Westside Farm Project

Interview with Devin (9), Kemetree (10) and Detriz (7) – a.k.a. “Graveyard”, the BMX Garden Club.

Becky: What are your hobbies?
Devin: Ride around.
Kemetree: Hit jumps and do tricks I never done before.
Graveyard: I like to ride my bike and hit jumps – some that I never did. Read more

Westside Field Notes is presenting you with an important side note: Volunteer 1 hour of your time this summer by providing a workshop or meal to the Westside Farm Project’s “Green Streaks” summer program – free to Westside neighborhood kids, July 7th – August 27th, Wednesdays 10:30 – 11:30.  We also have space for an intern . . . Read more

It’s May 1st, about 6:00 p.m.  I’m watching a mare and stallion gallop around a pasture.  The grass is warm and green and the horses are in complete rapture.  A fox is pouncing on its prey while a heron glides overhead.  Peepers chirp ecstatically. Read more

We’re turning the soil with pitchforks, stretching our muscles after a long winter and yawning open like cherry tree blossoms…

We’re waiting for peas, spinach, beets, carrots and sunflowers to poke their sleepy heads through the soil.  Last year’s parsley has returned, along with some volunteer lettuce and kale plants.  The neighborhood kids are on spring break and have joined me in the garden every day this week.  They’re raring to go . . . so am I. Read more

“Seedfolks”, by Paul Fleischman, is an entertaining story of the haphazard creation of a community garden from thirteen different perspectives.  The book illustrates the complications of poverty and cross-cultural communication, without neglecting the essentials of romance, danger, suspense, and healing.  The story happens within a vacant, rat-infested, garbage-filled lot that “looked like no place for a garden…  Especially to a neighborhood of strangers…”. Read more

“Westside Field Notes” are about what’s happening on the ‘farm’, from the soil up to the hands that work it.  News should come weekly or biweekly.

This year we’re growing on three parcels in the Westside neighborhood of Pittsfield, MA.  You can find us on former vacant lots on Robbins Avenue and Linden Street, and at the Silvio Conte Community School.

Last month, when I met participants in the Westside Initiative (a city undertaking that supported the initiation of the Westside Farm Project), they were eager to expand neighborhood gardens, despite meager infrastructure and funding.  Their enthusiasm felt like being handed a fertile field with ample sunshine and irrigation. Read more