The As Yet Unnamed Sustainability Project

Four Kino students–Erik, Ethan, Klair, and Tyler – have launched a year-long challenge to themselves: to see if they can grow and produce their own food.
They all got interested in the challenge last year, when Neill Prohaska was teaching Environmental Science. Neill is now going to U of A, working towards masters degrees in both journalism and Latin American studies, but he is still supervising the project.
The four began working on their gardens before school ended last spring. Over the summer, they came up to Kino early in the morning before it got hot (like 5 am) to keep working on them. Limited to food crops that do well in the Tucson climate, they are growing beans, corn, peppers and squash, as well as the more exotic sorghum, amaranth, and panic grass. They are relying as much as possible on rain water from the water harvesting tanks that Harrison built for his senior project last year.
Since their garden is not yet ready for harvest, for the time being they are eating locally produced foods. Neill has a supply of dry corn from his garden; they are making it into hominy. They have teppary beans from Native Seed/ Search, eggs from Hickman’s Ranch, and peppers and okra that they bought at a farmer’s market.
“We started on the first day of school,” said Tyler and Klair. “Erik and Ethan started on the second day.”
”What have they been eating? “Not much,” says Tyler.
They are taking vitamin pills and supplements just to make sure. They’ve also given themselves some major wiggle room: anything that can fit through a straw.
“Ethan called me this weekend and complained that his friends were eating sloppy joes. I was going to joke that he could put some in a blender and drink it, but then I realized that he probably would,” said Neill.
Harley, Emmi and Lela’s father, is providing some loaner hens for eggs as well as givint them some baby chicks. The tilapia tanks, which Ethan is working on, will also be a regular source of protein.
Once they are producing more food, Neill says, they will take another look at the straw exception.
Klair says, “I been feeling more energy since we started. I think it’s the Jamba Juice.”