GRuB

Youth Programs:

Through our GRuB in the Schools Initiative, disengaged and/or low-income students earn credits while learning about and contributing to their local food systems. We focus on the themes of Farming Self (personal development), Farming Land (sustainable land stewardship), & Farming Community (civic engagement & community service).

We also engage PreK-12 youth in hands-on learning about soil, plants, food, and community through field trips to our farm.  We help them explore the question, “Where does our food come from?”

Kitchen Garden Project:

Gardens and good food naturally connect and inspire people to grow together while improving community self-reliance and health. GRuB partners with lower-income people to create projects that increase access to healthy food.

Since 1993, we have worked alongside volunteers and gardeners to build more than 2,400 backyard and community gardens, host workshops, and provide support, training, and resources for new gardeners to find success. Our goal is for gardeners to build the skills and connections to organize good food projects in their own neighborhoods.

Good Grub from the GRuB Farm:

The GRuB Farm provides the soil, plants, trees, water, and microbes essential to the learning experiences we offer to youth. As stewards of this land we have expanded the rigor on the farm through increased food production and marketing including growing more food for emergency food distribution. We also have the capacity to employ more youth in our programs. As the rigor in the fields increases so does the self-esteem and pride that youth earn from a hard day’s work.

We run marketing programs to fund our programming, and to serve as job training for students. You can find our youth working hard on the farm to support our Produce CSA, Bouquet CSA, our on-site market stand, and our participation in the West Olympia Farmers Market. We also provide youth the opportunity to take home fresh food weekly in the summer, and we cook and eat it throughout the year together, and we donate to the Thurston County Food Bank on a consistent basis in the middle of the season.

Veteran Partnership:

GRuB Growing Veterans is a new pilot partnership between GRuB’s Kitchen Garden Project and Growing Veterans.

The mission of Growing Veterans is “We combine veteran reintegration with sustainable agriculture; creating a holistic solution to fighting the multitude of issues the veteran population faces and simultaneously empowering our fellow vets to strengthen the incredibly important sustainable agriculture movement.”

We are working together to bring the best of both of our programs to veterans and those in active duty who live and serve in South Puget Sound.