Farmers can learn sustainability, and kids can try cooking, at new center near Ceres
A new center has launched south of Ceres to teach sustainable farming and healthy eating.
It’s called the SOILS Center, which stands for Stewardship of Irrigated Lands and Soil. The Central Avenue site is the new headquarters of the East Stanislaus Resource Conservation District and has two acres to demonstrate various practices.
The center held an open house Thursday, Sept. 22, to show off the remodeled building. It provides farmers with advice on soil fertility, pest management, water conservation and related topics. Children in the Junior Chefs program will pick produce from the six large planting boxes and learn cooking at the onsite kitchen.
“It just gives us more opportunities than we had before,” said district board chairman Mike Passalaqua, who grows hay west of Modesto.
Office hours have not yet been set at the new office, where Central intersects with Keyes Road.
The district serves a 968-square-mile zone east of the San Joaquin River. It had been based at the Stanislaus County Agricultural Center, off Crows Landing Road west of Ceres.
Executive Director Trina Walley said the new site provides more room for the 12-member staff. A few will remain at the old digs to be close to local employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The new site will serve home gardeners and users of community gardens. The district also promotes local food purchases through the Stanislaus Grown campaign and arranges donations to people in need through the Farm to Pantry program.
The district has partnered on river restoration in the region. And the new site has a hoop house, an enclosed growing area, to produce non-crop plants that diversify the landscape. Everyone at the open house got a free potted milkweed, vital to preserving monarch butterflies around the West.
A shed holds sacks of seeds for the ground cover that farmers can grow between their trees or vines. The practice can reduce erosion and add nutrients to the soil. Some of the cover crops have flowers that attract insects that pollinate crops and eat pests.
Junior Chefs launched in 2016 with a USDA grant to the Modesto Certified Farmers Market. The district last month got $99,948 from the same source to teach 98 fifth- through eighth-graders from the Empire Union School District. It will start in October and run through the academic year.
