Essay for Grad School Part 1

For your reading pleasure, I am posting the essay I wrote for my grad school application to Chatham’s Food Studies program. Haven’t heard yet, but I’ll let you know!

About Me

My name is Shelly Danko+Day and I moved to Pittsburgh 21 years ago. I’ve been married to my husband Brett for over 15 years, I have a BFA from Slippery Rock University and I love gardening. I’ve been looking for work for over a year, and most of the jobs I’m seeing don’t entirely appeal to me, although I have applied for many. When I saw Chatham’s ad about the new Food Studies program, something just clicked in me. It’s a passion that I have not recognized until recently and I’m very excited about the possibilities!

I feel connected to the past, my past and the future through agriculture … planting, growing, nurturing and harvesting are all major parts of my life. It wasn’t until recently that I realized it has always been a large part of my life. Even when I didn’t notice, gardening was influencing me. From one end of the US to the other I was affected by nature in ways that shaped who I am today. It’s hard to imagine a time when I wasn’t growing something but there were many years when I was disconnected from it. Now I am fully engaged in homesteading activities. I raise chickens, have a small home garden where we grow herbs and tomatoes, and I’m a key member of Mildred’s Daughters Urban Farm working group in Stanton Heights.

First Dig

Until I was 10, my family lived in a small town in northeastern PA. I was a pretty intense kid and in addition to spending large chunks of time watching the minute hand on a clock move or staring at the sun as it slowly disappeared behind the hill, I spent countless hours playing in the un-planted areas of our garden. A favorite thing for my sister and me to do was dig for worms in the spring. We would go out with flashlights and get the juiciest night crawlers for my dad to take fishing.

One of my first memories was of picking scallions; they were the first things to come up in the spring. We also grew potatoes, carrots and garlic, and our neighbor had a big old rhubarb plant. My father made sauerkraut in a huge wooden barrel, and once he ground his own horseradish by hand.

Green Granny

Both my grandmothers had gardens, too, and were very green by today’s standards. My Grandma Morley was always doing “crazy” things like throwing coffee grounds on her plants and saving her food scraps and paper in a milk carton on the sink…even tissues! She had a makeshift rain barrel, and she saved her bath water to flush the toilet! My favorite food at Grandma’s was macaroni and tomatoes made with elbow macaroni and canned tomatoes from her garden…she made special batches without seeds just for me.