World Ark Magazine - January/February 2009 - (Page 31)

like all good local agriculture projects, the food Project creates a community out of its workers and supporters, who become linked to each other through the raising and exchange of food. Today, the project farms 31 acres outside the rural town of lincoln. it has also rehabilitated and is actively farming several plots around boston, including the one lennie’s crew is working in dorchester, which was previously an abandoned lot filled with junked cars. More than a hundred teens participate each summer, and thousands volunteer year-round. Together, they produce a quarter-million pounds of vegetables annually, half of which is donated to hungerrelief organizations. Throughout the summer, the social change component of the program’s mission statement becomes one of its most salient characteristics, as participants learn more about food sovereignty and industrial versus sustainable farming and encounter hunger and poverty firsthand. Tyree Saunders, 14, is from the neighborhood of Mattapan, a predominantly black neighborhood home to many families who recently emigrated from the Caribbean. he says he applied to work with the food Program because his mother wanted him to get a summer job. (Participants are paid a stipend, which makes the program competitive with other summer jobs the kids might take.) “i thought i was going to be with cows,” says Tyree, a wiry, voluble young man with his hair in cornrows, who wants to be a veterinarian, and whose first choice was getting a job at the zoo. “but then i walked out and there was this huge field. i thought we wouldn’t be doing back-crushing labor, but we did.” That back-crushing labor, however, gives participants a much closer look at things they might not otherwise see: the amount of labor required to grow food and the many ways fresh produce can be prepared. each week, a chef from a wellknown local restaurant teaches participants how to prepare some of the food they are growing. The crews use these lessons, along with part of the harvest, to make a meal for a local shelter or soup kitchen. Since beginning the program, Tyree says he has considered becoming a chef. one of his most recent dishes, using carrots from a recent harvest, was a carrot, peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich. recently, his crew prepared lunch for the residents of the Pine Street inn, one of boston’s largest homeless shelters. “i’d never really seen homeless people before,” Tyree Food Project participants prepare for the farmers market. w w w. h e i f e r . o rg januar y/f e bruar y 2009 | wor ld a r k 31 http://www.heifer.org

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of World Ark Magazine - January/February 2009

World Ark Magazine - January/February 2009 Contents Letters For the Record The Good Life Asked and Answered Microfinance: A Lot for a Little Business is Buzzing in Honduras The World Grows Smaller Mixed Media Heifer Spirit Heifer Bulletin Calendar First Person

World Ark Magazine - January/February 2009

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