Councilmember Campos commits $25,000 to Veggielution

We are proud to announce that Veggielution has just signed an agreement with San Jose Department of Parks and Recreation for use of an additional acre of land at Emma Prusch Park! This deal has been in the works for a long time and required a huge effort from volunteers, City staff, the office of City Councilmember Nora Campos and the Prusch Farm Park Foundation. The agreement will allow us to create a 1-year pilot of the East Side Community Farm, which will provide low cost food to the community and teach San Jose’s youth about food, agriculture, and other social and environmental issues.

We are very excited to make this announcement, and it marks the beginning of a new phase for Veggielution, a time where we will be reaching out to the community more than ever while expanding our current programs and structure. We are one step closer to realizing our vision for a large-scale educational community farm in San Jose.

As mentioned before, we’d like to thank all the people in the Park’s Department who made this possible, including Park Supervisor Alex Pearson, Park Manager Branden Casper, and Parks Director Alberto Balagso. A very big thank you to Councilmember Nora Campos and her Chief of Staff Ryan Ford. In addition to helping us navigate through the process of creating this agreement, Nora Campos has committed $25,000 dollars for supplies and infrastructure. The money will be used to build an water-efficient drip irrigation system and outfit us with supplies for community workdays and our new high school youth program starting this Fall.

Veggielution is a sponsored project of The William James Association, which promotes work service in the arts, environment, education, and community development. Thank you to Laurie Brooks for helping with the nuts and bolts of the agreement (liability insurance, etc.) WJA is providing much needed organizational services as we move towards creating our own 501(c)3 nonprofit.

Here, it’s also important to mention our original sponsor, The Prusch Farm Park Foundation. Their unwavering support has kept us going through our first year at Prusch Farm Park and our friendship will continue into the future. We just finished potting up around 200 tomato plants that board member Dot Maley has donated to the cause. A whole team of Veggielutionaries has worked to make this possible, including writing the 30-page proposal for the East Side Community Farm, a blueprint of the organization we are currently building. This document will be made public in coming weeks to open up a larger community dialogue about what a larger farm can look like in the future.

Let’s Get to Work!
Needless to say, there are mountains of work to do at the farm as our planting window rapidly closes. At 10am, Saturday June 20, we will hold a groundbreaking ceremony and begin planting on the new acre. Please save the date and stay posted for more details. Meanwhile, check our calendar for upcoming workdays and meeting times. We will be working starting at 2:30pm on Wednesday and holding our General Meeting at 7pm in Clark Hall at San Jose State University. Now is a great time to get more involved in our organization!