Our Hoop House interns have been busy bees this spring between hosting awesome events, supporting the young sprouts, and spreading knowledge!

In Week 7, the Hoop House hosted an anthotype event, where sunlight is used to print images. People brought in fabric or paper they wanted to spruce up, painted it with a turmeric mix, and got creative with plants and objects from the Hoop House to design stunning prints! The prints then developed under the sun and sat for a couple days before the Hoop House interns developed them with baking soda and water to make the art come alive. The Hoop House also provided delicious yogurt bowls. Check out what people created!

The Hoop House also did a collaboration with the Bike Co-op at K during Week 8 to visit local gardens around Kalamazoo and get active outside. Outdoor Programs generously provided bikes for people to use if they didn’t have their own, and the bikers explored K’s green spaces and community gardens. Week 8 also featured an event with SPEAK from the Health and Counseling Services Center where students came to paint rocks, do puzzles, and enjoy chips & dip. If you’re interested in collaborating with the Hoop House in the fall, please reach out to us at environmentalstewardship@kzoo.edu. The Hoop House also supported Groove Grove this week by providing craft supplies, musical talent, and of course, their smiling faces.

The Hoop House has also been a source of learning this spring. The Composting PE class came to hear from Lee Arbogast and the Hoop House interns about the importance of composting in the cultivating process and how the nutrient recycling sustains the land. The new CES-100 class, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), has also been spending many mornings learning from the land they are tending to and exploring themes of land and food sovereignty, ecofeminism, and Indigenous responses to climate change. Alongside the TEK class, CES-300 course, Body, Land, and Labor, helped sort seeds and prepare for the Cultivation Ceremony in Week 8. The Cultivation Ceremony was led by CES professor, Dr. Cyndy Garcia-Weyandt, and the Hoop House interns. Together with help from students, they prepared food from tomatoes, strawberries, and corn harvested from the Hoop House and set up an altar to give offerings to the Mother Corn. This ceremony is intended to give back to the land in a reciprocal and respectful way, as well as build connection with the plants that sustain us by regarding them as living relatives. Students listened to a Wixárika elder give blessings, gave offerings and wish candles to the seeds, and then ate the food they prepared together.

Another exciting update from the Hoop was the tarp rewrapping last Friday! The Hoop House hasn’t had a new tarp since its construction in 2018 and it ought to get rewrapped every few years in order to run optimally because the tarp that protects and regulates the Hoop gets weathered, cut up, dirty, and cloudier, which lets in less sunlight for our growing plants. The rewrapping was a celebration of the Hoop House and past students that helped it come to life and left behind something for future K students like us. It was also a gift to the future students that will come to care for this space and learn from it. Many hands made light work and we are so grateful to all the volunteers that came and made it possible! The rewrapping featured some talented K student musicians, an impromptu slip n’ slide, a circle of benedictions, and lots of laughter.

As 10th week comes to a close, we encourage you to decompress by dropping in during our open hours every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday between 4:30-6pm, which will continue until the end of finals week!

Larry J. Bell ’80 Environmental Stewardship Center

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