By Mr. Anglemyer, inmate technician for the SPP Frog and Turtle Program

The dog days of summer have almost gone which means that it is harvest time for some of the vegetables that are growing here at Cedar Creek Corrections Center.

The gardens are tended by inmates and all the food grown goes to the institution’s kitchen for inmates to eat. Broccoli, cabbage, carrots, corn, peppers, lettuce, beans, squash and pumpkins are all being prepared in the kitchen. There’ll even be a small amount of tomatoes and strawberries.

Cedar Creek Gardens Ready to Harvest. Photo by Joslyn Trivett.

Last year inmates grew close to twenty thousand pounds of produce. All this food will never see the inside of a can. It has all been grown organically — no pesticides or chemical fertilizers have been used in the growing process. Most of the compost used to amend the soil was made at the prison using leftover kitchen scraps (except for a layer of mushroom compost that was obtained locally).

Adding Cedar Creek Compost to the Soil. Photo by SPP Staff.

The food will be a welcome change from the normal fare of processed, frozen, canned or bagged produce that is the norm in prisons. It is unfortunate that fresh produce only lasts for a few months, but three months is better than zero months; especially when some inmates among the population haven’t had access to fresh food for years — or even decades. The difference between organically grown garden fresh produce and the frozen, dyed, and chemically grown/preserved stuff is night and day.

Rhubarb Growing Along the Fence. Photo by Sadie Gilliom.

There are some extra challenges this year due to the drought. We’re worried about water usage here just like everybody else on the west coast, but hopefully the lack of water won’t have a huge effect on crop yields. The inmates are doing a great job of using water efficiently and of recapturing where they can.

Many of us in the population are extremely grateful to the guys from the horticulture program whom work in the gardens, as well as the people at Centralia College and the Sustainability in Prisons Project who do their part in making the gardens possible. Fresh food makes the late summer and fall seasons here at Cedar Creek a special time.

By Andrew Garber, DOC Communications
Photos by Kelli Bush, SPP Program Manager

LITTLEROCK – Jack Boysen grew up afraid of bees, yet here he is sticking his hand in the middle of a buzzing hive.

Beekeeping technician Mr. Mr. Anglemyer describes beekeeping to the King 5 cameraman.

The puffy, white, head-to-toe beekeeper suit he’s wearing helps, as does a hand-held smoker that puts the bees in a subdued state. “When you don’t use smoke, you don’t have a good day,” Boysen advises.

Still, Boysen says he never would have contemplated walking into a swarm of bees a few years ago.

Being in prison changed his mind.“I’ve had a lot of jobs in DOC. Janitor, cook, plumber, electrician and out of all the jobs I’ve had over the years, this is the most rewarding because you feel like you are doing something not only for your own benefit, but also the rest of the world,” he said.

“You have the opportunity to actually advance yourself when you get out of here,” said Boysen, 29, who is projected for release in 2017. “You have the potential to turn this into a career when you get out.”

Technicians Angelmeyer and Boysen attend to the hives, checking on the bees’ health of the bees while they describe what they have learned about beekeeping.

The Cedar Creek Corrections Center runs a beekeeper training program in conjunction with the Sustainability in Prisons Project, (SPP), a partnership between the Department of Corrections and The Evergreen State College, and the Olympia Beekeepers Association.

Boysen learned about the program from his classification counselor, Gina Sibley, and signed up with another inmate at the prison to take a six-week course last year that teaches the basics of beekeeping. Since then, he’s been helping tend bee hives at the prison.

The work involves donning his white suit once a week, with its tight-fitting gloves and netted hood that zips shut to keep out the bees. Then Boysen and another offender light up a metal smoker that burns wood chips or pine needles, and they head for the hives.

They puff smoke and gingerly pull out wooden racks that contain the bees and their honey. The inmates are checking on the health of the bees, which are prone to various pests and diseases. They also want to see if a new hive is forming.

“Through monitoring, we discovered a hive was starting to split and they actually created a queen cell and were creating a new queen,” Boysen said recently, while holding a rack crawling with bees to look for a queen. “So we took that out of the box and made a new hive out of it because when they do that, it means they’re getting ready to swarm.”

During the summer, the inmates and a correctional officer, Glenn Epling, who assists them, take honey-laden racks to a small centrifuge in a shed behind the prison that spins just fast enough to force out the honey without damaging the cones. The racks are then put back into the hives for the bees to refill.

Officer Epling shows the reporters the liquid gold produced by Cedar Creek’s beekeeping program.

Officer Epling shares his expertise and excitement about working with the hives.

One worker bee, which lives around six weeks, produces about 1⁄12th of a teaspoon of honey during its lifetime, said Laurie Pyne, with the Olympia Beekeepers Association. So if you ever buy an 8-ounce bottle of honey in a store, it likely took the lives of more than 500 bees to fill the jar.

Olympia Beekeeping Association president Laurie Pyne consults with beekeepers at Stafford Creek Corrections Center following a lecture.

Boysen thinks about the living he could make from raising bees.

“It’s kind of hard for us to get jobs out there, if you have an extensive record,” said Boysen, who is serving time for multiple convictions including theft and possession of a controlled substance. “With this, for a couple hundred dollars you can get a hive together.

“Then you get two hives and three. You can get almost five gallons of honey off one hive in a year. If you market it in small honey bears, it actually gives you a pretty decent income,” he said, while pulling out a rack to take to the centrifuge.

“We’re basically robbing the bees,” he said. “But this is definitely legal.”

Epling, who tends several hives at his own home in addition to working with offenders at the prison, said that two inmates who were released last year are now raising bees on the outside. “And it sounds like we have a future here with these inmates,” he said of the offenders he’s teaching now. “It’s a good thing. It works for everybody.”

Joslyn Rose Trivett, who works for Sustainability in Prisons Project at The Evergreen State College, said one of the SPP’s goals is to teach offenders marketable skills they can use on the outside, as well as help build up their self-esteem while in prison.

“A lot of the people who are incarcerated are struggling with the feeling of being thrown away and discarded by society,” she said.

SPP Network Manager Joslyn Rose Trivett interviews with the King5 reporters.

The beekeeper program and others like it can show offenders “there is value in every material and every resource and every animal and plant and certainly in every person,” she said.

Read more: KING5 story.

SPP student-staff and butterfly technicians at MCCCW install four new raise beds to grow plantain, a common weed preferred by the endangered butterfly as food in their larval life-stage. Photo by Seth Dorman.

A refreshing, overcast morning at Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women (MCCCW) made for great weather to build four new raised beds for the Taylor’s Checkerspot Butterfly Program. We will grow plantain (Plantago) in these beds to increase the amount of food for the caterpillars (larvae) at the facility. SPP’s nursery crew—including Carl Elliott, Allie Denzler, and Ricky Johnson— joined the butterfly team on the project.

Lindsey Hamilton, Taylor’s Checkerspot Program Coordinator, and butterfly technician Eva Ortiz unload a wheelbarrow full of soil. Photo by Seth Dorman.

Butterfly technician Michelle Dittamore and SPP nursery coordinator Allie Denzler install support brackets. in a corner. Photo by Seth Dorman.

The Taylor’s Checkerspot larvae require Plantago leaves for foraging, and then as adult they can use the plants as a place to lay their eggs. In recent years, the larvae have prospered; the hard-working technicians dutifully supply each larva with an appropriate serving of food. The larvae will eat as much as they can in the fall to grow and store up enough energy to survive the cold, winter months of dormancy (diapause). When the hungry larvae wake-up in mid-February, they require an ample food each day to  become a pupa (pupate). Some Februarys, the Plantago plants have not yet had favorable weather conditions for sprouting new, plentiful leaves. Consequently, the food the larvae desperately need to complete their life cycle is scarce. Some years, technicians are forced to pick from scattered Plantago around the perimeter of the facility.

By adding the new raised beds, we hope to have a more dependable supply for larvae to metamorphose into beautifully checkered adults. With the bed additions, we hope to grow at least 3,500 plantain plants. This means each of the 3,500 larvae reared in a season will have their own individual plantain plant! We plan to add cold frames for each raised bed, which will boost plantain production in late winter. Bountiful food resources for the butterfly larvae are beneficial in the warmer months of the season if some food recourses become contaminated or reduced due to pests and disease.

SPP’s nursery crew and butterfly team shovel soil to be placed in new raise beds. Photo by Seth Dorman.

After some heavy lifting of soil with shovels, the maintenance crew at MCCCW shows SPP their bulldozing skills. Photo by Seth Dorman.