Eggplant

Although The Food Project is a sustainable farm with a mission to help create a just food system, it’s really all about the kids, community and the development of work and life skills.

We came to the farm after the close of the Summer Youth Program and so did not have the opportunity to see all sixty of them working on the farm, but we did get to work beside the handful who had chosen to remain on for a few more weeks and were our generous and patient guides for the day.

We pulled into the parking lot of the farm in Lexington and made our way to the large white tent housing a cluster of picnic tables and embellished with a necklace of signs with inspiring words like courage, community, commitment, hope, service, initiative alternating with personalized statements from the summer farmers with hand prints and drawings.

A few of the kids were splayed out on the benches, escaping the hammering heat and waiting for their daily assignments.  Their supervisors were jollying them along towards the fields—fields equal work and work is hot and hard.  They slowly piled into the back of a pick-up truck with a quiet rumble of lighthearted complaining, and were off.  “You’re doing peas again.” I heard one of the supervisors say.

The Rialto GG team replaced them on the benches and turned their attention to Michael Iceland, the outreach coordinator.   Dressed in khakis, a green Food Project t-shirt and broad straw hat, Michael looked like one of the farmers, but it became clear after listening to him for just a few minutes that his experience and expertise lay in media and public relations.  He is energetic and articulate about The Food Project and passionate about the role it plays in the lives of these kids and the contribution it makes to the community.

“In 1991, The Food Project’s founder, Ward Cheney, had a vision of young people from the city and the suburbs working side by side on the land producing food for the hungry and learning together.”

“You should have seen the teenagers carrying boxes of compost through the Boston Medical Center lobby and up the elevator to the roof top garden they are tending,” he beamed.

“And we brought fresh vegetables to folks in a Roxbury neighborhood by building a farmer’s market at the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative.”

He was clearly troubled by the tomato blight and talked about how farmers all over the region had lost entire crops.  25,000 pounds in total were lost.  At The Food Project they tore up all the slicing tomato crops, but had hoped the heirlooms would survive.  They didn’t, however some of the cherry tomatoes did.

But the rest of the crop was healthy.  As we toured the fields, we knew we were near cabbage from the smells that wafted our way.  We learned that cabbage, broccoli and Brussels sprouts are planted side by side to ease in their care since they are treated in similar ways.

We visited the sauna-like green house and saw mounds of onions and garlic curing for storage.  The curing allows the skins to dry which serves as a protective layer so they will last up to six months before being sold.  We saw beautiful stalks of corn which we learned was popcorn.  Sweet corn is very land intensive as it is temperamental so it is more cost effective to grow heartier popcorn.

And then we saw the blight.  Rows of seemingly healthy colorful heirloom tomatoes hanging off their plants, but what we discovered when we turned them over it was shocking—a black diseased crater on the underside of each fruit.  It was heartbreaking to see and gave us an up close appreciation of the delicate the balance the relationship is between a farmer and nature.  One unstoppable bug, one unseasonable freeze, one flooded field can change a years worth of work for a farmer.  I was reminded of what Eero at Nesenkeag had told us in June of 2008 about how excessive rains had washed out his lower fields and caused him to lose his crops one month and yet when we visited him, he was unable to use some of  his fields due to lack of rain.

“And now we’re at the night shades, eggplant, bell and hot peppers.”

We stopped here and half the GG joined the kids at worked, bending down and picking only perfect sized purple eggplants off the vines.  We needed instruction so as to twist the vegetable off the plant just right–with the stem.  If the stem is left on the plant, the vegetable is exposed and will deteriorate quickly.  They were gathered gently into plastic tubs and loaded onto a pickup truck.

The other half of the team worked in a lower field digging carrots—first “forking”with a pitch fork to loosen up the soil, taking care not to jab the vegetables, and then bending down to pull the carrots out of the ground.  We picked buckets of them.

Although GG has taken us to many farms, this was the first time we actually had a chance to dig in the dirt and it was a treat to work side by side with the farming kids.

There is something about putting your hands into the soil and pulling out something that later on you will put into your mouth that is so basic and infinitely satisfying.

Of course, we didn’t wait to rinse off the carrots, but rubbed them on our shirts and snapped off a bite in our mouths.

The kids were there from all parts of the Boston area and for as many different reasons and most had never worked in a garden or on a farm.  Since The Food Project pays the farmers, it is a good summer job.  Some had heard about The Project at school, others from their parents or friends, and one we spoke to, from a lawyer.   They told us it was “fun,” “sometimes hard work,” and they had learned “awareness of what is going on around us.  How the food system works and why some people don’t get enough to eat.”  “I learned what kohlrabi is…I’d never seen it before.”  One young woman from Tanzania who clearly knew what she was doing told us she had in fact worked in a garden before, “’cause my dad had one.”  Another told us her experience with The Food Project had inspired her dad to start a garden this year.  “ I love it.  My dad used to have a garden in Trinidad.  I think it’s in my blood.”

We made our way back to the tent toward the toasty smell of grilling onions where I had a chance to chat with Bharat, the site supervisor.  This was his seventh summer at The Food Project.  He started there in the summer of 2002 when he was sixteen as a crew worker in the youth program, just like the kids we had been digging with, and he became hooked.  Over the years he’d held many positions, including an intern, crew leader, and assistant site supervisor.  In his current role, he is responsible for the safety, both physical and emotional, of the kids.  “These are kids from all backgrounds, and we are committed to providing an environment where everyone can be safe.”

I asked Bharat how they measured success at The Food Project.  He was thoughtful and then said, “I know we can’t force these kids to change how they think, but we can give them a sense of what we are doing, to show them that it is fun, and to give them the experience of working with people who are different and with people who are the same in a safe place.  We are successful if we instill a good work ethic, an understanding of what hard work means, a sense that being part of a community is something special, and finally, that each of them can make a difference in the world.”

The eggplant, onions, garlic and peppers were turned into a grilled caponata, the cabbage and carrots into a sesame slaw, the greens and flowers were a gorgeous salad and the melon refreshed us at the end. We had brought sausages, chicken and cheese which rounded out vegetable rich menu.  As we gathered around the tables and dove into the scrumptious food Nuno and Jared had graciously grilled for us in the shade of the trees, we were once again reminded of the power of food and the table as common ground.  I’m not sure what everyone talked about, but everyone was talking.