A long-time supporter of The Food Project wrote this piece recently. A slightly shorter version of the op-ed was published in the JP Gazette (a local Boston paper) a few weeks ago. We thought it insightful and engaging, and hoped that it might be a good read for you as well. Enjoy!

A Food Plan for Boston

When I graduated college in 1971, having lived in cities my whole life, I moved to Vermont to explore a simpler lifestyle, closer to nature and the land. A few days after arriving there, I called to say hello to a college advisor who also had by then moved to the Green Mountain State, for similar reasons. We chatted for a minute, and then he said: “Well, have you planted your garden yet?” “Do you mean flowers?” I said. “No. You live in Vermont now. You need to plant a vegetable garden.” I shrugged my shoulders, but within the next few weeks, there was dirt under my fingernails, seeds in my pockets, and manure on the soles of my shoes.

Several years later I returned to the city. My family and I have lived in Jamaica Plain for thirty years and, with almost religious devotion, we plant a vegetable garden every year. I can’t overstate the fulfillment that comes with being outside, digging in the ground, planting seeds, cultivating, nurturing young plants, following their progress, harvesting, and ultimately enjoying, on the dinner table, the fruits of that labor. During the summer months and into the fall, we buy no vegetables from the market. All the vegetables my family eats — lettuce, beans, peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, beets, chard, cucumbers, carrots, eggplant, onions, garlic, cabbage, pumpkins, winter squash, and more — are products of the soil we till.

And so I find myself almost forty years later, at the end of this year’s harvest and a few days after World Food Day, echoing the words of my college advisor – and the more recent urgings of food activists like Michael Pollan — in crying out to my fellow city-dwellers: Plant a garden!

Why? Because there’s nothing better for your family’s health than organically grown vegetables. Because by growing your own you eat the freshest possible, and reduce the “carbon footprint” left when food is shipped from halfway around the world, or even just a few counties away. Because in these trying economic times, it’s reassuring for families to know they can put their own food on the table, several months of the year – and longer, with canning and freezing — for minimal expense. (Boston Natural Areas Network [BNAN] reported on October 20 that the average Boston community garden plot produced $431 worth of food.) And because the act of gardening itself – the small but meaningful bit of stewardship of the land, the connection to nature’s life cycles, the pleasure of nurturing growing things – is simply so rewarding and renewing.

How to do it? We have about 150 community gardens in Boston – my family plants in one of them — but we need to create many, many more. Large swaths of parkland in residential areas throughout the city — Franklin Park and the Southwest Corridor Park in my area come to mind – can become shared urban farmsteads, with minimal outlay. Workplaces with some greenspace around them (or even a flat roof) can set a portion aside for growing vegetables, that employees can tend before and after work, and during lunch break. And, of course, home gardens, in the front or back yard, are always the simplest option.

Schools should be included as an indispensable part of this urban farming vision. “Food” can become a key part of each grade’s mission and curriculum, with growing vegetables at its core. Classes can start seedlings in the classroom, plant and tend them in the school’s own community garden, care for and harvest them, and cook up tasty recipes together. Parents would be strongly encouraged to participate, weekends or after-school, and during the summer — bonding with other families while gardening together. The students’ curriculum: lots of practical math problems, science galore (biology, botany, chemistry, geology, ecology, meteorology), geography, health/nutrition, the history and geo-politics of water and food, prose and poetry musings on nature: a veritable cornucopia of diverse topics to inform and enrich their hands-on experiences.

As a city boy who was introduced to the joys of gardening many years ago, and has been thankful ever since, I hope we find ways to make urban farming an integral part of civic life in Boston. Several organizations — like BNAN (including their SLUG – “Students Learning Through Urban Gardening” — Program), Earthworks (fruit tree planting throughout the city) and The Food Project (engaging inner city youth in urban farming) — are already working hard to make that happen. Let’s urge our school, public health, and municipal leaders to cultivate their ties to these and other green pioneers, giving every Boston family a chance to “grow their own.”

Michael D. Felsen
Jamaica Plain, MA. 02130

The author is an attorney who gratefully gardens at the South Street Community Garden on the Jamaica Plain campus of UMass Medical School.