As the color fades from the trees and we brush the dirt from our hands, I'd like to share with you an update from the front lines of our work running a small nonprofit and building three new food forests with our neighbors this year.
It's not easy keeping the lights on at a community-run land trust while building food forests on constrained budgets, all while doing the counter-cultural work of showing up for the bees, the songbirds, and the health of our neighborhoods and each other.
Yet we keep showing up, not because it's easy, but because our planet is asking us to heal and regrow. While our culture tells us to prioritize parking over parkland and new development at the expense of old growth trees, nature and our neighbors boldly stand for a different path...
We must stand with Black and Brown neighbors after racist mortgage redlining practices have made their communities 3.3 degrees warmer with 16% less parkland.
We must stand for nature in our city after one of the hottest summers on record; protecting open space and returning it to nature with edible trees, native flowers, and wild, regenerative approaches.
We must stand for healthy, locally-grown food after the pandemic has increased food insecurity and laid bare the inequity and brokenness in our food system.
We must stand for each other, and for green spaces in our neighborhoods that bring us back to the land, where we reconnect, move our bodies, and cool down in the summer heat.
Our community-run food forests address these imperatives simultaneously and directly. In challenging periods of history, nature reminds us we must stand for her so that she can stand for us, and we're doing our best to answer that call.
So, stand with us and become a Monthly Donor to help us protect urban land and build new food forests.
Your contributions are what makes our coalition grow and thrive, and helps our lands to heal and regrow.
Individually we must, together we can,
Alex Alvanos
Associate Director
Boston Food Forest Coalition
November Events
Winterizing a Food Forest Workshop
Saturday, November 6th @ 9-11am 131 Cambridge Street, Boston MA 02114
Join the stewardship team of the Old West Church Community Food Forest for this workshop in preparation for the winter months ahead.
The workshop will cover all the basics of winterizing a food forest or perennial garden. We’ll cover mulching for healthy soil, pruning young fruit trees ahead of frost, and much more. Join in and bring your own questions around seasonal preparation!
This session will be led by Ben Crouch, owner and proprietor of Land of Plenty Gardens in Boston.
Saturday, November 20th @ 9-12pm 131 Cambridge Street, Boston MA 02114
Join the Old West Church Community Food Forest stewards for this special workshop centered on crop planning. We'll cover the basics of crop planning and seasonal considerations, while exploring how the seasons affect when crops prosper.
This food forest features some annual plant beds as well as perennials, and this workshop will cover a wide breadth of crop planning considerations as they pertain to annuals and perennials alike.
This workshop will be led by Apolo Catala, farm manager of OASIS on Ballou Avenue Urban Farm. Apolo is also an urban farm designer and a project coordinator for the Southern New England Farmers of Color Collaborative.
New Volunteer Mornings at The Boston Nature Center Food Forest
Sundays @ 10-12pm
500 Walk Hill Street, Mattapan MA 02126
As winter approaches and daylight savings returns yet again, the stewards of the Boston Nature Center continue to work tirelessly to care for their beautiful space in Mattapan.
Their weekly workday will now be set for Sunday mornings at 10am. These mornings center on gathering with community as much as they do on food forest projects, and all are welcome to join and get their hands in the dirt. Come enjoy the brisk mornings of late fall while volunteering with an awesome team.
No registration is necessary!
HAVE YOU HEARD?
NEW WEBSITE
To lift up all areas of our work, The Boston Food Forest Coalition is excited to announce the launch of our new website!
After months of collaboration between our stewards, staff, board, and partners, it's been so exciting and rewarding to finally share it with our community — that's you!
Visit bostonfoodforest.org to explore!
NEW MONTHLY DONORS PROGRAM
We're thrilled to introduce our new Monthly Donors program. Monthly donations directly support the creation of new food forests in neighborhoods across Boston.
Our Monthly Donors will receive special updates from BFFC to let them know just how much of a difference their support makes.
We hope you'll consider becoming a Monthly Donor, and becoming a part of the local solution to our universal challenges.
The stewardship team of the Ellington Community Food Forest hosted an amazing Saturday workshop & tour day on Saturday, October 16th, welcoming neighbors, community members and stewards of other BFFC sites to attend. In the morning, folks collaborated on removing invasive plants from the food forest. After lunch, lead stewards Ms. Thelma and Ms. Estella gave an amazing tour of the garden, complete with storytelling on how the space came to be. The day wrapped up with a general discussion about how food forests contribute to our communities and to the city, as we all face the reality of climate change and its impacts on our lives.
Leland Street Cooperative Garden hosted their first ever 5-day Timber Framing Workshop from October 22nd-26th. Nine students completed the full course. They gained valuable skills and new knowledge in timber framing and in sustainable building, which several of the students will put directly to use in their careers in this field. The Leland stewardship team organized a scholarship program for this workshop so that folks with different access to finances could participate. The Leland team now has the frame built for their long-awaited garden shed!
The stewards of the Boston Nature Center Food Forest hosted a planting & volunteer day on Sunday, October 10th. Throughout the day, this group collaborated to aerate the soil, prep and lay cardboard, propagate and plant new perennials, weed, incorporate additional soil, and water all new plantings. They planted 70 plants in total, featuring close to 40 different varieties! These new plants will add nutrients to the soil, increase pollination capacity, grow food, add biodiversity, and create a new learning space for future permaculturists, locals, and students.
The Old West Church Community Food Forest has been bustling with activity, even with the cold weather setting in. The stewardship group at this food forest has hosted workshops with local educators and community members, as well as with school groups through the West End Branch of the Boston Public Library and Cityscapes, Boston. This space offers a vibrant space in which to teach and learn about food, food justice, and care of the earth — and this fall has been full of that!
The Egleston Community Orchard in Jamaica Plain received a bit of a makeover during the community work day hosted on Saturday, October 9th. Stewards of the space, as well as neighbors and volunteers, gathered together for a few hours to tackle some pressing projects in the space — mulching paths and beds, building new bed borders (pictured above), and clearing out weeds. New stewards have been coming together to care for the Egleston Orchard throughout the pandemic, and have recently begun weekly meetings on Wednesday to connect as a team.
Building and development at BFFC's three newest food forest sites continues to chug along this fall, with transformation evident at all three — Edgewater Food Forest at River Street (pictured above), Savin Hill Wildlife Garden, and Uphams Corner Community Food Forest. Each of these sites has a vibrant and active stewardship team working alongside our landscaping partners to create the food forests of their dreams, for their communities and their neighborhoods.
Every dollar donated keeps fruit on the trees and boots on the land.
If you're inspired to support the work of bringing more land equity and community cohesion to Boston, please consider a one-time or recurring donation to BFFC.
