Louie says every year that he isn’t going to plant tomatoes, delivering the line with a knowing smile that his fellow community gardeners have come to expect. Standing outside the Forsander Apartments in Florence, it’s the line I keep hearing with a laugh from the community gardeners as they show me their plots full of cucumbers, lettuce, amaranth, peppers, dill and tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes.
I meet the group of gardeners while I tag along with Juju Carpenter, the Food Access Manager of Grow Food Northampton (GFN), as she drives the organization’s van to nine low-income housing sites around Florence and Northampton. Each week from May through November, the van holds the offerings of the GFN Free Mobile Farmers Market that includes locally grown fruits, vegetables, and herbs, changing in variety throughout the growing season. Volunteers from the Northampton Survival Center follow along with their own van, offering nonperishables and supplemental meal starters to the apartment residents.
Along with buying and distributing hundreds of thousands of pounds of produce from local farms each year, Grow Food Northampton’s Food Access Team has established community gardens at each of the housing sites as an additional resource for those at risk of food insecurity. Residents who choose to garden receive the tools, compost, educational workshops, and a variety of seedlings from local nurseries at no cost. A series of wooden raised beds have been built near the gardens for those with limited mobility.
“Within a national food system that disconnects us from the knowledge of growing our own food, having access to a garden is a radical act,” Juju tells me. “Not to mention, working in soil has been proven to lower levels of depression and anxiety. Many of our seniors in housing live by themselves, so having a garden plot means spending more time outdoors, gardening alongside their neighbors.”
When I ask Louie what keeps him coming back to the garden every year, he tells me it’s a lot of work, but it’s not good to stay stuck inside. He chooses growing tomatoes every year for anyone at the apartment complex who wants them, especially those who aren’t able to garden themselves. He tells me there are a lot of reasons, but ultimately he lands on one primary sentiment.
“It’s this,” he said, and gestures to all his neighbors I’ve just met, all of us getting a little too warm in the summer sun but continuing our conversations happily. We’ve been admiring each of the garden’s plants while swapping tips on how to keep produce fresh longer in the kitchen, sharing a recipe for mint tea with sprigs picked up from the Mobile Market, hearing stories of generational family farming, and petting a sweet dog named Lucky who circles around us.
At the Salvo House apartments in Northampton, those community roots also run deep. Alice tells me the residents come out every day to both work in their plots and socialize with their neighbors.
“We all share everything. The soil, the tools, and what we grow. We help each other water and keep an eye out for each other. We come out at night and just have a riot.”
After the flooding of 2023, the gardens at Salvo were moved to higher land and, due to heightened interest, the Food Access Team expanded the plots to be able to accommodate more gardeners. Each week through the growing season, GFN’s Mobile Market comes to the Salvo House parking lot bringing not only produce, but a sense of connection to the local food system. Over the folding tables sprawled with bright fresh foods, residents share their relief and gratitude for the resources coming to them, when paying for a rideshare to get groceries is too expensive, and there are fewer reliable options for healthy produce at commercial stores.
“I love everybody at Grow Food,” Alice said. “They’re all so supportive and have given us all we need. Having the mobile market and a garden of my own allows me to have fresh food not bought from a supermarket. Plus, it keeps me active and social!”
Each season, the Food Access Team supplies a wide variety of plants that are chosen by the residents, and are culturally relevant to the community. Local farms like Windy Ridge Nursery send seedlings of aji dulce, culantro, oregano brujo and jalapeno. For many of the gardeners I spoke to, having access to land again feels like a generational calling, as many share with me stories of growing up on family farms and learning from their elders. David tells me about his father’s organic farm in Georgia growing everything from collard greens to tomatoes and herbs. Alice grew up in the area with ties to family farming in Hadley, watching the corn grow tall each summer.
Although funding for GFN’s food access programming was initially received from the City of Northampton through the post-COVID American Rescue Plan Act, that funding ended in 2024. Shortly after, the USDA’s Local Food Purchasing Assistance Program, which supplied the financial backing for organizations, schools, and food banks to purchase food from local farmers, was terminated by the federal government.
GFN’s Executive Director Alisa Klein told me, “The ending of these funding sources means that we have to constantly hustle to make up the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year it takes to run these programs. We are so lucky that this community values supporting our neighbors in low-income housing and understands the crucial nature of ensuring that a local food system is defined and shaped by all members of our community.”
Juju added that she believes “food sovereignty begins in the garden. Everyone has the right to fresh, local food and everyone has the right to garden.”
At the end of the growing season, residents will have a festival on the back lawn of their homes, where gardeners and neighbors come together with Grow Food Northampton staff to celebrate another successful harvest. There will be games for kids, and a community picnic featuring the home grown food. The garden will once again become the backdrop to a lively social gathering; a point of connection to both the land gardeners tend and the community they grow.
Laura Spencer is a writer-in-residence at Grow Food Northampton.