First Week in the Songaia Garden

Hello! My Name is Laura Johnson, and I am spending my summer evading the obligations of formal education and diving into the more practical classroom of hands-on. My good friend Caroline and I had a string of small things that brought us to come to the decision to "WWOOF" this summer. I had a desire to come out to the Northwest and it all worked out  for us to be here at Songaia for the next two(ish) months.

I am in Agricultural Engineering/ Natural Resources Engineering at Purdue University, this is basically a different approach to environmental engineering. Until my third year of College, I’d never heard of the term “food security” and once I started to learn about all that it entails, the more I became intrigued.  One of the things that I have learnt in my life is to always start at the base and work up from there, so once I knew that I was interested in food security, I really wanted to get a handle on what it looks like to produce the food, hence wanting to be at a place like Songaia, a whole community that eats from their own garden!

All in all this summer has been so busy and so non-stop and so amazing. Week One was a blur. We met so many people in such a short time, I’d say it was overwhelming, but the excitement was too high. 

So, the first week was fast, humbling and over sooner than when we realized that it had started. Not knowing the community permitted us to observe the way everyone interacted in the most sociological way that two engineers will ever have. It is still mind-blowing to me how so many diverse people live together so closely and make it work. 

In the garden that week, there was a lot of weeding as well as planting and getting beds together.  A majority of that time was also just trying to figure out the rhythm of this community and our place in it. I knew that we didn’t have much garden work experience so this was the part that I was nervous for! In school it is common to not know anything and study from a textbook, but here you just have to keep asking and doing in order to learn. 

Reflecting on how we applied to this internship, I remembered  a question about our experience with co-housing and intentional communities that we were asked.   A key thing that this week taught me, was that intentional was not the typo I thought it was when I answered the question about my international community experience. I learned that within Songaia, there is an intent to thrive in a way that supports the changing world that we face, which is refreshing and exciting.

 Oh, well, I also learned about bind weed.