While Long Beach Unified School District students have continued many of their studies online, one class that just can’t be virtually replicated is the garden learning program run by locally-based Ground Education.

The non-profit, now in its 10th year, works with kids from kindergarten to 8th grade to show them not only the science of growing but to make the connection between healthy food, a vibrant community and environmental responsibility. And this is all done very much hands-on, which meant that when students were sent home several weeks ago there was going to be far fewer hands harvesting all their hard work.

The task has fallen to Ground Education co-founders Holland Brown and Karen Taylor and a shifting cast of volunteers who have been spending their days—rain or shine, as you’ll see—not only harvesting the students’ handiwork at multiple schools but cleaning, packaging and distributing it back to the students through LBUSD’s ongoing lunch program.

We caught up with the pair as they spent another day in the field, this a soggy one at Luther Burbank Elementary; fitting given Burbank’s standing as a world famous botanist and horticulturalist who developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants.

Brown says it’s disappointing that social distancing means she and Taylor can’t be there when their students receive their produce, but hopes “they feel our love” when they do.