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 →

New School on the Block

By Mackenzie Klema

Harvesting Wheat in Essex

Check out our friend Noah. We helped him harvest wheat last Saturday.

Wheat Harvesting

Photo by Heather Atwood

Nuestros Amigitos

By Meg Little

As nine o’clock neared on Friday morning, I was pulling in in front of the Brick House, feeling a mix of nervousness and excitement. Today was our first Gardening with Kids class and we were to have a handful of three to five year-old Spanish-speaking kids under our supervision for two hours.

As I reached our garden beds, I was introduced to an eleven year-old neighborhood boy named Luis. I was told he would be joining us for the class. “Great”, I told him, “you can help us teach the little ones!” He seemed excited. As I showed him around he told me he moved from Puerto Rice to the States a month ago. He had no experience with English, giving me a great opportunity to practice my rusty Spanish. “How do you like it here?” I asked. “I like it a lot so far” he told me. After showing him around for a few minutes a group of children showed up. Our attention was quickly filled by little energetic children who wanted to touch, taste, smell, and draw everything at the same time. As we showed them how to plant seeds, identify plants, and water the pots, my mind kept wandering to Luis, who sat quietly and watched the kids running around. I thought about how difficult it must be for him and so many others like him who have (so to speak) had their roots pulled out from underneath them to be replanted in foreign soil with people that speak a different language!

Ten-thirty came and went and our two families of kids headed back from where they came, with pots full of seeds ready to grow. Luis hung around as we packed up our things and discussed how everything went. At the end of the two hours his father came to get him and I eavesdropped as I packed my bag. “Sabes que es?” (Do you know what this is?) he asked his father as he pointed to a watermelon plant. No, his father said, and I listened as he told him what each plant was. He continued to tell him what they did and what he planted and as I listened, I could hear the pride and excitement in his voice. “Nos vemos” Luis said to me as I bid them goodbye, and I noticed how less reserved he seemed.  I left feeling elated. This is really what this Summer Workshop Series is all about, I thought to myself. It’s not about making money or building your resume or quantifying our success. Real success comes from the quality of the experience for each person who feels moved to be a part of our classes. Real success comes from knowing that we improved one person’s day, be it through someone learning how to change a flat, someone slowing down their busy day in a yoga class, or being able to show off to their dad about what they learned that day.

As I walked away from Luis I considered how lucky I felt to be a part of this. How lucky I am to be able to take part in a program that focuses on the here and now to create real-time solutions for everyday people, like my new friend Luis.