GRuB (Garden Raised Bounty) is a non-profit organization that works in Thurston and Mason counties in Washington State to inspire positive personal and community change by bringing people together around food and agriculture.
GRuB partners with youth and people with low-incomes to create empowering individual and community food solutions. They do this by offering tools and trainings to help build a just and sustainable food system.
GRuB’s programs and projects are not only effective in storing biocarbon today through building carbon rich soils, they’re also educating youth and others about how to sustainably grow their own food, thus encouraging biocarbon storage for future generations as well. Through their GRuB in the Schools Initiative, disengaged and/or low-income students earn credits while learning about and contributing to their local food systems. They focus on the themes of personal development, sustainable land stewardship, and civic engagement and community service. GRuB also engages preK-12 youth in hands-on learning about soil, plants, food, and community through field trips to their farm. This helps them to explore the question, “Where does our food come from?” In doing so, the children learn about why it is important to eat sustainably grown food.
GRuB also partners with lower-income people to create projects that increase access to healthy food. Since 1993, they have worked alongside volunteers and gardeners to build more than 2,500 backyard and community gardens, host workshops, and provide support, training, and resources for new gardeners to find success. GRuB’s goal is for gardeners to build the skills and connections to organize good food projects in their own neighborhoods.
An avid gardener previously owned the 2-acre parcel of land that GRuB began leasing 1999 and purchased in 2008 to become the GRuB Farm. Since then, their work has served to preserve a historical piece of urban farmland that might otherwise have been sold off and subdivided into a housing development. At the farm, GRuB utilizes sustainable farming practices that help to increase the amount of biocarbon in the soil. They produce their own compost for use on the farm and teach workshops on composting to students in their programs. They also practice crop rotation, which allows for soils to recover after each season. They carefully manage the organic soil amendments that they use to keep the soil healthy, alive and carbon-rich.
As a food-growing organization, GRuB gives thanks to indigenous peoples worldwide who for thousands of years have been the stewards of the seeds that become the food and medicines that nourish all of us. They hope that their work honors the Squaxin Tribe, on whose land the GRuB Farm now sits.
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