Picking Up a New Habit
Morning sunlight spills across gardens of broccoli and tomatoes. Solar panels glisten on the roof. A rooster crows in the yard as Sister Janet Weyker unceremoniously flips a pitchfork-full of wet hay on top of a pile of alpaca poop. "It's inglorious work we do here," she says with a chuckle.
Like most days, this June morning started with chores. Sister Janet collected eggs from the henhouse; fed the dogs, cats, chickens, turkeys, and goats; and cleaned out the alpaca corral -- all before about nine o'clock, when school, civic, and church groups, as well as summer campers and families, began to arrive. Each year, Sister Janet educates more than 5,000 people through ecology-based programs at the Racine Eco Justice Center, a 15-acre working farm in southeastern Wisconsin that operates under the motto "Justice for the earth and all its inhabitants."
In 2000 Sister Janet and others in her Dominican convent -- part of the Catholic order known for its scholarly tradition -- got together to discuss issues of education and social justice that were not being met in schools in Racine, a largely working-class city of 80,000 people in Wisconsin's manufacturing corridor on the shore of Lake Michigan, 33 miles south of Milwaukee and 60 miles north of Chicago. At the time, a nearby coal-fired power plant was planning a billion-dollar expansion, which highlighted the need, in Sister Janet's mind, for students to understand the links between their lives and the environment. Guided by more than 40 years of experience as an educator -- as an art teacher, school principal, and college chaplain -- she proposed creating a community center where children and adults "could spend time with nature and learn to cherish it and love it."
For four years, Sister Janet searched for a place that could provide a hands-on learning experience and also house six nuns. Then one day she received a call from a former county official who had read about her quest in the local newspaper. He told her he had cancer and could no longer maintain his 15-acre farm; he sold the property to Sister Janet and the Dominican sisters at a fraction of its market value.
The 1912 Dutch colonial farmhouse needed renovations and the old barn was falling apart. Now a geothermal system heats and cools the house, and 55 solar panels on the granary heat water and feed kilowatts back to the grid. Countertops were crafted from the floorboards of an old bowling alley and shelves from cut-up church pews. The floors in the farmhouse are red oak recycled from the mansion of a former Milwaukee sausage baron.
On this morning, three cars brimming with families of grade schoolers pull up the dirt road that leads to the center. Sister Janet, clad in knee-high muck boots, black jeans, and a baggy T-shirt, squishes through the wet hay to greet them. They've come to plant vegetables. Together with their parents, the children start by charting square-foot grids across raised garden beds.
Sister Janet watches as one boy digs a shallow hole for a leafy broccoli plant. "Rudy, that little baby's going to blow right over," she says, gently taking the spade. "Now hold that little guy like this," she adds, placing the broccoli in his cupped hands. Dark soil crumbles between his fingertips as he examines the threadlike roots.
Rudy's mother says they have a flower garden at home, but she brings her family here to plant their vegetables because of the sense of community Sister Janet has created. "It's a bond that we share with other families around food. We are grateful for this experience -- to see vegetables grow from the ground and even know what a chicken coop smells like. It's so much more emotionally satisfying than buying things in packages at the supermarket," she says as she knots a bit of nylon rope around a makeshift trellis that will soon support new tomato vines.
"Preach by what you do and how you live," Sister Janet says, reaching for a handful of weeds. "Only use words if you need to."