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As we descend into fall and winter here in the Boston area, here’s a reflection from the summer to keep us warm.
It’s August and it’s time to harvest the melons. Harvesting melons is one of my favorite things to do on the farm, as it most resembles football. To harvest melons, we walk into the row of melons, close to each other at first as the leader pulls the ripe melons from the vines and hands them down the line. At first, it’s just a a handoff, a gentle pass down the line of six young people. As we move further into the row, the gentle pass becomes a toss and eventually a throw, carefully avoiding dropping the sweet, warm fruit. Because a drop means one less melon for the market or the CSA.
It also means snack time. To taste an Athena cantaloupe still warm from the sun, is an amazing rite of summer here at The Food Project. Each of us waits for our favorite produce to be ready to be eaten. For me it’s cantaloupe and watermelon. When they’re ready, I know summer is really here.
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I’m Adam, age 16, from Concord MA. This summer, I will be working as one of the eight Urban Education and Outreach interns working at The Food Project. This relatively new internship is the result of the mixture of two previous internships: BLAST and Urban Education. Our internship is based in Dorchester, where we spend a lot of time working with local gardeners to improve their knowledge and understanding of healthy gardening in the city. One place where we work particularly often is on the Urban Learning Farm (ULF). We started working on the ULF only a few months ago and have made tremendous amounts of progress, but we still have a long way to go. The farm is composed of 20 raised beds, lined up neatly in two rows.
Raised beds offer a solution to protecting the vegetables from the lead-contaminated soil below. Ultimately, we hope to pave the paths with woodchips, surround the perimeter with berry bushes, and complete the pretty picture with some kind of sundial in the middle. Although we still have a long way to go before we realize this goal, we are well on our way to success.
At the Urban Learning Farm, we meet with local gardeners as well as school groups and other members of the community. We will work closely with these people on the garden, as well as educate them about healthy gardening in the city. The vegetables that we harvest from the garden will be given to these local gardeners and youth, and the fruit is sold weekly at our Farmer’s Market at the Dudley Town Common. I’m looking forward this summer to meeting local gardeners as we continue to work on our newest food lot.
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Our five super Rural Agriculture Interns, from left to right: Allie, Emily, Jasi, Owen and Kangni. These five youth have participated in the Summer Youth Program and the Academic Year Program, and are now producing our 100 delivered box shares, with my help as the box share manager. Say hello if you see us on the farm!
