New Haven Independent

They raised tents, weeded the garden, pawned their harvest at their weekly farmers market, built a fence, cleaned the sheds and cared for the animals. When their front garden spilled forth with untamed shrubbery, a construction worker and landscaper came in to walk them through the process of building a new segmental retaining wall.

Kejohn Ervin (pictured, left), an incoming junior, has worked on the project in a rotation cycle along with the 24 other members of the youth work crew.

“Some jobs are a little monotonous, but we have fun. You learn how to build and how to make something without taking shortcuts.”

Shawn Upton of Upton Inc. instructed the students on the detail of the process from the mapping process down to the type of particle of the processed stone used for the bed’s base. And as Ervin and Rhegi Freeman tamped down, leveled, and neatened the foundation, they knew the shapes of the stone particles are angular, allowing water to filter through.

Youth Crew Manager Meg Graustein said the students’ physical labor gives them more ownership of the area. For others, like Cheryl “Shay” Bedard (pictured), both a cake artist and a woodworker, the work functions as a networking tool into the construction field. “I know a lot of people in the business,” Bedard said with a shrug. As she and freshman Adam Vargas chipped away at the cement blocks donated by Nickolock, they discussed their pay of $8 an hour, which Vargas cherished for investment in school clothes and supplies.

The crew effort, 11 years old, draws from the Youth at Work program to compensate the students.

Down a beaten path into the sizable garden, Yale sophomore Tatum Bell picks and weeds with the students. “As a student, you’re told what to do in order to get a grade,” she said as the girls picked Garden of Eden beans and lazily chatted. “Now, they’ve got money invested in it.”

Keith Taylor (pictured with Tamica Cray) broke it down: “You gotta do what you gotta do. I gotta do this or I don’t get paid.” He enjoyed the peace of the garden, compared to the top of the hill where the hodgepodge of noise from the summer program and construction continued.