Bill Tracey delivers the freshly harvested produce with a bike cart built by local trailer-maker John Welch. jobless and homeless citizens of the community.” With over 2,000 homeless people in Santa Cruz County it’s no wonder there’s a waiting list for the fifteen paid positions available at the Garden. When a position does open, prospective employees volunteer a short while to see if they are truly interested in the work. If so, they begin at a minimum of twelve hours a week and attend the weekly meeting. Workers are familiarized with procedures of the garden, and then choose an area for in-depth training. For Skooter it was compost, for Octaciano, the greenhouse. Jane Freedman, the Garden Director, trains the gardeners in bed preparation, composting, cultivating, planting, harvesting, and selling produce at the farmers’ markets. The weekly meetings provide group members with an opportunity to air concerns, make collective decisions, and work through any pressing problems. A rules committee — made up of five of the homeless workers and two of the staff — compiles and presents a list of rules that are then agreed upon by the larger group. Developing and enforcing their own rules gives the workers a voice in decision-making that they are generally denied elsewhere. Some of the rules: “When scheduled for work do not come high, drunk, or hung-over: If you do, you will be sent away immediately and the consequence is suspended paid work until nine hours of volunteer work are completed.” “No sleeping at the Garden. Anyone caught camping is kicked off the project.” Some workers find housing through work at the Garden, though most sleep in local shelters during the winter and camp out in the summer. A city-wide ban on camping keeps homeless citizens in fear of police waking them at night with $160 fines. Homelessness, a crime against humanity, is now a criminal act in Santa Cruz. The Garden’s pay, $5-$6 an hour for 12 hours a week, may not be a living wage. But Darrie Ganzhom, a garden employee, feels the money is only “one piece of the puzzle. It’s part of the network needed to get one’s life together.” As another gardener says “the work has grounded me. It’s stabilized me to where I can actually go out and enroll in school. Otherwise I’d be too scattered. You know, hustling to get this or that. Since I’ve worked here. I’ve moved to a safe place to sleep at night.” Purposeful work at the Garden enables many of the homeless to make changes in their lives. Octaciano says “Las plantas crecen si les das carino” — the plants will grow if you care for them. The caring the homeless give to the Garden is reflected in the renewed care they give themselves. This can mean getting a new set of teeth, quitting the bottle, or finding shelter. At a County hearing where the Garden requested funds, Lynne, the Garden’s director, made an analogy between composting and providing jobs for the homeless. Just as discarded organic waste is brought to the garden and recycled into life-giving compost, the homeless. RAIN Spring 1993 Volume XIV, Number 3 Page 3
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