By JEFF CLEMETSON | La Mesa Courier
Trish Watlington has always held a passion for gardening and farming.
“I grew up in a farming community. In fact, I consider myself more of a small farmer than a gardener,” she said. “The ability to put tiny seeds in the ground and feed our family and community in a healthy and environmentally responsible way is extremely important to me. It’s my ‘why.’”
The Maryland native spent 17 years as a family therapist after studying psychology at the University of Rochester and then a masters program at the University of Maryland. After working in Maryland and Indiana, Watlington moved to La Mesa in 1997.
For the last year, Watlington has worked as chair of the Olivewood Gardens & Learning Center where she is advancing efforts to provide high quality garden and nutrition education to San Diego families in need. She also leads Farm to Fork San Diego, a community-based organization that supports local farmers, fishermen and the businesses that support them.
La Mesa Courier recently caught up with Watlington to learn more about this community Difference Maker:
Tell us about Olivewood? What does the organization do?
Olivewood is a historic 6.85-acre property in National City serves as an interactive, indoor-outdoor classroom for children and adults from around San Diego County. Our purpose is to build healthy families and a healthy environment. We do this through science based environmental education lessons, hands-on gardening, and hands-on cooking for students and families from underserved communities.
What is the Cooking for Salud program? What is your role?
This eight-week intensive adult education program empowers adults to transform their kitchen into a healthy food zone. It’s more than just a cooking class; this program focuses on building individual and community capacity for health through nutrition education, healthy cooking, and leadership development.
With the expertise and guidance of local chefs and community partners, our participants explore techniques for preparing flavorful vegetables, healthy salad dressings and sauces, whole grains, lean meats and meat alternatives, and healthy cultural dishes. They also identify strategies to involve children in healthy cooking and acquire basic nutrition knowledge.
I love to celebrate all Cooking for Salud graduates and welcome them into, what we call, the Kitchenistas community. And as Olivewood’s board chair, I work to guide and support our team at-large, spread the word on the work we are doing in the community, and help raise funds to someday expand our garden programming for unserved communities in San Diego.
What is Farm to Fork San Diego? What is your role there?
Farm to Fork San Diego is a membership organization that promotes and supports farmers, fishing families and the San Diego restaurants and other businesses that support them. Farm to Fork San Diego sponsors San Diego Farm to Fork Week in September which is intended to raise the profile of San Diego County food agriculture and the restaurants, chefs, wineries and breweries that support it. Farmers, Chefs and Fishermen, a local tasting event, will kick off Farm to Fork Week on Sunday Sept. 13, 2020. I am the founder and CEO.
Being a La Mesa resident, are you involved with the MacArthur Park community garden that is being planned right now?
I am not involved with that, but would very much like to connect with that project and help if I could.
— Reach editor Jeff Clemetson at [email protected].
