This farm feeds their spirits, too
Wedged between triple-deckers on a scruffy side street off Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchester, it's not where you'd expect to find a thriving little city farm brimming with rows of squash, tomatoes, raspberry bushes, and even greenhouses. But the reVision Urban Farm, made up of three formerly vacant lots near Franklin Field that have been converted into an acre of organic gardens, is about upending traditional notions of what a farm can be and who it can benefit.
Started in 1990, the farm is part of a nonprofit effort run by Victory Programs to assist homeless mothers and their children. The reVision House shelter, near two of the farm's three plots, houses up to 22 young mothers and families and offers them classes and job training while in transition to a more permanent living situation, said Matt Kochka, the farm's full-time crop manager.
Bordered by a white picket fence, the fields grow an array of everyday vegetables such as carrots, zucchini, tomatoes, and cucumbers, plus slightly more exotic fare like callaloo, collard greens, and sweet potatoes at the request of patrons, said Kochka.
Despite the weedy soil, ever-present pests, and persistent squash and zucchini thieves, the farm is surprisingly fertile, yielding 5,300 pounds of produce last year, 200 pounds more than the state average for its size, he said.
Even the back porches of reVision House have been repurposed into three stories of small greenhouses filled with hydroponic gardens and an experimental tilapia fish farm. The latter hasn't been very successful, said Kochka, because of frequent power outages the neighborhood experiences.
Each season, the farm offers paid internships for up to eight shelter residents to give them some job experience and build valuable life skills.
"When I first got here I wasn't all that interested" in working on the farm, said Joanne Lynch, a 21-year-old mother who has been living at reVision House with her young son for about seven months. At first, Lynch said, working in a field sounded pretty unappealing, with little to recommend it other than proximity to her son's daycare. But since starting three weeks ago, Lynch said she's come to like it, especially writing for the farm's biweekly newsletter. And while it is physically demanding and dirty work, there's little time for the boredom of a retail job to set in, she said.
"There's usually something to be done; the time goes by fast," said Lynch. "I think I'm learning a lot, especially since I have a 2-year-old. I'm not really a vegetable eater," but says she's impressed with how good the garden squash has been, and plans to serve them more often to help her son develop good eating habits.
When city slickers get past the heat, bugs, and dirt, "it really is fun to eat what you've grown," said assistant grower Jolie Olivetti, who trains the resident interns and supervises farm volunteers.
"It's amazing how many different areas of life farming touches," said Olivetti. In addition to gardening, residents learn about everything from customer service while working the farm stand and Fields Corner farmers' market, to nutrition and cooking with the produce they tended to and picked; to problem-solving and prioritizing.
In partnership with Mass. Audubon's Drumlin Farms in Lincoln, reVision also runs a small Community Supported Agriculture program for city dwellers who can't make it out to the suburbs or who believe driving there has negative environmental impact, said Kochka.
For $530 a share, members get a weekly sampling of the farm's output from mid-June to October. ReVision grows 30 percent of the produce and Drumlin the rest. Since most of the 75 members can't get over to Dorchester each week, most pick up their boxes at spots in Jamaica Plain, Cambridge, Somerville, and Milton.
Volunteer Lydia Eccles drops by the farm once a week and has found the experience rewarding. "It really seems visionary to me. It's not just sitting in an office talking about doing good somewhere else in the world," she said. It is "producing benefits in the community I live in."
"It's not only useful in terms of producing food, but it's part of a larger idea that can have an impact and spread," said Eccles. Noting the lack of green space in her Chinatown neighborhood, she said: "It's very satisfying to be eating something I helped to weed and pick."
Christina Pazzanese can be reached at cpazzanese@globe.com.
