VSU’s Urban Agriculture Program Assistant Makes Community Connections Through Partnerships, Innovation, and a Little Dirt
Rachel Lawmaster with local Petersburg students.
First thing in the morning, you can find Rachel Lawmaster caring for rabbits and working with greenhouse plants. The rest of her day might include more farm work, office work, or hosting a weekly program at the Petersburg Boys and Girls Club to introduce students to agriculture (her favorite day of the week). Lawmaster is Virginia State University (VSU)'s Program Assistant for the Urban Agriculture program, and she combines passion, commitment and a broad array of outreach efforts to impact her community positively.
With her expertise and professional ease on the farm, you might guess Lawmaster spent her entire life in agriculture. While she did not grow up on a farm, her connection to nature and science helped lay the foundation for her future work. After spending a year working at the Southern Piedmont Agricultural Research and Extension Center (SPAREC), Lawmaster changed her area of focus from Horticulture to Agronomy at Virginia Tech and took a position as a farm manager for a farm-to-table catering company. "I enjoyed working with Extension and then gained a new appreciation for it as a producer," says Lawmaster. "I wouldn't have been as successful without help from my local Extension agent and team." With this appreciation in mind and after seeing the positive impact of community gardens in Richmond, Lawmaster joined the Urban Ag program at VSU.
Today, Lawmaster has her hands full with different programs and initiatives to connect with the community through agriculture and food. She works with schools and community organizations to establish gardens. To ensure their long-term viability and success, she helps leadership determine a garden plan, design, and budget and walks them through the garden creation process. Lawmaster is always available to follow up with educational workshops to teach people skills to maintain gardens.
One of her most cherished partnerships is with the Justin J. Davis Heart Foundation, founded by local community health champion Karen Brown-Davis. Her foundation focuses on educating the community about healthy lifestyles and positive health outcomes and providing free produce to the community through outreach events and the local Ettrick Refrigerator. "In the first year of our partnership, we donated over 1,000 pounds of fresh organic produce from VSU's gardens," Lawmaster recalls. "The next season, we donated over 800 pounds of all-naturally grown produce and almost 500 pounds of hydroponic lettuce," she says. Lawmaster is inspired by Brown-Davis, and together, they're setting goals to grow their impact. "Our goal is to open more community refrigerators, contribute to the student refrigerator on campus and donate to local food banks again," says Lawmaster. In time, she hopes to create more community gardens to sustain donations to the foundation and other food banks.
Rachel Lawmaster at the Youth Fair.
On her favorite day of the week, Lawmaster runs the "Dig N2 Ag" program with the Petersburg Boys and Girls Club. What started as a monthly program has evolved into a weekly opportunity for students to explore food production, career opportunities and environmental aspects of agriculture. Through education and self-discovery, students expand their understanding of food systems and their capacity to get involved in food production. Lawmaster will help install a new garden at the middle school for programming opportunities and was excited to host students at VSU's Randolph Farm this past summer. "For many students, it was their first time on a farm," she says. Students saw a working farm, different production systems and participated in rewarding activities like harvesting berries and making smoothies on VSU's Blender Bikes.
"It's great to watch youth experience new things," says Lawmaster. "Usually, in a new group, no one wants to get dirty and they freak out about bugs. But by the end of the day, we are competing for who has the dirtiest hands and students are catching bugs." These moments of connecting students to the earth, community activists who approach her for opportunities to reach more people and her fellow Extension colleagues inspire Lawmaster to continue and grow her work. "I get to see the impact on the community when we work and come together to achieve great things," she says. "It just strengthens the community."
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