Juan grows his skills at Common Roots

Juan Ledesma thinks he’d like to be a video game designer one day. Right now, he’s content to develop his job readiness skills and learn a bit more about growing food and flowers in a production environment. Common Roots Farm has been fortunate to work with Juan and his aide, Ray, throughout our winter preparation and into the spring planting season. Despite not being sure of finding his way around initially, Juan, who is blind, enlisted his mobility specialist, Micaela, and they began to explore the farm using our newly installed accessible farm path.

In a very short period of time, Juan was navigating from his school bus’s drop off spot, into our Seed to Salad garden where he could leave his backpack, lunch, and water bottle, and on to the greenhouse. Once he mastered that, he learned to assist in letting the sheep out to pasture and getting them situated for morning grazing. Thanks to Juan, Ray, and Micaela’s initiative, our tool wall is now properly labeled with Braille signage, as is our tool shed.

Juan’s teacher, Kevin Casey sent us a note asking if additional students could join Juan this fall for an opportunity to be part of the team at Common Roots Farm. He added, “Thank you so much for everything! It was such an incredible experience for Juan and everyone that accompanied him out to Common Roots Farm this school year.” We also received this lovely note from Ramona Young, Career Development Specialist, “Pajaro Valley USD is very grateful for the partnership with our students who have gained valuable life skills. Common Roots Farm is very much appreciated as a training site and so much more. The Farm provides an environment that gives our students life skills, confidence, and a soothing setting that aids in their mental well-being. We hope that our partnership will continue next year with more students.”

We wish Juan a wonderful summer and thank him for all he’s taught us to date and all his contributions to creating a more accessible farm. We are all looking forward to his return to the farm as next semester begins.

Salesforce makes an impact

When Common Roots got a call from 1440 Multiversity asking if we’d heard of “Trailblazer Ranch,” its new partnership with Salesforce, the San Francisco based software company, we had to admit we had not. However, since that first call, we have hosted four farm work days engaging 50-75 Salesforce employees for about two hours each time. The workdays have been so much fun for our team, and we’ve enjoyed the chance to share our vision with a global network of Salesforce employees who are finally, themselves, gathering with colleagues following the exclusively remote working years of the pandemic.

Salesforce employees have proven to be game for just about any tasks on the farm. We’ve needed help with plant out, weeding, spreading compost and wood chips, removing invasive plants from our creek zone, and more. Some have even had a chance to bond with our farm animals, feeding the sheep and fawning over Blueford, our Great Pyrenese sheep dog. We’ve heard that folks have particularly enjoyed getting outside for some team building activities and we have been especially appreciative of everyone’s ‘can-do’ attitude, even those who have never set foot on a production farm before.

We shared samples of our Albion strawberries with several groups, and had an especially memorable moment showing one woman what strawberry plants really look like as she’d never seen one before! All in all, this opportunity has been wonderful for our farm and we hope the same is true for Salesforce.

1440 Multiversity’s founders envisioned a “beautiful and nurturing destination where people and organizations could gather in community to explore, learn, connect, reflect and reenergize.” We feel very aligned with this purpose and thank 1440 and Salesforce for the chance to work together on behalf of people living with intellectual/developmental disabilities, and the ecological health of our farm, in this new endeavor.

Art anyone? Thursdays with Theresa

If you haven’t been by the farm lately, then you might not know that our new Seed to Salad garden is also hosting an art and crafting group every Thursday afternoon with the amazing Theresa Nelson. Each week, immediately following Shared Adventures’ garden club, you can find Theresa ready to have some creative fun under the big blue shade canopy. Theresa brings over a large assortment of art materials and shares her skills and enthusiasm with anyone who would like to join in. Activities are suitable for people with and without disabilities and offer a lovely (and enticing!) way to spend an afternoon.

In addition to having very creative ideas, Theresa is a wonderful teacher, patiently showing participants how to make something new and cool each week. So far, the class has made picture frames, wall hangings, decorated bottles, jewelry such as necklaces and earrings, and more. Always coming up with something new, Theresa is endlessly patient in sharing her talents so generously.

If you're a local and haven't stopped by lately, please consider it. This is a wonderful social group, too, for people with disabilities and a great activity to do with support staff while being outside and Covid safe. Theresa never turns anyone away, and the group meets here every Thursday from 12:30 to 2:00 p.m.

Thanks, Theresa! We are so grateful to have you as a resource in our community!