Appeared in Summer 2012 Northeast Flavor, New England's Food & Wine magazine
Good Medicine
Integrating the healing power of
organic farming at Serving Ourselves Farm with renewal of life skills at
Boston’s Long Island Homeless Shelter
Laura Pope
“Working at
the farm, tending the gardens, is particularly suited to recovery. It’s a place
to quiet the mind, meditate and focus on the tasks at hand. Growing food is a
very clear activity; it’s not complex in the way a lot of the world is. The sea
breeze makes it a perfect environment to work outdoors.”
So says
Erica La Fountain, farm manager at the four-acre, certified organic Serving
Ourselves Farm at Long Island Shelter in Boston Harbor, about the very real
positives of aligning the organic farm ethic with social change. The farm provides
food to the homeless, trains homeless individuals in a wide variety of skills,
attracts volunteers, offers a sanctuary to troubled youth while also serving
the community at large.
Each growing
season, the farm yields 25,000 pounds of fresh organic food—vegetables, fruits
and herbs, eggs and honey – that helps to provide 2,000 meals each day for 800 homeless
persons at the Long Island and Woods-Mullen shelters. Some of that bounty also
lands in local restaurants – including the swank Hamersley’s Bistro, Ashmont
Grill, Tavolo and Barbara Lynch Gruppo, while 20 percent goes on display for
sale at farmers’ markets in Boston.
The brainchild
of Boston Mayor Tom Menino, Serving Ourselves Farm was founded as a vocational
training program in 1996, as part of the Boston Public Heath Commission’s
Homeless Services Bureau. The farm also partners with the City’s
Office of Jobs and Community Services, which funds Youth Options Unlimited,
YOU, a training and employment program for court-involved youth. For seven
weeks each summer, a large group of youth from YOU arrives at the farm to lend
helping hands.
“There are
so many different aspects of work and training here,” explains La Fountain, who
brings a background in social service, organic and community farming to SOF.
“There’s the seeding, tending and harvesting, then the Culinary Arts Program in
the shelter kitchen where trainees learn to prepare meals, as well as methods
to preserve harvest foods such as pickling and drying herbs,” she adds. “We
also maintain an apiary for the honey and to help pollinate the plants, and
tend our free range laying hens. Our adult trainees become mentors to our youth
participants.”
The farm is one
component of the Serving Ourselves Program (SOS), an integrated,
holistic program which focuses on developing basic work and life skills, while
providing services to homeless individuals. Each season, the farm employs as
many as six client workers, who receive shelter, meals, case management,
education services, health services, and counseling while in the program. After
graduation from the program, each client worker is helped with finding work and
housing.
In addition to the training programs, the SOF utilizes the Community
Supported Agriculture, or CSA model. Those who purchase
farm shares in CSA are given a reusable bag of fresh produce every week
throughout the growing season, a delectable stash gathered by trainees and
volunteers.
“We
emphasize kitchen staples in our plantings – potatoes, tomatoes, greens,
onions, carrots and summer squash,” says La Fountain. “Then we plant 30 other
vegetables in smaller quantities for our culinary arts program, farmers’
markets and the CSA, such as garlic, radishes, leeks, beans, broccoli, turnip,
kale, beets, scallions, cherry tomatoes and eggplant.”
Like any truly sustainable and successful program, collaboration
and inclusion are key factors. “The Boston Public Health Commission has a
unique public/private partnership with the Friends of Boston’s Homeless, a non-profit charged with raising funds for our program. They recently hosted our first Celebrity Harvest Dinner. Each celebrity chef prepared a course for more than 100 diners, raising $25,000.
Ultimately, results are what make
the Farm such a remarkable tool in transforming lives.
“Our
trainees interface with all the visitors and volunteers at the farm. They share
knowledge with others about their tasks, they answer questions, they teach.
We’ve had trainees go on to jobs directly tied to farm skills – in the florist
business or in landscaping. A lot of them lose weight and cook better meals as
a consequence of working here. In the end, our great success rate in job
placement comes from transferable skills learned here: accountability,
responsibility, respect. Serving Ourselves Farm is all about a great physical
and mental recovery.”
