Michael Frank | Clear Dot Charter School | Columbia SC

I am a teacher of Spanish and organic gardening who has kept a school garden for nearly a decade now. I’ve been a lifelong gardener and decided in 2012 to bring my love of nature and the knowledge and skills I’ve gathered over the years to the young people I teach in the hopes of introducing them to life sciences and influencing their nutritional choices. Since moving to my current school, a charter school with a focus on farm to table eating and environmental awareness, I’ve had more opportunities to grow on a larger scale and have the produce my students and I grow served to them in their lunches. I have always saved seeds, but with the expansion of our school coming up in a year or two, I will be able to do more of this since I will be put in charge of a 1.5 acre market garden.

Over the years I have a made connections in the farming community here in the Midlands of SC and become an advocate for small organic farms and food equity and access. A good friend of mine, Jason Roland of Organically Roland Farm in Lexington, SC, showed me a plot of corn and sorghum that he was growing for Sow True Seeds in Asheville, NC. It sparked in me the idea of starting to do contract seed work myself as a way to raise funds to supplement the cost of supplies in our school garden. The previous fall my students had helped me to harvest 1.3 lbs of pure strain kale seeds from our school garden and Jason is now growing it to add to his CSA boxes this spring. I look forward to exploring the possibility of getting involved in seed production further.