by Marla Koss
January 31, 2024
The Edible Schoolyard in North Berkeley is a magical place. Twenty-five years ago Alice Waters and friends broke ground next to Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, intent on giving students hands-on experience in the wonders of growing food and being nourished by it.
Today it has a large, well-appointed kitchen with plenty of modules that have a table, sink and stove top each for the use of the students. Not far from giant oaks outside are farm rows, an impressive old outdoor oven (great for pizza!), one lovely ironwork structure for meeting up and another, open-air high tunnel over which to grow vines. Chickens unconcernedly wander. There’s a black chicken you’d be forgiven for mistaking for a black cat out of the corner of your eye, since it seems to like to play in high grass.
A lovely spot for students to gather for a garden class.
Garden sheds hold the equipment. Fruit trees, vines and shrubs share plots with herbs and pollinator plants. The trees, to my eyes, are all alarmingly tall – especially the long line of espaliered apples, too tall to reach up and pick any fruit.
These espaliered apple trees were trained to be taller than usual, to avoid deer damage.
Okay, we had been told that the kids love to climb the big trees, but why so high? One word: Bambi! Rejoice, gardeners of Alameda, because Bambi and friends have yet to swim over in pairs and establish themselves! When pruning and shaping fruit trees in the Edible Schoolyard, one must defend younger trees and the fruit they bear, once they are old enough to start producing (here, wire cages are used for smaller, tastier trees).
It was one of the few blue-sky mornings we’ve had so far this year when volunteers Michi Lee, AC Master Gardener Rehka Talcherkar and I arrived to give haircuts to some young plums and pluots planted on a triangle of hillside below the garden proper, just above the middle school playground. Though these trees had also been trained to be tall (ordered “high-head” from the nursery, is my guess), we found the occasional broken branch. And soon realized these poor young trees had to defend themselves from whatever came flying off the playground: regulation unified school district red rubber balls (I hadn’t seen one of those since 1964!), basketballs, weird-looking sorta-soccer balls. In fact, as we pruned there, balls whizzed past us as well.
Volunteers Michi Lee and Rehka Talcherkar
Whizzing balls weren’t the only oddity. I had no idea that kids as old as middle-school emitted such high pitches, boys and girls alike (was that cute boy I drooled over back in 6th grade capable of squealing while grabbing at a basketball and I just didn’t notice?). And as we were pruning next to the wall of a mini amphitheater, I sometimes walked to the top of the triangle to get a better look at the trees. On one trip up the slope, I got a lungful of Strawberry Shortcake vape. The mini-amphitheater was obviously a good place to hang out!
A view down to the playground, with students sitting quietly.
Three hours of sawing, snipping, lopping and waving pole pruners around like giraffe puppets, we wound up our pruning session. The playground had filled up and gone quiet several times. We’d taken off 4 wheelbarrows-worth of twigs and branches and carted it up the hill to the compost area, where the black chicken continued to play in the grass.
Michi Lee removing a damaged branch.
Volunteering is such fun and good exercise, whether you’re weeding a row of peas, planting seeds, turning compost or learning how to prune fruit-bearing shrubs and trees. At Farm2Market in Alameda Point, laughter is a mainstay when two or more volunteers work together. The Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley brings locals together to handle garden tasks while chatting and catching up. Michi and I usually volunteer in the orchard at Farm2Market, and can be found in the orchard there on Saturday mornings when it’s not raining. We enjoy having inexperienced volunteers join us, as we work as a team rather than solo, making it easier to get everybody on the same page experience-wise. If you’d like to volunteer at Farm2Market, click here.
If you live in Berkeley and would like to volunteer at the Edible Schoolyard, here’s the link to get involved. Volunteer hours are Tuesday mornings 9am-12pm (sign up here), and monthly garden work parties happen 9am-1pm (sign up here). A small cadre of orchard pruners (including Rehka and Michi) can sometimes be found there on Tuesday mornings. The Edible Schoolyard staff’s preference is for folks to join them on Tuesdays or Saturdays, but you can also reach out to Garden Director Jess Bloomer directly here: jess@edibleschoolyard.org to schedule another time to come out and help out.
The Edible Schoolyard is open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays, for wandering through and simply enjoying. For information on hours, how to get there and more click here.