us,” Deb Bowling said. “He did beautiful cultivating.”

Mike Bowling, who has a military background, becomes part teacher, part drillmaster and part grandfather to build gardening skills and pride in a job well done with the students.

He made three rules and sticks to them: No profanity, no “saggin’ and baggin’” with pants (he keeps suspenders on hand), and no cell phones.

“If we treat the kids with respect, they treat us with respect,” said Bowling, who would often put in 12-hour days at the garden. “The kids didn’t want us to go home. We’re like their Mom and Pop figures.”

After Deb’s day working in her office, she joined Mike and the students in the garden and on weekends.

When students had a birthday, she made a cake and celebrated in the garden. The students showed their appreciation to the Bowlings when Deb broke her hip during harvest, and the young gardeners carried on the work in their absence.

The Bowlings allowed each student to tend certain crops. When they finished caring for their row, then they would help the next person.
“If they have ownership, they will do a better job,” Mike Bowling said.

Lynn was known as the cucumber queen, he said. “For every cucumber she picked, she would eat one on the spot and put one in the basket.

“She asked me why we put the cucumbers in hills, and I said, ‘Because that’s the way my mom did it.”

As harvest time rolled around, students were able to see the fruits of their labor. They also discovered an appreciation of fresh fruits and vegetables as the produce was delivered to the school kitchen and they proudly saw it being served to their classmates.
Hemmelgarn laughed as he recalled the cooks using zucchini to bake and serve zucchini bread.

“They wouldn’t eat zucchini bread,” he said, but the next day they served the same as “sweet bread,” and students started trying new foods.

News of the garden spread to other Job Corps centers around the country, and those sites are now looking to Atterbury as a prototype in starting their own gardens.

This year, community organizations are getting involved. Johnson County Farm Bureau, Inc. heard of the project and donated $500 to build a fence around the garden plot to keep out wildlife.
The Jennings County Growers Assoc. also donated $200, and Johnson County Solid Waste Management visited the center to teach the student gardeners about composting.

The 2010 garden team kicked off during Earth Week festivities, when a local farmer brought a team of draft horses to disk the garden.