Hello from Montana!

We are starting this blog to document our summer in Somers, Montana. We are here to build a garden at the Somers Middle School to grow food for the cafeteria and provide an outdoor classroom for the students. Who are we, you ask?

Jean Schwartz is from San Clemente, CA and graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts in 2009. She quickly put her film degree to good use, first moving to Austin, TX then living on a homestead outside of Sebastopol, CA. She loves plants.

Tory Elmore is from Somers, NY and a rising Junior at Brown University where she is working toward a degree in Environmental Science. She spent Christmas break working on an Organic farm outside of Quito, Ecuador and has done urban gardening at a small settlement house in downtown Providence, RI.

We are volunteering through Americorps VISTA as Summer Associates in coordination with the Montana FoodCorps and Montana Campus Compact.

We arrived in Somers the second week of June and will be living here until our project concludes on August 13.

We are excited to document our experiences building this garden from the ground up and getting to know the community here in Somers. We are also excited to explore the Flathead Lake area and all of the natural wonders it has to offer.


Here's a picture of Flathead Lake and Somers from the Outlook Inn B&B, our home-away-from-home for the summer: