On a few Wednesday afternoons per semester, the plaza in front of Jester Residence Hall transforms into a lively marketplace. Booths overflow with fresh produce, baked goods and plants as students gather to shop, chat and enjoy the energy of the UT Farm Stand. This biweekly event brings campus-grown goods and local partnerships together, all just steps from where students live and learn.<\/p>\n
\u201cUT Farm Stand started exactly 10 years ago as a Green Fund program,\u201d said Cecilia Raatz, the sustainability coordinator with University Housing and Dining. \u201cIt was just kind of a one-time project in the spring semester of 2015, and then it was adopted by University Housing and Dining as a full-time project. It has evolved over the past 10 years into what it is today.<\/p>\n
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The UT Farm Stand operates with the help of two campus gardens and a dedicated network of student volunteers who plant, harvest and prepare produce for the market. Some weeks, as many as 45 students can be found tending the gardens under the guidance of the Farm Stand\u2019s small but mighty staff.<\/p>\n
For Lola Davis, a student and market team member, the experience has been transformative. \u201cFarm Stand has changed the way that I see gardening and food in the sense that it\u2019s expanded my knowledge of what I think I could do as an individual and how I can empower my community,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
One of the most rewarding parts of the job for Davis is seeing food grown in the gardens near Jester make an impact on the Forty Acres. \u201cMy favorite thing that\u2019s sold is Jester produce because it really emphasizes our local missions and initiatives to get the food that we grow in our community directly back to the community that it serves,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For Nardos Wondwossen, the Farm Stand\u2019s Zero Waste student manager, that sense of connection is what makes her work so meaningful. \u201cThere\u2019s something really beautiful about sitting down and making your dinner and realizing: Wait, I know where all this came from,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a few Wednesday afternoons per semester, the plaza in front of Jester Residence Hall transforms into a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,1086,447,13179,1049,13829],"class_list":{"0":"post-37458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-austin","9":"tag-austin-headlines","10":"tag-austin-news","11":"tag-campus","12":"tag-community","13":"tag-staff","14":"tag-students","15":"tag-wellness"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}