Teague Weybright - Los Angeles Community Garden Council
by Jessica Albano
Interview:
"We unofficially, but officially, promote Guerrilla Gardening, wherever you are, however you can, if it's the space you have... put it in. We’ve been doing some studies and in a 10x10 square foot area, so 100 sq ft, you can grow $7-$800 worth of food a year in Southern California. So for a family who’s living on an income of 13-20k a year, if you give them $1,000 worth of food, that’s a pretty big chunk of their income.
I’m from Indiana farm land. We had a small garden when I was growing up and my grandparents owned the Weybright farm, which has now been in our family for 100 years. We would go up there every summer and she (my grandma) had a huge garden and there was always homegrown food for us. My mother always made sure when we were growing up that our breakfasts were always together, obviously our lunches were at school, but we ate dinner as a family every time. That was kind of what was important and it helped us to have time together. She fed us good, you know, fruits and vegetables as much - as she could in Northern Indiana. We were always into athletics and through college I started to recognize how eating poorly would affect the way I felt.
After college I went to serve in the Peace Corps, then came back to the United States, and moved to Los Angeles. I got a job building community gardens and started to work with these at risk youths and really recognized a lack of knowledge about what fresh fruit and vegetables were. I remember for one of my first meetings, I was getting ready to go to the school and I was talking while holding up, I think a carrot, and some kid said he thought it was a green bean! I just couldn’t understand how there could not be knowledge of what fruits and vegetables were, so I delved into it and started understanding more of what it was. I started building community gardens and saw how much of a positive effect it had on the people. Then I started growing my own food a little more and have just been committed, I guess at that point, to what I see as one of the greatest needs for fighting whatever it be… obesity, poverty, or anything. I mean, growing your food fights all of that.
This is more important than just a feel good story. Financially, our community gardens, I would expect, put over $2M of food into the food system on an annual basis. When you start adding up those numbers, it really makes a big difference. And as far as school gardens go, one of my most memorable times is when they have snack sales after school… now it’s nachos, but used to be popcorn and candy. And so, we are the anti-candy guys who sell fresh snacks once a month. And I was concerned the kids weren’t going to buy it, so when we had our first farmer's market, the kids were buying $.50 bags of cilantro, $1 bags of snap peas, and $1 bags of lettuce, and that was their after school snack. I was so dang happy to see these kids walking away. I said, 'that’s your snack?' and they said, 'yeah, Mr. Weybright! You taught us that it’s good for us and we like the way that it tastes.' I was like, there we go, then we need to keep doing this. And we should be doing it at every school, everywhere. So…why do I keep doing it? I think I keep doing it because people say that it can’t be done. I started a farmers market here at the school because they said it couldn’t be done. We’ve grown 400 pounds of food because they said it couldn’t be done."
"We unofficially, but officially, promote Guerrilla Gardening, wherever you are, however you can, if it's the space you have... put it in. We’ve been doing some studies and in a 10x10 square foot area, so 100 sq ft, you can grow $7-$800 worth of food a year in Southern California. So for a family who’s living on an income of 13-20k a year, if you give them $1,000 worth of food, that’s a pretty big chunk of their income.
I’m from Indiana farm land. We had a small garden when I was growing up and my grandparents owned the Weybright farm, which has now been in our family for 100 years. We would go up there every summer and she (my grandma) had a huge garden and there was always homegrown food for us. My mother always made sure when we were growing up that our breakfasts were always together, obviously our lunches were at school, but we ate dinner as a family every time. That was kind of what was important and it helped us to have time together. She fed us good, you know, fruits and vegetables as much - as she could in Northern Indiana. We were always into athletics and through college I started to recognize how eating poorly would affect the way I felt.
After college I went to serve in the Peace Corps, then came back to the United States, and moved to Los Angeles. I got a job building community gardens and started to work with these at risk youths and really recognized a lack of knowledge about what fresh fruit and vegetables were. I remember for one of my first meetings, I was getting ready to go to the school and I was talking while holding up, I think a carrot, and some kid said he thought it was a green bean! I just couldn’t understand how there could not be knowledge of what fruits and vegetables were, so I delved into it and started understanding more of what it was. I started building community gardens and saw how much of a positive effect it had on the people. Then I started growing my own food a little more and have just been committed, I guess at that point, to what I see as one of the greatest needs for fighting whatever it be… obesity, poverty, or anything. I mean, growing your food fights all of that.
This is more important than just a feel good story. Financially, our community gardens, I would expect, put over $2M of food into the food system on an annual basis. When you start adding up those numbers, it really makes a big difference. And as far as school gardens go, one of my most memorable times is when they have snack sales after school… now it’s nachos, but used to be popcorn and candy. And so, we are the anti-candy guys who sell fresh snacks once a month. And I was concerned the kids weren’t going to buy it, so when we had our first farmer's market, the kids were buying $.50 bags of cilantro, $1 bags of snap peas, and $1 bags of lettuce, and that was their after school snack. I was so dang happy to see these kids walking away. I said, 'that’s your snack?' and they said, 'yeah, Mr. Weybright! You taught us that it’s good for us and we like the way that it tastes.' I was like, there we go, then we need to keep doing this. And we should be doing it at every school, everywhere. So…why do I keep doing it? I think I keep doing it because people say that it can’t be done. I started a farmers market here at the school because they said it couldn’t be done. We’ve grown 400 pounds of food because they said it couldn’t be done."
