Soil Kitchen report by Rachel Kobasa ’13
Monday, April 11th, 2011 by Helen WhiteNever in my life have I received an email containing the words pedosphere, nitrogen cycle, or pH. Who knew soil was so complicated? I had signed up to volunteer at the Soil Kitchen, but maybe I had gotten myself in over my head. With this in mind, I was unsure of what to expect when I arrived on Wednesday. I had read about the Soil Kitchen on a few blogs and gone over their website, but nothing is ever real until you are actually there.
The Soil Kitchen was very easy to spot: seeing a giant windmill on top of a building isn’t common. When I walked into the storefront, I was presented with a transformed space, or what I can only imagine was transformed from its original, abandoned state. (I was told that nothing had occupied this storefront since 2005.) There were tables in the corner where a man in a lab coat was talking about soil. Soup was being served. People sat on benches eating and talking. And covering every available window ledge and shelf were bags of different soil!
After a brief lesson, I was given a handmade apron to wear and I assumed position near the front door, welcoming people as they came in. Some people brought in soil samples. This was good and bad, seeing as of the day before, there had been so many soil samples brought in (good!) that the EPA had to stop accepting them for heavy metal testing (bad.) People could still have the pH and acidity of their soil tested, which is informative in regards to what kind of plants will grow well in the soil.
Some people came by to collect the results from the EPA testing. I was taught how to read them with some basic sense of what they meant. They had tested soil for cadmium, arsenic, and lead. Most people who came to pick up samples had non-detectable levels of cadmium and arsenic, and surprisingly a fair number of them also had very low levels of lead. However, there were a few people who had lead levels that were high enough to cause some furrowed brows, so we sent them over to an expert on site who talked to them about ways they could combat the lead poisoning their soil. It seemed that even through the disappointment people were generally happy to know what was in their soil and so they had a better understanding of what was safe to grow.
My favorite part about telling people the results of their soil testing was hearing what they wanted to do with the space they had taken the soil from. One man said he had this very old, historic lot that was overgrown and needed some love. So they wanted to transform it and plant things and make it a space for people to inhabit. Other people talked about planting flowers. Some people wanted to grow herbs. And seeing such a range of different people was fantastic. They were old and young. Some had families and some came alone. Some spoke English and others spoke another language so used a family member to translate.
This is when I realized how important a place like the Soil Kitchen is. Here is a space that was created as a solution to an issue: people want to grow things in their gardens and being city soil, there is a higher chance for contaminants to be present. So they want their soil tested! Soil Kitchen created a centralized location where people could bring soil, be educated, eat some good food, and even attend workshops about varied topics such as windmill making or how to compost. It was fantastic to look around and see how everyone was brought together because they all cared in some way about their soil and growing. They could come from vastly different neighborhoods in Philadelphia but it didn’t matter. It was sad to tell people that this was the last day the Soil Kitchen would exist, but it made me imagine all the other possible projects that could be completed in the future, combining arts, science, food, and community.
