Part 1 - Shadowing Adrienne
Hello fellow farming enthusiasts, my name is Dan and I am one of the new Business and Administrative interns at Green City Growers. I just finished my second year at Northeastern University majoring in EnvironmentalScience and minoring in Physics and Mathematics. Given my major and minors, most of my classes at Northeastern are centered around science and learning the fundamentals of each given subject. When I was looking for summer/fall internships last winter, I wanted a job that would not only give me experience in multiple aspects of a company but would also focus on the more business side of things (being that I will probably never get to take a business class in school and what better way to get the knowledge). So, long story short, here I am at Green City Growers!
Thus far most of my work has been centered around becoming familiar with the business, running some social media and going on adventures to Cambridge in pursuit of Sharpie markers. Yesterday though, I got to shadow one of our urban farmers, Adrienne, and see what it was like to be part of the horticultural team!
Our first trip was to Abt Associates to help the team harvest and maintain their garden. Abt is a member of our employee wellness program which strives to promote healthy eating at the workplace and all around happiness of the employees. We arrived in our rugged Green City Growers truck, wearing our dirty sneakers and ripped jeans and when we entered, we emerged into Abt’s clean, professional environment I felt a little out of place. We made our way through the office building like some foreign species in a wild forest carrying our oversized buckets and carts spilling over with kale and eggplant. Eventually we came to the back door which lead to an awesomely lush green area in the center of the office building. It was this super cool coexistence between office space (where you could literally see dozens of suits and ties typing on their desktops) and an abundant green area with a pond and geese and ducklings and, of course, a half dozen raised beds filled with lavish produce.
Upon our arrival to the green space, we were greeted by a bunch of office workers who were eager to help us garden. Our plan: harvest, weed, plant, fertilize, maintain. Seemed pretty simple to me, I knew all those words. When I was walking around looking for some kale to pick, I overheard some conversations between the coworkers, two girls in their 20’s.
“Oh is this your first time out here?”
“Yeah, I’ve always wanted to come out here and it’s really a lot more relaxing and fun than I thought.”
These two girls continued to work and harvest, sometimes screaming at the bugs, sometimes gasping about how cool the radishes were. It was cool to see because these girls who are the same age, have the same interests and work in the same office building, have never spoken to each other or met each other before, yet here they are, harvesting and planting and laughing together.
After some time had passed and some pressing conversation about what crops to planted next had concluded, the workers made some to-go bags with produce that they wanted to take home. Again, I overheard a conversation between one of the 20 year old girls and a woman who seemed as though she was an ABT veteran.
“What’s your name?”
“Debra.”
“Oh yeah I’ve seen your name on a lot of budget proposals, it’s nice to finally put a face to the name!”
Just hearing that made me step back a little bit and take this whole experience in. These two women, who work together on projects for their company, have never even met before. This garden, which seems so simple and so linear, has so many unforeseen, immeasurable benefits. Yes these gardens produce awesome food, yes these gardens spruce up the workplace, yes these gardens supply activities and a release for the employees of the company, but there are also so many more intangible consequences. Six four by eight suare foot raised gardens have transformed these coworkers into friends and cohabitants into teammates.
Stay tuned for the second part of my day….
