Growing food, belonging and community

Justin Munroe of Grow Nashua delivered the following remarks at a Foundation community event in September:

In the forest there is an underground web that is woven throughout the soil that acts as a network for sharing resources between neighboring trees.

The trees use their network to move resources to support neighbors around them.

For example, the older trees will share sugar to help seedlings survive.

Or they’ll release a defense signal that warns of incoming threats like bacteria or insects.

No agenda for doing this.

They’re just trees.

This is the type of network that Grow Nashua is building between ALL our Nashua neighbors.

And we’re doing it with strategically designed programs that center around FRESH FOOD.

Which is great, because it allows us to attract pretty much ANY neighbor, because everyone loves food:

Eating it, talking about it, sharing it.

Grow Nashua has four programs: community gardens, school gardens, the Lil’ Free Veggie Truck and Curbside Compost.

Things started about a decade ago when I actually volunteered with a group that helped welcome New Americans to Nashua.

From talking to families I heard that many families traveled to the United States with seeds in their pockets and they were ready to plant.

So we built our first community garden, and neighbors joined from 12 different countries. We laughed, we talked, we shared.

One day one of our gardeners, Salama, who had a strawberry plant that hadn’t produced all season, finally found two strawberries!  She ran up to me so excited, and a little boy that was in the garden came over to see what was going on.  Without hesitation she crouched down and gave both to him. It was a beautiful moment. She had no agenda for doing this.  This was just people being good to one another.

This community garden set Grow Nashua’s focus on serving our most vulnerable community members.

To date we’ve built 160 plots spread throughout 7 neighborhoods.

We also built three Elementary School Gardens, and we run programming for 4th & 5th graders.

This is great because it connects us with the next generation, with our future. Many of these students have never had a garden, never mind tasted something fresh picked. So when we grow all the ingredients for a fresh salad with homemade strawberry vinaigrette dressing that they just made…Ooh, that’s where it’s at. It gets them understanding the food system. It gets them understanding how many nutrients are in fresh veggies. And ultimately, how those two factors impact our bodies and the environment around us.

Then we realized people needed more fresh veggies than what they could grow, so we got creative started a Lil’ Free Veggie Truck.

This is where we go out every morning during the summer and we gather veggies from backyard gardeners and farmers that have extra.

How many people in here garden? (Show of hands). Great so you know you always have too many zucchinis and happy to share! How many people shop at the grocery store? (Show of hands). I know, loaded question. But the point is, this is how easy it is to participate in Grow Nashua. Neighbors like you donate veggies each morning and then we drive through low-income neighborhoods and share free fresh veggies! We even have a little ice cream jingle that we play on the veggie truck…(As you can imagine it takes the kids a minute to come around.)

We also run a Curbside Compost service that diverts food waste!

We gather it daily in buckets,  and have already turned 1 million pounds into electricity and compost for the gardens.  This is a huge ecological win and also a big win for our New American neighbors, as the job doesn’t require much English, it has flexible scheduling, and pays a high hourly wage.  So, if you’ve ever thrown away left-overs or a banana peel. You can be part of Grow Nashua.

So whether neighbors join a specific program or sign up to volunteer, the vision of Grow Nashua remains the same.

Our neighbors are who we are.  Their gifts, talents, and voices are critical to our success together at this moment in time.

Just like the trees, we can trust one another. We can share resources freely, with no agenda. We can truly know our neighbors and care about them as people.

Imagine the Collective Strength in a community like this?

I know I can.

And it reminds me of a quote, that I’ll leave us on:

“When the root is DEEP, there is no reason to fear the wind.”