History 21 The Podcast - 3.22 Market Garden Youth Program

At 7 am on summer mornings, kids gathered on a lawn in Anoka, waiting to be bused to local farms, ready to help maintain and later harvest crops for the farmers as part of the Market Garden Youth Program. A traveling filmmaker, Robert M Carson, captured images of this program as part of his film “This is Our Town” in 1953. In this podcast episode, we learn more about the documentary, its filmmakers, and the research journey to discover more about this mysterious program for children.

Hosts Rebecca Ebnet Desens, ACHS Executive Director, and Sara Given, ACHS Volunteer Coordinator.

This is Our Town

Market Garden Youth Program

The Vault

• Full video ”This is Our Town” Episode 1

Anoka County Library Minute

Further Reading:

In This is Our Town, the filmmaker highlights the Market Garden Youth program, where youth register to help with local agricultural duties. The film shows the youth tending to the fields and cleaning and packing the crops. While much has changed in how local agriculture operates since the 1950s, its importance and interest have not waned. Listed below are some library resources related to agriculture from multiple perspectives – from farms to food and even homesteading.

• We Are Each Other’s Harvest: celebrating African American farmers, land, and legacy by Natalie Baszile (630 BAS)

• The Dish: the lives and labor behind one plate of food by Andrew Friedman (647.95 FRI)

• The Future of Food by Deborah Koons Garcia (DVD363.192 FUT)

• Ditch the City and Go Country: how to master the art of rural life from a former city dweller by Alissa Hessler (640 HES)

• The Haymakers: a chronicle of five farm families by Steven R. Hoffbeck (633.2085 HOF)

• Homesteading From Scratch: building your self-sufficient homestead, start to finish by Steven Jones (640 JON)

• Letter to a Young Farmer: how to live richly without wealth on the new garden farm by Gene Logsdon (630 LOG)

• More Than a Farm Organization: Farmers Union in Minnesota by Don Muhm (630.6 MUH)

• Farmer John’s Cookbook: the real dirt on vegetables by John Peterson (641.65 PET)

• The Big Marsh: the story of a lost landscape by Cheri Register (333.918 REG)

• Compact Farms: 15 proven plans for market farms on 5 acres or less by Josh Volk (630 VOL)