Thanks to Rebecca Bloomfield for this guest post. Rebecca is an alumni of the Adamah program and a garden teacher at The Edible Schoolyard, a program of the Chez Panisse Foundation and founded by Alice Waters.

The highlight of my week this week involved watching two of my students fight. Dodging the carefully-cultivated garden beds, one student ran after another. I hurdled over the strawberry patch to intercept the pursuer and was met by a stern pout that melted into a grin with the words, “she stole my snow peas.” I heard giggling and crunching behind me as the winded friend approached us both, handing us the peas. We snacked and returned to harvesting.

The Edible Schoolyard, in Berkeley, CA, is a force of healing and transformation for middle school students. As children turn soil, plant seeds, harvest produce, and build compost piles, they deepen their connection to food. As the garden transforms, so do the students. It is a space for things to change from that which is to that which can be: seed to sprout, compost to fertile soil, flower to fruit. Like the Mishkan that the Jews were commanded to build during the Exodus, the garden is a sacred space where a divine presence dwells. School gardens the nation over provide space for children to learn that they have choices when it comes to their food, their bodies, and their environment: things do not have to be the way they currently are.

The large-scale implications of a one-acre school garden are not so apparent to the students. They have learned to look far enough into the future to anticipate the harvest of a ripe fruit, but not to the harvest of healthier communities and localized food systems. For now, their lessons are small: Tomatoes aren’t only red: some are green, purple, yellow and orange, too. Cauliflower can be purple, and one kind grows in spirals. Corn leaves make beautiful music when the wind blows through them. Winter squash grows in the summer.

It is this delicate balance between what is and what can be that fuels me every day. The potential in every seed and student has brought and kept my heart into this work. The garden comes to life with the students; it is the breath of a world to come.