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Date: 8/16/2023
SPRINGFIELD — They change lives one crop, one field, one harvest at a time. The Springfield-based nonprofit Gardening the Community not only provides access to garden-fresh vegetables and other foodstuffs in the Mason Square/Six Corners neighborhoods — one of the city’s chronic food deserts — it does so in a way that helps its young farm workers build skills to improve their lives.
One woman’s idea
Gardening the Community interim Director Liz Wills-O’Gilvie explained to Reminder Publishing that Gardening The Community was the brainchild of a local woman who, in the early 2000s, saw a need in her neighborhood for both fresh food, and food education. That young woman, Ruby Maddox “had a friend who was part of the Northeast Organic Farming Association,” and she parlayed that association into a program that helped both local youth and the community they lived in, Willis-O’Gilvie said.
“Ruby wanted kids to get a sense of where food comes from, and she started working with kids, teaching them how to grow food,” with the help of the Northeast Organic Farming Association, Wills O’Gilvie explained.
Maddox understood that her young farmers “had never had a growing experience” and felt teaching them about how food was grown was a critical skill. Wills O’Gilvie said Maddox also wanted these young people — most of whom lived in areas without easy access to a grocery store — to learn and understand “why the quality of food [you eat] matters.”
From a small plot to a farm store
Wills O’Gilvie said Gardening the Community started out in 2002 with its young farmers working just one plot on Central Street in the heart of the Mason Square neighborhood with the help of the Northeast Organic Farming Association. Gardening the Community continued working with the support of the Northeast Organic Farming Association to create an urban farm experience for local youth and the neighborhood in the Central Street area for over 10 years. That plot — now a community garden worked collectively by residents and members of the Gardening the Community youth program — currently operates under the stewardship of the Springfield Food Policy Council.
Twelve years after planting that first garden, Gardening the Community, then its own nonprofit, bought a ¾ acre space on Walnut Street, removing over 400 tons of debris to transform the site to fertile gardening soil. Walnut Street now houses fields, a greenhouse and Gardening the Community’s year ‘round farm store. The program also works a garden plot on Hancock Street, where they have a large hoop house for cold-weather farming. In total, the area farmed by Gardening the Community and its youth farmers within the city of Springfield is “about an acre and three-quarters,” Wills O’Gilvie said. “We work very hard.”
The crops include green and yellow summer squash, tomatoes, lettuce and spinach. Dedicated portions of the plot on Hancock Street grow crops native to Latin America. Another area is dedicated to foodstuffs grown in Africa. Wills O’Gilvie said these crops are nurtured in response to the demographics of the community the organization serves. The farm store also sells crops and foodstuffs from other local farms during the growing season, and winter crops post-summer.
The nonprofit operates their urban farm project with a small permanent staff that runs the farms, youth programs and farm store, this season adding a year ‘round farmer to assist with planting and overseeing the three grow sites. Funding for the project comes through “writing grants to community foundations, private donors that make gifts, appeal letters sent out to supporters” and sales through the farm store and annual farm share purchases, Wills O’Gilvie said.
And the farm produces. Wills O’Gilvie said in 2022, Gardening the Community grew 70,000 pounds of food, and served “more than 1,000 families” from the Walnut Street farm store through purchases, farm shares and bicycle-powered deliveries of produce to local customers.
More than just gardening
Wills O’Gilvie said between 35 and 40 young people were working in the Gardening the Community program this summer, and she expected about 20 to stay after school begins. Chief among the many skills participants learn are sustainable farming practices.
“The way we farm is environmentally just. We are no-till and pesticide free,” Wills O’Gilvie said, explaining that their method of working the soil differs from that done by larger farms, and helps with “carbon retention in the soil, which is keeping us all healthier.”
The program also teaches social justice skills, such has identifying the changemakers in the community, and digital literacy skills to turn that information into action. A recent project for the youth involved asking questions in the community about food access and lived experiences, then turning the information into a presentation “to take to local politicians to talk to them about food justice,” Wills O’Gilvie said.
And Gardening the Community teaches one more very important, and practical skill to its young workers, who all receive a stipend for their labors. It teaches them how to open a bank account and begin saving for the future.
“We encourage them to save out of their stipend,” Wills O’Gilvie said. “We’ve had nine parents report they opened a bank account because their kids opened bank accounts.”
Gardening The Community may have begun as a way to teach young people about food and how its grown. But over the past 22 years it has become much more than that.
“At GTC, the core of our mission is rooted in food justice,” begins the mission statement on the organization’s website. “We believe we have the ability to solve our local hunger and food insecurity challenges through growing food, empowering our youth, dismantling institutional racism, and creating opportunities to ensure that local, healthy, nutritious and affordable food is available for all residents in our home city of Springfield, Massachusetts and beyond.”