Getting to know Thoreau Farm’s neighbor, Gaining Ground
“I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus. But why should I raise them? … What shall I learn of beans or beans of me?”
–Henry David Thoreau, “The Bean-Field,” Walden
Writing there in Walden of his (successful) experiment in the bean-patch, Henry Thoreau got down to basics (as he had a tendency to do). Down to the fundamental questions: Why should I raise them? What shall I learn? And learn not only about the beans but about himself.
At the outset of my very first post on this blog, back in February, I mentioned that the Thoreau Farm property (the parcel owned by Thoreau Farm Trust on which the birthplace house sits) is adjacent to — in fact seamlessly connects with — a community farm and food project called Gaining Ground, dedicated to hunger-relief in the Boston area. Situated on 17 acres leased from the Town of Concord — on some of the oldest continually cultivated land in America (farmed for more than 350 years) — all of the farm’s organically-grown produce , more than 20,000 pounds per year, is donated to food pantries and meal programs, consumed within 20 miles of the farm and within 24 hours of harvesting. Community volunteers provide roughly two-thirds of the labor.
As I said in that first post, it’s hard to imagine a better neighbor to Henry’s birthplace: an organic farm with a social conscience. Somewhere in that combination, I think, lies an answer to those basic questions Henry asked of himself and all of us. Because for Henry Thoreau, naturalist and abolitionist, living in harmony with nature meant acting in solidarity with his fellow human beings.
I’ve been wanting to write a post on Gaining Ground since the moment I saw it last winter. Not because I’m any sort of a farmer (though I’m only one generation removed from a small, hardscrabble farm in northeast Texas) or even much of a gardener. Sadly, I’m neither. Rather, it was because I immediately felt the pull of the place’s idealism mixed with pragmatism. There’s nothing abstract about the place or the project. Its mission, stated simply, is to “grow food and give it away to people who need it. For free.”
The farm’s philosophy and “model” is spelled out lucidly (and enjoyably) in “Gaining Ground: A Model of Hunger Relief and Meaningful Volunteerism” (pdf). The document tells a bit about the project’s history — founded by Concord resident Jamie Bemis in 1994 as simply a small garden on private land, later moving to the current location in 1999, expanding the operation — and suggests what makes it different:
There are other models for what we do. Community supported agriculture (CSAs) grow food with the financial support of community shareholders. Community gardens bring together gardeners on communal plots of land. And some progressive commercial farms devote space to growing food for hunger relief. We’re something different — a unique combination of hunger relief and community volunteerism. All of the food we grow is given away to people who need it — for free. This refreshingly simple approach lets us focus on meeting the needs of our volunteers and recipients, rather than on sales. It lets us provide healthy produce to people who need it most, while offering new volunteer opportunities to a wide range of people. These two aspects of our work are closely intertwined — one wouldn’t work without the other.
The document goes on to elaborate on the Gaining Ground “values,” including “Experience — we nurture joy and wonder in our garden,” “Scale — we respect the power of small,” and “Sustainability — we grow in a careful, considered fashion.” Another value seems to be a healthy sense of humor. Under “How to Have Fun”: “If you don’t know how by now, you can always learn…. Keep it light. Avoid phrases like ‘sustainable food systems’ and ‘teen empowerment.’ … Don’t think of it as saving the planet.”
And as they point out, it’s a model that appears to work. They’ve been thriving now for nearly two decades. Just think how many tons of food has been given away.
(A side note for Thoreau buffs: Gaining Ground also operates the kitchen garden at the Old Manse in Concord, based on the heirloom vegetable garden Henry created as a wedding present for Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne in 1842.)
Gaining Ground farm managers Michelle De Lima, left, and Kayleigh Boyle. (Photo: Gaining Ground)
This past Saturday I volunteered at the farm for the first time (something I plan to do a lot more of), helping farm manager Michelle De Lima and two other volunteers — teachers at the Carroll School in neighboring Lincoln — plant beds of flowers, which will be given away along with the produce. Next time, Michelle promised, I’ll get to help grow some food! (If you want to volunteer, either by yourself or as a group, check out this useful section on the website.)
Last week, leading up to my first volunteer visit, I sent Michelle and her co-manager, Kayleigh Boyle, a few questions by email, which they generously took time to answer (see below). Michelle, 29, is a graduate of Brown University, where she majored in Latin American studies, and Kayleigh, 25, is a graduate of Emerson College, where she (impressively!) created her own major: non-profit marketing. They’ve been farming at Gaining Ground for several years now, and have been the farm managers since January 2011. They also, as of this season, oversee the kitchen garden at the Thoreau Farm birthplace house next door.
Just to get a quick sense of the operation, I asked Michelle what crops are currently in the ground, and what’s just about to be planted. She replied:
In the ground: peas, radishes, turnips, tat soi (an Asian green), Napa cabbage, red and green cabbages, broccoli, kale, collards, baby bok choi, fennel, lettuce, beets, carrots, potatoes, onions, leeks, parsnips, summer squash, zucchini, and flowers. Plus perennials: strawberries, raspberries, asparagus, rhubarb, herbs, fruit trees, blueberries. Going in this week or next: tomatoes, eggplant, sweet & hot peppers, basil, green beans, more beets, carrots, and lettuce. Waiting in the wings (a.k.a the greenhouse): winter squash, pumpkins, musk melon, water melon, cucumbers.
That’s a lot of food. All of it going where it’s really needed.
My email exchange with Michelle and Kayleigh follows. We hope you’ll join the conversation.
(P.S. I should note: Thoreau Farm needs your support as well. If you care about the legacy of Henry David Thoreau, and putting his ideas into action today, please consider making a donation and becoming a member. Many thanks.)
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WS: What’s happening at the farm right now? What are your days like at this point in the growing season?
KAYLEIGH BOYLE: This week things are a little stagnant because of the continuation of last week’s wet weather. Weeding and tilling are tougher when the land is wet, and we don’t really have anything urgent to go in the ground right now. We’re teetering on the time when frost-sensitive plants go out, but we’re biding our time until we’re absolutely sure no hard frosts will surprise us.
On this week’s agenda is our first round of weeding in our spring field (crops include cabbage, kale, broccoli, lettuce, and fennel). We will also be tilling and prepping the land for next week’s planting of tomatoes. Little things include orchard care, the trapping of a woodchuck by way of overripe cantaloupe, and trapping of slugs by way of PBR.
WS: PBR?
DE LIMA: PBR as in Pabst Blue Ribbon — not some sophisticated organic pest management system. We used little cups of beer set in the asparagus patch to attract and drown slugs.
Kayleigh covered the basics, so I’ll just add a little. I find this time of year both exciting and a bit daunting. It’s exciting because we’re finally getting to do the things — preparing fields and planting — that we’ve been planning over the winter, but it’s also intimidating because there’s no telling what the season will bring in terms of weather, pests, and diseases.
WS: How does this season — this spring — compare with previous seasons? What did the warm/dry winter, early spring, and hard frosts mean for the farm?
DE LIMA: At this point, I hardly feel like there is a baseline to which I can compare this spring’s weather. The last few years have been all over the place in terms of temperature and precipitation, but this one certainly seems extreme in its variability.
The warm winter made sugaring more difficult, because low sugar concentrations meant that we had to use a lot more time and firewood to convert sap to syrup. The warm, dry early spring made it harder to get cool weather crops like peas, cabbage, broccoli, and kale established. We had to irrigate in April, which is a scary first.
Most of the crops have recovered and seem to be enjoying the cool, wet weather we’ve been having. The hard frost after all of that warmth damaged some of our fruit tree blossoms, which luckily won’t matter much this year as the trees are too young to bear fruit anyway. We, and other farmers, are seeing early and strong emergence of some pests due to the warm winter and early spring, and I imagine that will continue as the season progresses.
BOYLE: This is my fourth season at Gaining Ground, and not one spring season has been the same — though I can say this spring was drier than any I have experienced in the past. The dry early spring made for easy tillage of the land, no worries about getting stuck in the mud with our new tractor. The downside was the desperate need for our drip irrigation system as soon as our first spring field was planted. It was definitely strange to be running irrigation in April.
WS: Is the changing climate a concern for you as a farmer? If so, how does it affect your work, on a practical level and in terms of your overall outlook? (If you read my interview with Amy Seidl, who talked about farmers in Vermont, you’ll know that this is something I’ve been thinking about lately.)
DE LIMA: The changing climate is a huge concern for me as a farmer and human being. It’s something I’ve been thinking and worrying about for ten years, but this year’s freaky weather, including an April hail storm, and the experience of running irrigation two months before we usually do, really brought home to me the fact that climate change is happening here and now. The extreme variability of precipitation, alternating between periods of no rain and periods of frequent storms, is the thing that concerns me most. Farming in New England has never been easy or predictable, but I think it is becoming even harder to plan for, making observation and flexibility even more important. It is all pretty unsettling, but, despite the challenges, I am still happy to spend my days growing food.
BOYLE: I feel like our seasons have become more unpredictable — for example, this past year’s warm winter, this year’s dry spring, and multiple days last summer with temperatures of 100+ degrees. These are weather patterns I wouldn’t expect for New England. The thing is, certain crops thrive in all of those conditions, but we don’t know what the conditions will be until they are on top of us. As a farmer you are ordering seeds in January for what you are going to be planting in April; you cannot change crops at the last minute according to the weather.
It seems like Eastern Mass. has already started to adapt to the warming weather. People don’t wait until Memorial Day to put out their tomatoes anymore. That could be looked at positively, since that means more tomatoes in a longer season, but I also think of the effects it has on something like maple sugaring. Sugaring is entirely dependent on cold winters and the steady warming of temperatures in the spring, so a changing climate could make it impossible to produce in this area. It is such a special product that is made in such a small part of the world, that would be a huge loss.
WS: I’m curious whether you know many others roughly your age who are working in local/sustainable agriculture? How do you see GG in relation to the wider culture and society in which you grew up and came of age? Is there something a little bit “counterculture” about small-scale organic farming as a career or line of work? (Do you think of it as a career?)
DE LIMA: I’m 29, and I do know lots of people my age who are farming, mostly women. And I think there is something “counterculture” about it, in that a lot of growers do not fit in, or want to fit in, with the prevailing consumer culture. That’s not to say that we are cut off entirely from the mainstream, like the “back to the land” folks were — many of us live and/or work in cities and work with the public in various ways. However, I do think a lot of us are turned off by the materialism, inequality and environmental degradation that consumer culture is built on, and have come to farming because it is tangible, satisfying work that we can feel good about doing.
BOYLE: I am going to be 26 this June, and when attending Eastern Mass. CRAFT meetings, weekly educational farm visits during the season, I see a lot of people my age who work on farms in the area. My childhood best friend is working on a farm in Western Mass. Both of us got into farming at the same time even though it wasn’t our initial plan.
I grew up in a rural Vermont town where farming was the lifestyle for a lot of the native Vermonters. It was also the career of a lot of back-to-the-landers, who decided to move to the area to start farming for the first time. But growing up it was a line of work you didn’t want to get into because you saw how people struggled and had to close down their farms when they could no longer support themselves. For me, I look at farming differently now, not just as a career but as being part of a great movement. Since it is a hard way to make a living it has to be something you care deeply about. Farming is the best sort of direct action — it involves a lot of doing, versus a lot of sitting around and talking. It makes for a literal “working from the ground up” to make a change.
WS: I’m interested in what drives you personally. What led you here? What motivates you? There must be a healthy amount of idealism under-girding a project like Gaining Ground, but it’s obviously anchored or rooted in real pragmatism as well. That mix of the idealistic and the pragmatic is really potent (and of course has a long and rich tradition in social-justice movements). But maybe you don’t think of it in those terms — those are just my terms, looking in from the outside. So, tell me, what it is that really drives you to do what you’re doing?
BOYLE: I found Gaining Ground after working a park ranger, another job that allowed me spend my days outside. Though I quickly found I wasn’t satisfied with the organization I was working for. I didn’t feel like they took care of the park in ways I agreed with, using chemicals for weeds and lacking any composting or recycling programs. Farming and food became something I wanted to pursue because I felt that food was related to so many other issues in society; poverty, health/nutrition, climate change, big business, and politics. Gaining Ground seemed like a perfect fit for my ideals, while not taking itself too seriously. Also, farm work is so appealing because it is tangible. It gives you a real sense of accomplishment, which I think is hard to find in a job today.
DE LIMA: The mix of the idealistic and the pragmatic is exactly what I love about this work. I have grappled with how best to address environmental degradation and social injustice since I began to be aware of them in my adolescence. During college I considered policy, law, social work, and education, trying to figure out how I could be most useful. I began volunteering at an urban farm in Providence and found that I loved being outside digging in the dirt and nurturing plants. I went to work on a farm in Vermont after college and continued farming more because I liked it and didn’t know what else to do with myself than because I was consciously choosing it as a “career.” Now, it’s become a way of life that I can’t really imagine giving up.
I came to Gaining Ground because I had been frustrated that the fruits of my labor at other farms were affordable to so few people. The farmers I worked for in Vermont were good people who did what they could to donate and subsidize CSA shares, but there is only so much you can do when you’re struggling to make a profit.
There is so much about our food system and economy in general that is unjust and simply does not work. I dream of a world in which farmers can make a living and all people can afford to eat well, but I really don’t know how to get there. Gaining Ground is only one small effort in that direction, but I hope we have some kind of a ripple effect and that the connections our recipients and volunteers make to good food and caring for the land will inspire them to work for a better food system in whatever way they can.
WS: Who are your heroes?
BOYLE: Michael Pollan and Vandana Shiva were some of the first authors I read to discuss food and farming in a way that caught my attention and led me to learn more. On a less serious note, I love The Onion and George Carlin.
DE LIMA: I’m not sure I have heroes, per se, but I’ll tell you about a couple of great people I’ve known. My fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Williams, had a huge influence on me. She took our class on nature walks, teaching us about plants and wildlife and having us sit quietly in the woods. She also taught us about greenhouse gasses at a time when I think most adults in the US were not aware of them. She inspired me to plant my first–rather unsuccessful–vegetable garden at home.
My friend Rachel has also been a strong influence in my life. We’ve been friends for about nine years and she has helped me to become, or at least want to become, a more compassionate, gentle person. She has a lot of wonder and appreciation for the beauty in the natural world and in other people (which are not really two separate things) and fosters the same in everyone who knows her.
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