There’s something comforting about the fact that despite anything winter or the pandemic can throw at us, spring always brings with it a renewal of joy and hope. Enjoy this month’s Fork & Spade along with a big dose of sunshine and flowers!
Are you a first-time gardener looking for resources and guidance? Or are you an experienced gardener seeking access to materials and community? Shared Abundance Gardens is a program launched by Abundance Farm during the first year of COVID-19 to promote people growing food at home and sharing their harvests.
The farm commits to providing resources including plants, soil and gardening guides, and gardeners commit to strengthening communal bonds by sharing part of their harvest with their community and contributing whatever else they can: expertise, enthusiasm or materials and tools.
Part of Abundance Farm’s vision is that people from all backgrounds will deepen their understanding of how land, nature and agriculture are parts of their own ancestral stories. Shared Abundance Gardens brings the spirit of the farm’s pick-your-own program into the community, promoting the Jewish ideal that natural resources are fundamentally not owned by individuals but are meant to be equitably shared.
Abundance Farm is committed to offering Shared Abundance Gardens as a resource for anyone, regardless of financial situation. The program asks that gardeners support the initiative by making a sliding-scale financial contribution of $0 to $360 toward material costs, while Abundance Farm covers staffing costs. The seedlings, soil, compost, woodchips, and seeds that gardeners use have an estimated average retail value of $100 per garden.
You can learn more and register at sharedabundance.org/.
It’s back! Grow Food Northampton’s Tuesday Market opens for the season on April 19. Each Tuesday from 1:30 to 6:30 p.m., 25-plus vendors fill the plaza between the parking garage and Thornes Marketplace in downtown Northampton with a huge array of fresh local produce, meats, honey, maple, cheese, bread, prepared food, crafts and weekly music.
Visit the purple market tent to learn more about SNAP Match and how to stretch SNAP dollars at the market. For other local markets beginning this spring, check out CISA’s great Local Food Guide: buylocalfood.org/find-it-locally
And if you are jonesing to expand your gardening horizons, Grow Food Northampton will host a series of workshops this spring at the Community Farm on gardening practices including no-till bed preparation, mushroom cultivation, and more. For all the details, visit growfoodnorthampton.org/2022springworkshops. You can learn more about Grow Food Northampton’s work in 2021 in their recently published 2021 Impact Report at growfoodnorthampton.org.
The Manna Community Center is seeking volunteers to help at their sign-in desk. Volunteers are a critical part of the center’s success, and they are looking for creative individuals who can interact with guests with compassion and without judgment.
The role consists of engaging with guests as they enter and exit the building; asking guests for their first name; assisting with rapid COVID tests as needed; and taking temperatures with a contactless thermometer. Regardless of the city’s rescinding of the mask mandate, Manna still requires its staff, guests, and volunteers to wear masks while in the building. There will always be at least one experienced and trained staff person at the Community Center during operational hours.
If you are interested in volunteering or would like to get a tour before committing to a shift, Manna’s staff would love to show you around. Email Nora at nora@mannanorthampton.org, and they will schedule a time for you to visit.
Volunteer shifts are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday from 9 to 11:30 a.m. and 12:30-3 p.m.
Late last year, the Northampton Public Schools funded Farm to School, an exciting new venture aimed at providing students from elementary to high school with meaningful, interdisciplinary learning about the intricacies of our food system.
The new program coordinator, Bryan Jersky, is the father of two young kids in the district, and his vision for the program is delightfully comprehensive:
“Close your eyes and imagine elementary students planting strawberries in their school garden while learning about science. Imagine middle school students selling those strawberries to you from their own farmers market stand, while they learn about math. Imagine high school students studying potential inequalities that may exist for strawberry farmers across the globe. Now imagine strawberries from a farm just down the road being served in the cafeteria, students learning about food waste by throwing their strawberry stems into their school’s compost bin, and community organizations showing kids how to turn slightly squishy strawberries into jam.”
Bryan has spent his first few months on the job learning about previous projects; increasing local and healthy food for school meals; meeting with other regional farm to school programs to learn about what’s working best and what’s not; assisting Northampton High School in starting a pilot composting program; and most important, meeting with the Northampton community to find out what they want to see in a Farm to School program.
If you have any questions or input about the program, reach out to Bryan at bjersky@northampton-k12.us.
Francie Lin is Grow Food Northampton’s writer-in-residence. She can be reached at francie@growfoodnorthampton.org.