Operation Streamline

Friday was a hard day, probably the hardest of the trip.  We started the day with a presentation by Isabel Garcia of Derechos Humanos, the organization that Patricia volunteers for.  Isabel spoke of how legislation has impacted immigration and how she felt politicians on both sides of the aisle had largely failed on this issue.

Following that, we spent the afternoon at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Tucson watching Operation Streamline proceedings.  Operation Streamline is a zero tolerance immigration program aimed at deporting 100 people per day in each border city in which it is implemented.  Entering the court room, we saw 63 defendants- 61 men and 2 women, each wearing the clothes they had on when they were apprehended, each with shackles around their wrists and ankles, with their wrists bound to their waists.  Each wore a pair of headphones, through which they would hear a Spanish interpretation of the court proceedings.  There was a federal judge, a federal prosecutor, and approximately 10 public defenders.  The judge addressed the court, stating that each of the 63 were charged with entering the United States illegally,  stating that they had the right to remain silent but by entering a plea arrangement, as each of them had, they had forfeited that right and would be forced to answer questions.  She asked the defendants to stand if they could not hear what she was saying, or if they did not understand English or Spanish. 

Then, in groups of five, the defendants were brought to the front of the court to stand in front of the judge and answer her questions.  One by one, she asked each of the five which country they were  residents of, if they had attempted to cross the US- Mexico border on the stated date, if they had done so at an official United States border inspection station, and how they plead.  One by one each stated their home country (55 of the 63 were from Mexico, the other 8 from Guatemala), and answered si, no, and culpable (yes, no, and guilty), respectively.  The judge then asked if the lawyers had anything to add.  Other than a few exceptions (two Guatemalans asked permission to speak to the Guatemalan consulate and a handful of other defendants asked permission to serve their sentence in a particular city or state), none spoke. 

The judge then asked the defendants if any of them wanted to speak.  All said no.  She then handed out the sentences, anywhere from 30 to 180 days, stating in each of the cases where she'd been asked that she would recommend the sentence be served in the city requested.  When each group of five was finished, the next 5 were called up and the process repeated. 

A few things about the process stood out.  First it was incredibly robotic.  With the monotony of the questions and answers repeating one after the next, with almost no variation, with nearly all the lawyers quiet, rendered almost unnecessary, the proceedings had the feel that everything was entirely determined far before what we were witnessing happened.  Because of the nature of the proceedings, the few outlying events stood out starkly for their uniqueness.  However, these outlying events were almost completely heartbreaking.  One defendant was forced to sit down when he nearly passed out as he stood before the judge.  When he couldn’t get back up the judge rescheduled his sentencing for two weeks later.  Another defendant whispered in his lawyer’s ear for a good minute, before his lawyer asked the judge of he could receive a medical checkup as soon after the hearing as possible, for he had been wandering in the desert for ten days before being captured and feared he had done severe damage to his body.   
 

I found myself searching for any small differences between defendants in order to humanize them, as the shackles they were held in robbed them of their humanity.  I watched a few of them consult with their lawyers between questions, their lawyers awkwardly tugging their earphones off their ear in order to speak directly to them.   I listened as several responded to the question “What is your home country?” by saying “Sonora,” which is a state in Mexico (the state where Nogales is located), indicating to me that they didn’t entirely understand the questions they were being asked. I wondered what else about their situation they didn't understand.  When one lawyer told the judge his Guatemalan client spoke the indigenous language Mam rather than Spanish, I wondered what, if anything, he understood about the process he was going through or the agreement he had made.   

After the final group concluded we exited the courtroom and took a few minutes to collect ourselves before heading across the plaza to another building where we would meet with a public defender who would explain exactly what we had just seen.   

Prior to Operation Streamline, crossing the border illegally or living in the United States without proper documentation was treated as a civil infraction.  Deportations were legally called voluntary returns. Operation Streamline changed this civil infraction to a criminal charge.  Crossing the first time became a misdemeanor and the second time a felony.  

The program originated in Texas in 2005 and first came to Arizona in 2007.  100 captured immigrants are deported daily, Monday through Friday, in each of five cities across Texas, two in New Mexico, and in Yuma, Az.  In Tucson, only 70 are deported per day, meaning the proceedings cannot be formally called Operation Streamline, though it follows the same legal process.  Instead it is formally referred to as the Arizona Admission Denial Initiative, though everyone involved will casually refer to as Operation Streamline.  Since it started in Tucson in January 2008, the program has focused on first time violators, those who have no record of previous border crossing attempts.  Under the terms of their plea agreements, defendants processed would be immediately returned to their home country with no jail time served with the understanding that if they were captured a second time, they would automatically be charged with a felony and prosecuted.  Within the past month, the focus of the program has shifted.  No longer is the program targeting first time crossers, instead they are targeting repeat offenders; not necessarily those who have been processed through Operation Streamline previously, but those who had a prior record of entering the United States without documentation.  Now, when these repeat offenders are processed under Operation Streamline, they are given a plea deal where they would serve up to 6 months in a border patrol detention facility or a private prison for the misdemeanor charge of entering the country illegally rather than being prosecuted for the felony charge of illegal re-entry, but would be charged with a felony if captured again. 

A couple questions arise.  Why 100 deportations per day (or 70 in the case of Tucson)?  Cities like Tucson regularly saw 1000 immigrants captured attempting to cross the border illegally in the mid 2000’s, though that number sits at about 300 per day now.  So why would this program run for only 100 of those captures?  What happens to the others and who decides whether a particular capture is processed through Operation Streamline or some other means?  While only the border patrol knows the answer to these questions, the presumption is that the border patrol agents have a lot of personal autonomy in deciding how a particular capture is treated.  Someone who is old, weak, or female is more likely to be simply returned to their home country- essentially treated as a voluntary return.  Those who are younger and male may be treated as voluntary returns, may be forced to sign a deportation document by the border patrol agent who captured them, or will be processed through Operation Streamline and this appears to be almost entirely up to the discretion of the capturing agent.  Obviously Operation Streamline is the least desirable of these options as it attaches a criminal record to those processed this way, while others are still treated as having committed a civil infraction. 

What determines the length of each person’s sentence?  We saw defendants sentenced to anywhere between 30 and 180 days.  The public defender explained that those who were sentenced to 30 days had no other violations except for their one previous re-entry attempt.  Anyone sentenced to longer terms either had multiple previous illegal entries or had other civil infractions such as driving without a license.  None of those processed through Operation Streamline have serious criminal charges on their record such as violent crime or drug trafficking, as those offenses would send them into an entirely different court proceeding. 

We asked about the relative monotony of the process and the lack of defense offered by the lawyers.  She said that for the lawyers it is the worst type of trial to take part in.  Each defender has to serve one day in Operation Streamline every 6 weeks.  They have three hours to meet with their clients and each lawyer is usually assigned 5 or 6 clients.  The defender meets with all of his or her clients at once.  In that time, the lawyers have to determine what, if any, English their client speaks, explain to them what they are being charged with, give them their options, and figure out whether or not they want to accept the plea deal.  Sentencing occurs later that day.   

Public defenders are generally very uncomfortable with this arrangement because for any other criminal trial, the defendant would have an arraignment, a bond hearing, several pre-trial hearings, the formal trial, and the sentencing hearing, all of which would happen over the process of several months, during which the lawyer and defendant would meet several times.  In all but rare cases, the lawyers represent a single client in each case. In Operation Streamline, each lawyer has multiple clients, there is no bond, there is limited time for consultation, and the arraignment, trial, and sentencing are all held in one mass proceeding held on the day following their capture (in the court room, the judge asked each defendant when they crossed and we heard answers ranging from March 26th to April 4th, however this was simply the date they crossed the physical border, not the date they were actually captured, which would have been April 4th in all cases).  

Public defenders have some constitutional objections to the nature of these proceedings, but found when Operation Streamline was targeting first time offenders, the defendants all refused to go to trial.  When faced with the option of going home that very day, albeit with the guarantee of felony charges should they later be caught returning, or sitting in jail indefinitely while facing misdemeanor charges and a likely punishment followed by deportation, and still the guarantee of felony charges if caught returning, the defenders quickly found there really was no option.  Every single defendant accepted the deal.  Even when the focus shifted to repeat offenders and sentences up to 6 months were levied, the deal was preferable to the certainty of a felony conviction.  The defender spoke of the fighting spirit that lawyers have, saying that we’d all seen that on display in court proceedings depicted in movie and television, but this system handcuffed all involved, leaving the cold, robotic proceeding we witnessed. 

We couldn't help but laugh at a few of the details of the proceedings as the public defender explained them to us.  "Please stand if you cannot hear me," the judge says during the proceedings.  "Please stand if you do not understand English or Spanish," she says later.  The question of how anyone would know to stand if they could not hear or understand the judge's instructions to do so was unanswerable. Learning the fact that the room we watched Operation Streamline from, the Special Proceedings Room, was previously used to perform naturalization ceremonies recognizing immigrants who were becoming legal United States citizens, and was now used solely to criminalize and deport people who wanted to live here was a laugh so that you don't cry moment. 

Our group all left the courthouse that day with mixed emotions from confusion to sadness to anger.  We wondered how 30 or even 180 days would deter someone who was willing to make what is often a deadly journey through the desert in search of a better life for their family.  Unfortunately, that was one of many unanswered questions.  We cleared our heads with dinner and drinks at a local Mexican restaurant and prepared for a lighter day with a return to Pima County Cooperative Extension on Saturday.    

 

The Story of Patricia and Elvia

On Thursday night we had our home stay visit.  Our group of ten was divided into 3 small groups, each staying at a different home.  Tracy, Cynthia, and I went to stay with Patricia and her daughter Elvia in South Tucson.  Patricia works as a dishwasher at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Tucson and Elvia is a junior in high school.  We arrived at the house at just a few minutes past 6.  We were met by Baby, the family dog, who looked intimidating but was very sweet.  Elvia came outside to greet us and let us know that her mom was still at work, but would be home by 7:30.  Patricia had already cooked for us, but we thought we'd wait to eat until she got home to eat, so we sat and talked to Elvia for awhile.

Elvia is a sweet girl. She is bilingual, loves Taylor Swift and hopes to be an oncologist.  Her family first came to Arizona just after she was born.  Her father was offered a job by an American company and came to Tucson on a work visa.  Unfortunately, he wasn't able to bring Patricia, Elvia, or her two older brothers with him under the terms of the visa.  Because of that, the rest of the family came to the United States illegally.  Patricia came first, travelling over the border through an underground sewer in one of the border towns.  She had to alternately crawl and walk through the underground tunnel and as she was traveling it began to rain and the sewer flooded.  As the water got higher and higher she finally reached the storm drain where she was to exit.  She pushed it open, was met by a man who gave her some dry clothes, changed, and walked away, beginning her life of trying to fit in. Elvia and her brothers were later brought into the country in a car by a documented relative when Elvia was one.  As Elvia was telling the story of her crossing she mentioned the movie La Misma Luna (Under the Same Moon), in which a young child crosses the border to reunite with his mother in California after his grandmother who had been caring for him died unexpectedly.  The boy crosses with an American student visiting Mexico by hiding in a storage box under the backseat of her van.  You can see the video of the border crossing scene from La Misma Luna here.  I got the impression that her experience had been similar, although without the complication that arises in the film. 

She told us a bit about her life growing up in Tucson. She learned English before Spanish; in fact she didn't begin learning Spanish until first grade, after some other Hispanic children had teased her for not knowing Spanish.  She does well in school and really enjoys english and history class, but doesn't care much for geometry.  As we talked, she got a call from her mom, telling us she'd been asked to stay late at the hotel and wouldn't be home until 8:30 or 9.  At around the same time, two of Elvia's cousins from Nogales, Mexico stopped by.  Elvia shared with us that her parents had recently separated and that her and her mother lived together in the house we were at, while her father and one brother lived in a separate house.  Her father drinks a lot and has some anger issues, which eventually led to the separation.  It has been hard on Elvia, as she's not only changed homes but schools (they moved 2 months ago, so the change of schools happened right in the middle of the school year), however she said that she is happier in her new location.

Eventually we decided to eat because Patricia kept getting delayed at work.  Dinner was wonderful- beef mole with rice and beans and delicious corn tortillas.  It was nice to have another sampling of Mexican cuisine after the carne asada lunch at the ranch the previous day.  As we ate, Elvia talked to us a bit about her mother.  In addition to working at the hotel, Patricia volunteers for Derechos Humanos (Human Rights, an organization that provides support for migrants) and a few other organizations.  Her work at Derechos Humanos is particularly difficult, as her main task is helping families track down missing relatives.  Ultimately, she ends up telling many of the families that the person they are searching for has either died, been deported, or is detained by border patrol and facing deportation.  Obviously this work is very hard on her emotionally, but she feels that it is important work because she is often the only connection many of these families have to their missing relatives.  We asked how Patricia gets to and from her jobs and volunteer work without documentation, without a license.  Elvia said that she drives without a license, knowing that if she is stopped the police officer may contact border patrol if they find her without the proper documentation.  Not all officers will do this, but they have the right to under state law.

The questions many people have when hearing stories like this is why do these people come to the United States if they face such hardship and uncertainty once here as undocumented residents and why don't they come here through legal channels?  The answer to both of these questions is complex and I promised earlier that I would avoid the overt politics of immigration as much as possible, but in order to provide some context here are a few simple explanations.

Why do they come?  Mexico and many other Latin American countries face extreme poverty.  In many of these countries there is little or no middle class, citizens are either rich or poor.  Imagine trying to raise a family and not having enough food for everyone, or not enough clothes.  At the same time, a country like the United States has jobs available that most Americans are not willing to do- farm work, landscaping, cooking and cleaning.  The sense of family and the duty to provide for them is very strong and the opportunities for work so clearly available across the border that it is an easy decision for many to cross, even knowing the risks involved.  And make no mistake, they do understand that there are risks involved in crossing, from being arrested and deported if caught to dying during the journey through the desert.

Why don't they come through legal channels?  Quite simply, the opportunities for legal immigration to the United States are much fewer than most of us realize.  Sure, there are some opportunities for work visas, but these are so few compared to the demand, and I mean that from both sides of the border.  There is a demand Latin Americans for these visas so that they can come here, but there is also the demand from the United States for the workers.  The legal channels that are available for immigration are so limited, and so backlogged (10+ years in many cases), that if you are desperate enough, you simply don't feel you have the luxury to wait for such an opportunity to manifest itself.

That is the situation that Elvia and her family found themselves in 16 years ago, and they are still dealing with the ramifications.  Her mother is undocumented and Elvia and her brothers are as well. Patricia has few options to achieve any type of recognized legal status under current U.S. law, however Elvia and her brothers have applied for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status.  Under the DACA memo, signed by President Obama on June 15th, 2012, undocumented immigrants below the age of 31 who were brought to the United States before their 16th birthday and who have lived in the United States continuously for more than 5 years, can be granted a two year exemption from deportation, a work permit, and, in most states, eligibility for a driver's license.  In Arizona, however, Governor Jan Brewer issued a counter-order stating that DACA recipients would not be allowed to obtain any state services, meaning that they would not be eligible for driver's licenses. 

When Patricia finally arrived home from work, we had a few minutes to talk with her before she had to drive the two cousins to her ex-husband's house.  She returned a few minutes later, clearly exhausted.  We told her to go to bed and that we would chat in the morning.  We also met the third member of the house, Hendrix, a student from Earlham College in Indiana who was staying with the family as part of a study abroad program.  Hendrix was studying Hispanic issues in one of her courses and also working at a local farm. 

The next morning, we had a few minutes to chat with Patricia as she cooked breakfast, before she took Elvia to school.  She came back and we ate together, just as our van arrived to pick us up.  We talked a little about her recent experience with moving and how it had affected the family.  She said that Elvia had been really depressed and struggling in the old house and has been better since the move.  Both her and Elvia have been seeing a therapist, and Hendrix, who's parents had also divorced had been a great help to Elvia.

The home stay experience was very valuable, as we got to see the human side of the immigration issue.   It's easy to get swept up in the hysteria on one side or the other and forget that these, of course, are real people with real problems, many not so different than ours.  Having a chance to talk with Elvia and Patricia, even for a short time, helped put this in perspective and I am very greatful for the hospitality they showed us for those few hours.     

Tucson Village Farm

The second part of our visit to the Pima County Extension office was a tour of the Tucson Village Farm.  Tucson Village Farm is a working urban farm built by and for the youth of Pima County.  The farm is overseen by the Pima County 4-H office and offers a number of different programs.  Our visit coincided with the Growing Forward program, in which 100 youth visit the farm every Tuesday and Thursday all year round.  Two Tucson schools, Miles Exploratory Learning Center and Fruchthendler Elementary were visiting while we were there.

The cow milking station

The Growing Forward program is very interactive and aims at connecting the visiting students with agriculture.  The students cycle through a number of stations, each of which shows them a different piece of the food production puzzle.  At various stations they'll learn about food production, building healthy soils, composting, vermiculture, nutrition, pollination, and more. There are also stations where the children watch a cooking demonstraion, milk a replica cow, and move around and be physically active.  Other programs at the farm include the Digging Deeper Middle and High School Service Learning program, and Family Fun Fridays,which offers farm activities, a family friendly movie, and popcorn made from corn grown on the farm.

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Tucson Village Farm is funded through grants, donations, and the $4 per child charge for Growing Forward program and also relies heavily on volunteers. I was very impressed by how many people throughout Tucson supported the farm, and it's a testament to how good the programs at Tucson Village Farm are that so many want to be part of it.  As just one example, students at the University of Arizona (in I believe the Graphic Arts department) made signs for a number of vegetables grown within the farm that are colorful, descriptive and contain a QR code, which when scanned takes you to a recipe highlighting that vegetable on the Tucson Village Farm website.  Try it if you're phone has a QR app, or just click here.  

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I was also impressed by how every part of the program we saw had an educational component and everything was connected together.  For instance, after the students handled the worms, they had to be sure to clean their hands before going to the next station, where they'd be making popcorn.  Because water is scarce in Arizona and particularly important to the function of the farm.  Tucson Village Farm managed to turn this in a teaching opportunity by building a handwashing station with a drainage basin.  Water collects in the bottom of the basin and is diverted through a pipe to the fruit tree section, so each time a group of students wash their hands, which is 8 times per day every Tuesday and Thursday, the fruit trees get a 1-2 minute long watering through their drip irrigation system.

It was also interesting how the farm incorporated local culture.  After receiving some grant money, a mural was built on the farm, depicting skeletons breaking open a pinata containing fruits and vegetables instead of candy.  The skeletons are a reference to the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) holiday, which celebrates and honors the dead.  It is an important holiday in Mexican cultures, observed on November 1st.  Each year Tucson celebrates Dia de los muertos with the All Souls street processional, an event where anyone can participate as a means to honor their deceased loved ones.  The fruits and vegetables in the pinata in this mural are meant to show a healthy alternative to the candy that would normally be inside.  I walked away from Tucson Village Farm very impressed by the thought and effort that went into all parts of the farm and its operation.

A close up of a section of the Dia de los Muertos mural, giving bilingual recommendations for healthy eating.

Pima County Cooperative Extension

After spending Wednesday with the Santa Cruz County Extension staff, we began Thursday by heading to the Pima County Extension office.  Pima County is the county that houses Tucson, and the extension office was only about a ten minute drive from where we have been staying.  Along the way we passed by the campus of the University of Arizona as well as their animal research farm.  At the Extension office, we had two separate tours.  The first was a tour of the Master Gardener demonstration gardens.  Pima County has over 150 Master Gardner volunteers, and each one volunteers on a committee to manage one section of the demonstration garden.  This includes a rose garden, a raised bed vegetable garden, a desert garden, a pollinator garden, a basin vegetable garden, and much more.

We saw several interesting things on the tour, as the plant life in Arizona is naturally quite different than what we have in North Carolina.  The most interesting thing to me, from a production side, was how they grow vegetables.  In Arizona, the soil is very sandy, the climate is hot and dry, and the natural soil pH is between 7 and 8.5.  Obviously, it is very difficult to grow vegetables in those conditions.  Raised bed gardening allows users to use compost or potting mixes rather than soil, not unlike the Square Foot Gardening method I talked so much about last week.

 
But what if you prefer to grow vegetables in the ground?  The basin gardens show how that is possible.  In these areas, the soil for the beds is dug out to a depth of 2 feet.  A small portion of this soil is mixed with compost and returned to the beds and the remaining soil is mounded up around the edge of the garden to create a berm.  This provides the vegetables with a better soil media to grow in, while also helping to direct water to the gardens and retain it there when it rains.  Rains are very infrequent here, other than in the monsoon season late in the summer, so gardeners in Arizona must practice water conservation.  At the demonstration gardens, the rain water from the roofs of the buildings is directed to cisterns and used to irrigate all the plants within the gardens (except the vegetables).


I was also quite interested botanically in the plants that I didn't recognize; those that we can't grow in North Carolina.  Many of these were various types of cactus, agave, palm, yucca, and other desert plants.  I took particular interest in the cactus collection.  I can't tell you much about any of these varieties but I wanted to share an assortment of pictures with you so you can see the diversity in this group of plants.  We often think of a cactus as the single straight stem with two arms, when they really come in many different forms.

The young pads of the Nopalitos cactus (Opuntia ficus-indica)are called Nopales. They are edible and are often cooked with eggs and jalapenos

Trichocereus hybrid

Golden barrel cactus (Echinocactus grusonii)

Fishhook barrel cactus (Ferocactus colvillei)

Mexican fence post (Pachycereus marginatus)

Octopus cactus (Stenocereus alamosensis)

Argentine saguaro (Echinopsis tersheckii)

Close up of the spines on the Argentine saguaro

San Pedro cactus (Cereus pachynoi)

Night blooming cereus (Trichocereus sp)

Pine Cone Cactus (Tephrocactus articulatus)

Giant saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea)

 I'm finding that this trip is keeping us so busy there's no as much time to write about as I hoped, but in my next post I'll share about the second part of our tour, the Tucson Village Farm.

The Two Nogaleses

The United States/Mexico border wall in Nogales

My trip to Arizona started Tuesday at 3:30 AM, but didn't really get going until Wednesday.  Tuesday was the travel day which meant getting up very early, spending a lot of time in a car, and then much, much more time in an airplane, being slammed with a three-hour time change, and then finally a few hours of rest and recovery.  I didn't have as bad a time as some in our group (one member had his flight delayed by 8 hours); in fact, I had pretty great luck as I was originally supposed to have 3 connecting flights (Raleigh to Miami to Dallas Fort Worth to Tucson), but due to an issue with one of my planes I was rerouted to go from Raleigh directly to Dallas and then Tucson.  With one of my connections eliminated and my departure time essentially the same, I ended up in Tucson four hours ahead of schedule, which was great.  Except with no transportation, and none of the rest of my group there quite so early, it didn't leave me much to do.  So I caught up on some sleep and then shared dinner with the rest of the group later in the evening.

The purpose of this trip is twofold: 1) for our group of extension agents to see some of the work that Arizona Cooperative Extension has done in creating educational programs for Latino audiences so that we can better serve this growing population in North Carolina, and 2) to better understand issues that Latinos face before, during, and after migrating to the United States.  Immigration is a hot-button political issue of course, and I'll try to avoid the overt politics of it as much as possible, but I do want to share what I am seeing and doing here.  Of course, I'm also interested in the plant life here in this very different part of the country, so I'll try to share some of the interesting  things I see growing here as well.

The view of Nogales, Mexico from Nogales, Arizona

Today we went to the Santa Cruz County Cooperative Extension office in Nogales, Arizona.  Nogales is a city directly on the border of Arizona and Mexico, and the border wall that separates the countries is visible from the Santa Cruz office.  On one side of the wall is Nogales, Arizona, population 20,000 (94% Hispanic) and on the other side is Nogales, Mexico, with a population close to a quarter of a million people.  Because of the racial makeup of the County (Santa Cruz as a whole is 80% Hispanic), Santa Cruz County Extension programs are targeted heavily towards the Hispanic audience.  We visited at the Nogales Family Resource Center, an early childhood education center funded by First Things First, a program similar to Smart Start, and directed by Cooperative Extension.  We met with several mothers who have young children in the program and from them we heard many stories about their  experiences at the Center and the differences in life and education between the United States and Mexico.

Our group, along with Dean from Santa Fe Ranch and Darcy from Santa Cruz County Cooperative Extension 

A selection of low desert plants in the Desert Garden

After that we went to the Santa Fe Ranch just outside of Nogales.  Santa Fe Ranch is an operating cattle ranch that also serves as a non-profit educationally facility.  There we had a fantastic carne asada lunch, which was a welcome treat as the facility where our group is staying serves only vegetarian food.  After lunch, we were given a tour of the facility by Dean Fish, a former Extension Livestock and 4-H agent who now works on the ranch.  Dean showed us their Desert Garden, a cooperative project with the local Soil
and Water Conservation District.  The garden is aimed at showing residents appropriate plants to use in various types of landscapes.  Arizona is of course very hot and dry, with sandy soil, so it is very difficult to grow what we in North Carolina would think of as "traditional" landscape plants,  Instead the Desert Garden highlighted various types of cactus, ornamental grass, and agaves, among others.

A horse on the ranch amidst velvet mesquite trees

Santa Fe Ranch has a bird sanctuary, a butterfly and hummingbird garden, a farm animal exhibit and more.  They host youth groups in an attempt to connect children to various aspects of agriculture.  Dean also told us of a project he does with eighth grade students each year where they grow, market, and sell pumpkins in order to provide a model of a farm business.  One of the interesting things I learned at the ranch was about the Velvet mesquite (Prosposi velutina) trees.  These trees are everywhere in Arizona, and at this time of the year they really look like they are dead from afar.  Many trees, like cottonwoods and desert willow, are just beginning to leaf out, and the ragged mesquite trees stand out in contrast.  It turns out that they are not dead however, but because they grow in the harshest desert soils, in areas that are unirrigated, it takes them longer to leaf out each year then other trees in the area.  This despite the fact that these trees have a massive root system which can reach down as far as fifty feet into the soil to collect water.

View of the U.S.-Mexico border from the Nogales Burger King 

Our day ended with a trek back into Nogales.  We parked in a Burger King parking lot less than a mile from the Extension office we started our day at.  From there we had a great view of the border wall on the hills of Nogales, and just a two block walk to a section of the wall.  The wall is made from 20 foot high steel beams, and is really more of a fence then a wall, per se, as there is about 6 inches between each beam. You can see through it, stick your arm through it, or pass a note or toss a baseball to someone on the other side if you wanted. From our vantage point we could see buses waiting in line for the border crossing checkpoint
through the wall, and actually had a short chat with one bus driver and his passenger.  Had the wall not been there, nothing else would have clearly delineated Nogales, Arizona from Nogales, Mexico, as the two neighboring cities share similar architecture and design.

Border checkpoint between Nogales and Tucson

On the way home we passed by the distribution area where a large majority of the produce shipped from Mexico is first brought into the United States.  We were told that at some points of the year, roughly 90% of the produce sold in United States grocery stores has passed through these distribution centers.  Shortly after passing the distribution area, we were stopped at a border patrol checkpoint.  This was about 20 miles north of the wall we had just seen and touched.  I say this to point out that while there is a physical and geographical border at a fixed location between Arizona and Mexico, the concept of the border extends far beyond that fixed line and the distinction between one country and the next  is not as distinct as many would imagine it to be.  The landscape, culture, and language blends in so much that it doesn't quite seem obvious that you are in the United States rather than Mexico. Highway 19 has kilometer markers rather than mile markers, for example, and while the highway signs are in English, many of the businesses and landmarks have Spanish names. Until you see the border patrol checkpoint, or the border patrol vehicles that have someone pulled over, at which point it becomes clear that this is the United States.  At the checkpoint, the border patrol agent asked if we were all American citizens, we responded that we were, and we were sent on our way in less than 15 seconds. He even joked that he was glad that we were, because with 12 of us in the van it would be a lot of documents for him to check if someone had said no.  On Monday we will travel into Nogales, Mexico and spend a day there touring a Mexican industrial park, conversing with local families, and visiting a community center.  Because we'll actually be crossing the border there, our experience with border patrol upon returning will likely be a bit more rigorous.

Different Ways to Grow Your Vegetables

My Gardening Tips article in Friday's Roanoke Rapids Daily Herald brings Square Foot Gardening Week to a close with a look at a few other ideas for gardening in small spaces.

Different Ways to Grow Your Vegetables

What's in your square?

There's even more coverage of the Square Foot Symposium in today's Roanoke Rapids Daily Herald.  Thanks to Donna Clements for spending some time with us on Saturday and sharing her unique perspective on the symposium! Please be sure to read her thoughtful article- Word Pearls: Square Foot Gardening Benefits

This week seems to have turned into Square Foot Gardening week here at the blog, much like the week before turned in to Crape Myrtle week.  Next week I'll be traveling with a group of Extension employees to Arizona and Mexico on a Hispanic Cultural Immersion trip, so I imagine next week's posts will have a consistent theme as well.  Our trip will see us meet with a number of organizations that work with Hispanic communities on issues such as immigration as well as meet with Extension personnel in Arizona to see how Extension provides programming for Hispanic audiences.  I hope that I have enough free time to take in some of the Southwestern landscape, in addition to the food and culture we'll be enjoying.

One last note to finish Square Foot Gardening week: During the symposium we were each asked to give a 1-2 minute presentation on Square Foot Gardening in front of the class.  Some performed songs that they wrote about Square Foot Gardening, some gave elevator speeches, some simulated teaching Square Foot Gardening to an elementary school class, and others talked about why eating fresh vegetables was better than eating chicken pot pie.  For my two minutes, I wrote and shared what I guess you would call a free-form poem:

Square Foot Gardening

Gardening in a square, not a row

What's in your square?

Anything you choose

Warm season or cool

Short or tall

Big or small

All the harvest you want with 

no digging, 

no thinning, 

and no weeds-

well maybe just a few

but fewer than you're used to

Less space

Less time

Less money

Less labor

Less headache

Less heartache

Less backache

Square Foot Gardening

Gardening in a square

What's in your square?

More SFG Sympoium Coverage

Via the Roanoke Rapids Daily Herald, here is a bit more on last week's Square Foot Gardening Symposium: http://www.rrdailyherald.com/news/square-foot-gardening-comes-to-halifax/article_0f1a84b8-9629-11e2-b1e6-0019bb2963f4.html

Roanoke Valley Master Gardeners Host Square Foot Gardening Symposium

28 Newly Certified Square Foot Gardening Instructors (photo courtesy of Betty Bianconi)

Many of us love to garden and love fresh vegetables, but don't have the space to grow a traditional row garden.  Or maybe we have the space, but our soil is bad and nothing ever seems to grow in it.  Maybe it's rocky, or sandy, or nothing but clay and never drains.  Or maybe you're sick of dealing with weeds and are looking for a way to get keep them down.  Gardeners in such situations might have success using the Square Foot Gardening method.

This past weekend, the Roanoke Valley Master Gardeners hosted a 3-day Square Foot Gardening (SFG) symposium, where interested gardeners learned the benefits of this gardening method and how to build and manage these types of gardens.  I was very proud of our Master Gardeners for all the hard work they put into organizing and hosting this training.  We were surprised and honored to have attendees from not only Halifax County and other parts of the state, but from South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Illinois and Missouri as well.  I want to offer special thank yous to Master Gardener Betty Bianconi, who first had the idea of hosting the symposium and did all the legwork of arranging the symposium through the Square Foot Gardening Foundation, and to the Master Gardeners who helped plan, cook, and clean for this successful three-day event.  

Our symposium instructor and Square Foot Gardening Foundation CEO Victoria Boudman (center), her daughter Grace (left), and Master Gardener Betty Bianconi (right)

Getting started

The square foot garden method, developed by author and engineer Mel Bartholomew, is based on gardening in raised bed squares rather than rows in order to cut down on the space required to garden and eliminate the need for digging.  The basic square foot garden design is a 4 foot by 4 foot box, with a depth of 6 inches.  A grid separates the box into 16  one-foot by one-foot squares.  Within each square, you plant your vegetables.

Laying the grid

Depending on the type of vegetable you plant in each square, you may plant 1, 4, 9 or 16 of that particular plant.  For plants that grow to a large size, such as tomatoes, you'd only plant 1 per square (anymore than 1 and the plants wouldn't have enough room to grow), but for very small plants such as carrots, you'd plant 16 per square.  The beds are filled with a modified potting mix composed of 1/3 blended compost, 1/3 peat moss, and 1/3 coarse vermiculite, referred to in SFG literature as Mel's Mix.  Gardens can be built in a variety of sizes, but never wider then four feet to allow the garden to be accessible from all sides.

Victoria, Karen, and Wayne hang the trellis

Karen planting the last few onion bulbs

During the symposium, we built and planted a 4' x 4' square at the Halifax Agricultural Center.  The box that we planted during the symposium has cool season vegetables in, including garden peas, onions, broccoli, swiss chard, and leaf lettuce.  Some of these were planted a bit later than optimal, but we hope to be able to harvest them before the warm weather completely takes over.  In terms of planting arrangement, we set the broccoli in the four center squares, because it will ultimately be the largest of all the items planted, and we put garden peas along the back row so that they can climb the trellis.  The trellis was placed along the North side of the bed so it won't shade the remainder of the garden.  The remaining plants were set in the outside squares.  The broccoli and lettuce were planted by transplants, all others were seeded.

Our Master Gardeners have been working for over a year to recover what was formerly called the memorial garden and develop it into a demonstration garden.  We hope to use this demonstration garden to expose gardeners to new types of plants and planting systems that they can use at home.  We decided to tie the first phase of planting the garden into the SFG symposium and we will do additional square foot boxes in the coming weeks.  Our plan for this section is to grow a variety of different vegetables, both cool season and warm season, and also experiment with different soil mixes within the boxes.  I'm interested to see how Mel's Mix compares to other potting mixes or even straight compost in terms of plant performance.  Once the square foot section is established, we'll begin on our herb garden and our shade garden.  Additional sections will be added to the garden in following years.

Our new square foot garden and the Roanoke Valley Master Gardeners who helped plant it (photo by Betty Bianconi)

Check back as I'll be posting updates every few weeks, both of the square foot gardens specifically and the demonstration garden as a whole as it begins to take shape.