I’m Hannah, one of the new Business Development Interns at Green City Growers for the fall. I’ve relocated to Somerville from the state of Vermont to follow my passion for urban farming, and there’s no better place to get my hands dirty than with Green City Growers.
I was surrounded by local food and farms growing up in rural Vermont. Between my family’s backyard vegetable garden every summer, and a winter farmers market of local farms, I didn’t know how lucky I was to grow up with year-round access to fresh produce. A favorite memory of mine is of summers spent harvesting each night’s dinner from the backyard and coming up with new ways to use an overabundance of zucchini, for example. It wasn’t until leaving home for college that I realized what I had, being able to harvest my own produce and know my local farmers, and that I had a passion for growing my own food.
After college this passion took me to France to work on organic farms through WWOOF. It was a rewarding experience to learn how a self-sustaining farm works, and what a farming career looks like. These farmers are some of the hardest working people I have ever met. They find reward in being able to feed themselves from their own farm while making a living in a way that is also good for the planet.
For the rest of us who are not inclined toward farming life, and enjoy living in urban areas, there’s the wonderful world of urban farming and businesses like Green City Growers. I’m excited to be an intern at GCG to learn how I and everyone else can live in a city like Boston AND farm just enough to get our hands a little dirty. Growing your own food is rewarding. The WWOOFing farmers will tell you this. The connection you get to your food, nurturing it from seed to plate; there’s nothing else like it.
So my challenge to you is to start your own urban farm this fall, it's not too late. It doesn’t have to be big! Growing a few herbs in containers like milk crates can be fun, and delicious. LEARN HOW to farm in milk crates Thursday Sept 18 4-5pm. There are plenty of greens and root vegetables you can plant now to harvest before winter, or you can over-winter in cold frames for harvest in early spring. Learn everything you need to know about extending the growing season at the Season Extension Workshop.
There’s only one question: challenge accepted?
