Introducing Pioneer Valley SoS 2012

Just weeks after our program ended last summer, the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts was hit by Hurricane Irene. Bad. 

I was in North Carolina for the Grand Aspirations National Gathering as the storm worked its way up the East Coast.  The GA crew was fine, albeit delayed in our travel plans.  But when I got back to Franklin County, the home of program, I could see Irene had done serious damage.  Turners Falls and Greenfield, the hubs of activity for Summer of Solutions, were spared the worst of it, but near-by neighbors in Shelburne Falls, Conway and many other small towns lost roads, homes, electricity, farm crops, animals and more.  Seeing news footage of the main bridge being wiped out in Shelburne Falls was devastating.  We had helped partner Co-op Power to weatherize several homes in this beautiful and tight-knit community.  

A big lesson of 2011 for me has been that unprecedented weather in our rural river valley and the surrounding mountain towns is incredibly devastating.  This lesson came in waves: first the tornado which struck Springfield and other towns south of us in June, causing massive damage, then the hurricane in August, and most recently with the surprise Halloween snowstorm, which dumped a foot of snow overnight and knocked out power for almost a week in many parts of the region.  Narrow mountain roads aren’t built to withhold major flooding; aging bridges across the Connecticut and Deerfield Rivers can’t handle 100 Year Floods every year.   In an area which depends on agriculture, many small farmers had their worst season in years and lost thousands of dollars in crops.  

While it has been a sobering year to the realities of climate change, I feel hopeful for what we are building in the Pioneer Valley.  I also feel a new commitment to learning how to sustain ourselves and our communities in a changing climate. We will be at it again in 2012. 

Pioneer Valley Summer of Solutions is based in Greenfield and Turners Falls, MA, two towns in western Massachusetts along the Connecticut River.  These towns were rooted in manufacturing industries and are traditional crossing points for the surrounding communities, as far back as when the Pocumtuc tribe lived on the land. 

SoS in 2012 will continue our farming and community education projects from 2011 and expand in new directions.  In 2011 we helped start the Summer Workshop Series, hosted at the Brick House Community Resource Center in Turners, which was made up of dozens of free classes on topics from wood-working to self-defense to herbal medicine.  We will continue this partnership with the Brick House, including the Snack Garden, which we planted and tended with Spanish-speaking neighbors kids in the Kids Gardening Class. 

We also are continuing a fruitful partnership with Harvest Moon Farm, across the river in Greenfield.  We started a “work-share” in 2011, helping with the Gwen and Eric’s crops in exchange for a quarter acre plot of our own.  We’ll be expanding to grow more vegetables to sell, and expand options for Greenfield residents to eat healthy, affordable and local food and be a part of its production.   We also will be using the Greenfield Community Kitchen to develop our own prepared food product.  

As a program in a small, rural community (combined Greenfield and Turners are under 25,000 people) we face challenges and advantages.  Living in the heart of amazing natural resources reminds me how we depend on them for everyday existence, and even in rural communities, access is lacking.  Learning how to create prosperity in a community which has been abandoned by many commercial industries is more than a summer experience, but we’re lucky to work with a lot of other dedicated residents. 

Myself (Martha Pskowski) and Erika Linenfelser are returning as second year program leaders, and we’re hiring new local leaders.  Erika and I are both students at Hampshire College in near-by Amherst.  I am excited to deepen my connections in this community and explore ways to make more self-sustaining options for youth in Franklin County, who often relocate to find opportunities.  SoS is an exciting way to connect youth to older residents of the area to create a shared vision for the community.  I also can’t wait for more harrowing bike rides on our narrow roads, and refreshing swims in the Connecticut River after work days.  If you make it out to the Pioneer Valley, you’re sure to be charmed by our beautiful surroundings, and taken aback by the vitality of our local community. 

 

Support SoS Pioneer Valley 2012!

Pioneer Valley has been accepted as a Summer of Solutions program from 2012!  We’re excited for round 2 and are already contemplating ideas to make our program the best yet.

You can read about all the programs slated for 2012 (19!) in this great post on the Solutionaries blog. 

I can’t help but show off the map:

View Larger Map

Now that I have you all excited, there’s a simple ask that ends THIS TUESDAY.  Please help us out!

Grand Aspirations is in the running for the Chase Community Giving competition right now.  If we’re among the Top 100 vote-getters by Tuesday at noon we will win $25,000 for 2012 programs.  This would go directly to stipends for the program leaders who make the vision of GA a reality.  This competition is run through Facebook.

1. Click this link.
2. “Like” Chase Community Giving
3. Vote for Grand Aspirations to win $25k.
4. Post it on your Facebook and maybe tell a few friends about it.

While I have more than a few reservations about taking money from Chase, a major target of the Occupy Wall Street protests which I’ve been taking part in, I think the benefits outweigh the costs.  Last year, we were the recipient of $50,000 from the Pepsi Corporation, through a similar online voting competition.  This money allowed Summer of Solutions to expand in several meaningful ways.  We could pay more low-income program leaders and leaders from the communities our programs are based in.  We were able to provide a level of accountability like never before.  And we didn’t need to plug Pepsi once!  (We were much more likely to be drinking local Kombucha or People’s Pint (at non-program venues of course). )

There is a wealth (pun-intended) of writing on the perils of foundation funding.  I’d suggest reading some excerpts from The Revolution will not be Funded by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. The advantage of voting-based funding like Chase or Pepsi is Grand Aspirations continues to define it’s own mission, instead of bending to meet the criteria of a foundation focused on a certain issue.  We don’t need to break our work down into statistics to prove we’re worth funding; the support of our communities is what counts to win.  (That said, we received a grant from a really wonderful, community-focused foundation this year, the New England Grassroots Environment Fund, which is the exception to the rule of foundation funding!).

So please, take a minute, vote for Grand Aspirations, and stay tuned for more updates soon!  Also share this link and story with anyone else you feel would support our work.

Thanks from the whole crew! 

Capping off SoS Pv 2011

We completed a one-page summary of our program this summer to use for documentation and promotion purposes.  The link below goes to a PDF version (which you’re free to use and distribute if you like) and below that is the text of the document.

sospv1page.pdf

Summer of Solutions Pioneer Valley

Summer of Solutions Pioneer Valley (PVSoS) is a program in youth leadership and sustainable community development that equips participants to address social economic and environmental issues in their communities and creates tangible outcomes for the local community.

In an age of austerity youth are learning they have to create their own solutions and build sustainable, just livelihoods. Lead by youth for youth, Summer of Solutions takes into account both local needs and assets in its development of long-term projects.

Summer of Solutions Pioneer Valley has completed its first summer taking on these questions in the town of Turners Falls in Massachusetts. Drawing participants from around the area, ages 18 to 25, the program looked at the unique challenges of post-industrial rural towns and started to craft a vision for the future.

Working in close coordination with local organizations and individuals the programs pursued four main projects in 2011:

●      Free community education: Partnering with the Brick House Community Resource Center in Turners, SoS PV and other community members organized and ran a Summer Workshop Series that was open and free of charge, to community members of all ages. Participants helped develop the program structure and helped to facilitate courses, including comparative religions, book making, wild edibles, stone wall masonry, gardening for children and many more.­­
●      Sustainable agriculture: A cornerstone of PVSoS this summer was collaboration with a small local organic farm in Greenfield, Harvest Moon Farm, to grow our own produce and assist in planting, maintenance, harvest and marketing.  SoS PV also made a Snack Garden at the Brick House and engaged local youth in its maintenance.
●      Energy efficiency: Participants received professional training in air sealing and weatherization from Co-op Power, a Greenfield-based energy efficiency and renewable energy cooperative and weatherized two local buildings.  Additionally SoS PV researched energy efficiency for renters in Franklin County, and began distribute of their factsheet on this sorely over-looked subject.
●      Bicycle access:  Participants developed skills to maintain their own bicycles, and fix bicycles that have been abandoned.  A half dozen bikes have been repaired for community use and the creation of a local bike share program is in beginning stages.

Contact:
pioneervalleysolutions@gmail.com
413-489-1805
pioneervalleysolutions.org

Lighting the Way

Saturday was the yearly Turners Falls Block Party, a big event that shuts down Avenue A, the main street in town, and brings out neighbors and friends. These are also the final days of our program, which officially ends Monday. I slept in Saturday morning and got a slow start to the day. I was nodding off over my book in the park when my housemate Sara called me to come down to the parade. I walked up the block to watch the BMX bikers, marching band and Lawn Chair Brigade parade down the street. My head was weary so I headed back to the apartment for some coffee before our stint tabling with our renters energy efficiency materials.

While earlier in the day I’d been contemplating sleeping through the afternoon, once I returned to the Block Party around 3pm I didn’t leave until late in the evening. I started tabling at the Brick House Community Resource Center’s table on Avenue A. The catalogs for the Summer Workshop Series, which we helped organize, had run out almost immediately so I coordinated getting more copies made. I got some soul food from a vendor and caught up with my co-leader Jesse and his friends then headed back to the table.

The Block Party brings out just about everybody in town, and I watched them all pass by from our table. Unlike at the beginning of the summer when most of these faces would have been unfamiliar, many of these folks I now consider my friends and collaborators. People would stop by the table in a steady stream, pick up some materials, chat a bit and move along. I saw Danny, whose farm we’d helped out at two weeks ago, kicking his hacky sack along; I saw Nancy and Becca from Greening Greenfield and gave them a handful of our energy efficiency materials; Brick House staff and volunteers rotated through the table; kids from our gardening class passed by with their moms, eating tasty treats; Chris from Co-op Power and his family stopped by. Before I knew it, hours had gone by and it was time to break down the table.  The Block Party was far from over though.

A ways down the street, my co-leaders Erika and Jesse and our friends Ariel and Emma were engrossed in constructing lanterns for the Lantern Parade which ends the event.  These we’re just any paper lanterns.  They had collected sticks from the park to construct the frames and were now in the process of paper-macheing the outer layer, which would be lit up by the light inside.  The theme was water, to honor the river that wraps around town.  Erika was making a bird with a fish hanging from its mouth, Ariel had constructed a majestic multi-colored wave, Emma had a fish hanging from a hook, and Jesse was building an elaborate fishing scene.  I marveled at the intricacy of their work and the hours they had poured in.

At night fall, the Lantern Parade began, starting down Avenue A.  Little kids held their lanterns aloft, and older folks walked alongside.  The dark streets of Turners Falls were lit up by lanterns of all shapes and sizes.  We turned down to the canal and walked along it, all the way to Unity Park.  At the Park, we all circled around and took in the scene.  Blues, purples, and greens, all danced in the night sky.  The organizers then lit Thai lanterns, which can be launched into the sky.  We marveled as the fire inside the lanterns moved further and further away is it floated off, until it was just a speck in the sky. Our friends from Harvest Moon, Gwen and Eric, showed up just in time to catch the show. After the awards were handed out, we lingered in the park.  A meteor from the Pleiades shot above us.  We didn’t want the night to end, also knowing that our summer was coming to an end.  The Block Party had brought us all out for the day and reminded us that our connection to this place runs much deeper than a summer.  We’re all at different points in life, some looking for a job, some entering another year of school, but our time here has shaped us all in different ways.  Surrounded by our friends in town, the Block Party was a beautiful culmination to a summer which at times had been challenging, but was always rewarding.

The Timeless Image of the Seed

In the organizing I’ve done in the past few years, be it social, food, or environmental justice, the image of planting a seed is an old favorite. Like the aphorism, “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for his life,” the seed analogy represents starting something and then letting it take off on its own. It’s a powerful metaphor. My mom always described seeds as being life-affirming. There’s nothing more magical than watching a seed germinate and soon become a vegetable, fruit, flower… In fact, I found this incredible statistic in the Fedco Seed Company’s Seed School packet, by Eli Kaufman,

“Consider the miracle of the seed. In just 100 days one tiny seed weighing no more than 1/250th of a gram matures into a 8 to 9 inch head of broccoli weighing a pound or more, better than a one hundred thousand-fold increase in just over three months. The most brazen stock market trader wouldn’t dream of such profits!”

Perhaps we can’t expect a hundred thousand-fold return, but nonetheless, Summer of Solutions is not immune to the seed analogy. In fact, these last few days, seeds have come to the forefront and seem a particularly apt lens to look through.

Monday night I facilitated a seed saving class at the Summer Workshop Series. We talked about the three types of seed saving: dry, wet, and fermented. Seed saving is the last (or first!) step in a closed circle farming loop. A seed is planted, grows leaves, produces flower, then fruits, and the fruits, in turn, produce more seeds. After all I’ve learned this summer, both in and out of the workshop series, I felt proud and grateful to facilitate a course. I was able to produce knowledge and this knoewledge can now be spread. Yesterday, we added to the asset maps that we’d made in the begining of the summer, and I felt very pleased to see that Mackenzie, who had attended my workshop, added “a little seed saving” to our list of shared knowledge.

Tuesday, we took a tour and helped out at Seeds of Solidarity, a farm and non-profit in Orange. The name draws on both literal and figurative seeds. When I asked co-owner Ricky Baruc who he was in solidarity with, he said, “Well, everyone!…The planet, all people, all animals and insects….” To acheive this, Ricky and Deb live off the grid, have year-round produce from their hoophouses, which feeds them as well as the Co-op in town, and run a Seeds of Leadership program which gives Orange teenagers a chance to learn to farm, among other things. We spent our time weeding, rather than literally planting seeds, but I think the analogy still works. We forged a freindship with Deb, Ricky, and their intern Katherine. We built connections for the upcoming Garlic and Arts Festival. We shared a lot of cool ideas: about the universe, about building houses, about saving tomato seeds, about books to read. Like Gwen’s mystery “seeds from bottom of box” bag, who knows where one of those ideas might take any one of us.

As we approach the end of the summer, we’ve gone into hard-core reflection mode. Monday at Harvest Moon, we took breaks from field work to tie up loose ends in each project area. Tuesday at group dinner, we each set goals for after the summer–the next week, month, year, and five years. Yesterday, we added to our asset maps and talked about how we could collaborate with or build upon the networks, people, spaces, skills, knowlegedge, and materials that we haven’t yet. Then we reflected on each program, and then we moved to Unity Park for a series of personal reflections. Like the kombucha mothers that reproduce constantly and that various friends are constantly trying to pawn off on us, our potential has split and reproduced. There is the amazing potential for next year’s Summer of Solutions program, and there is the potential that each of us have in our respective communities, with the new skills that we have gained this summer. Our reflections have worked like planting seeds in the fertile ground of our potentials. What do we want to do? What barriers do we face? What resources do we have? Where can we challenge ourselves to improve?

Once a seed is planted, the hard work begins. I know that it is not merely a wait and see game. However, I know we have planted seeds of committment and seeds of supporting each other. I look forward to seeing what comes up,  and where that takes each of us!

Photoreel continued

Each week, we have a group dinner. Meg, Ryan, and Izzy have all been generous enough to have us over. But this week, we were back at the Cattail Ranch (aka our 4th street apartment or the SoS HQ) for some down south home cookin’

We made it onto the cover of the Greenfield Recorder yesterday. The picture shows us working on our bikes in Unity Park!

Tomatoes from our plot at Harvest Moon are rolling in faster than we can eat them!

Erika created a lovely, handmade guest book for our house. We have guests almost every day, and at this point, our guests are trained well enough to exhort other guests to sign.

Duncan's self-portrait zucchini stamp is the basis of the cover

Photo highlights!

This gallery contains 14 photos.

It’s a cliche, but a picture may actually be worth a thousand words. What better way to catch up on all of the exciting things we’ve been up to?! Coop Power has kept us busy, air sealing, insulating, and exploring … Continue reading →