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| Dear Friends,
What a difference a week makes! Last week we were still thinking we could host farmer-activist Karen Washington and were making plans for all this to "blow over."
Now, here we are reorganizing our work, instituting new policies and protocols, prioritizing health for others and ourselves and trying to imagine a future post-pandemic. It is all SO MUCH!
In this edition of our newsletter, we share our best guess at a plan for Spring 2020, food resources for New London, and an ode to the humble, hearty dandelion!
Stay Healthy, Stay Connected, Stay Well,
FRESH New London
PS: We are looking for new terms to describe the 6 feet we try to keep between ourselves these days! Hoping to get "compassionate distancing" to trend! Open to other terms to replace "social distancing!" |
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| | TABLE OF CONTENTS:
A Note from Alicia, FRESH Executive Director
Food Resources for New London
Eat your Weeds: We Aren't Kidding
We are All Farmers Now
A Plan to Keep Going |
| | | MOVING FORWARD: Humbly, Carefully and Compassionately |
| A Note from Alica, Executive Director at FRESH:We're busy here at FRESH thinking about important physical distancing recommendations and how to care for each other now and when we start to shift back into our typical routines.
We're getting creative and innovative (as we always do here in NL!) about ways to move forward and keep growing food. That means that while there will be no volunteer workdays or in person programs (until further notice), we can still find ways to share information and that you, me and everyone on the FRESH staff can still grow food.
At a recent staff meeting I said: "We are all farmers now." That was in reference to FRESH staff duties, but it really can apply to you too. On a sunny day, think about how and where you can start a garden at home, plant your pea seeds if you already have a garden and stay tuned to FRESH to hear more about ways to order plants online for our April plant sale.
Just be clear, FRESH will not host any volunteer workdays, events or in person meetings until further notice. Our office is not open to the public. But the Community Gardens are all still open. If you choose to visit the gardens, please observe proper distance from others - at least 6 feet, use only the tools and materials that you need and then wipe them down with the wipes that will be available in the garden sheds (by Friday afternoon). And wash your hands for at least 40 seconds before and after you come to the garden.
Stay tuned as we will continue to share information about food resources in our community, post videos and articles about food justice and look into all the ways we can virtually "connect communities."
Stay well everyone,
Alicia |
| | | | We have circulated this on social media and will update as we learn more. This is current as of 3/19/2020. |
| | Get a Little Yellow in Your Diet! Eat Your Weeds |
| | | | We Are All Farmers Now: FRESH Response to COVID-19 |
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The work of FRESH New London happens in the buckets: Empowering Youth, Connecting Communities and Growing Food. We are most successful when our projects bring those three buckets together-- as we planned with the building garden boxes or the CSA, where young people would get to apply their food growing knowledge and learn about food justice by being a part of a larger community doing the work!
But the need for compassionate distancing makes so much of what we typically do impossible. We can’t convene 15-20 young people to plant seed trays while discussing the brutal and exploitative history of agriculture; we can’t host large gatherings for farm work, collective learning or food sharing. The coronavirus outbreak exposed the systemic inadequacies in our public health infrastructure, but it also revealed what FRESH staff, board members, youth participants and volunteers talk about all the time: our food system is broken.
As Evan Fraiser wrote recently in The Conversation, “We live in a wondrous age when global supply chains seamlessly link farmers and consumers using the principles of “just enough, just in time. For years, companies have worked hard to keep inventories low, timing shipments to balance supply and demand using knife-edge accuracy.… But with this abundance — and convenience — comes a hidden cost that COVID-19 has exposed: a loss of resilience. Our global food system depends on the tendrils of international trade to wrap the world in an ever more complex system of buyers, sellers, processors and retailers, all of whom are motivated to keep costs low and operations lean.”
A loss of resilience..... That is what the Five Year Plan for Urban Agriculture worked so hard to address and rectify. And that is what FRESH is going to focus on as we move forward into the uncharted territory created by pandemic.
“We are all farmers now,” Alicia said at the beginning of our COVID-19 staff meeting and it is the core of FRESH’s work that we are going to be putting all of our energy into over the next month, perhaps the next few months. We will continue to fight for a just food system and will continue to be in solidarity. It will just look and feel a different for now.
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| | Whats The Plan? How Can I Help? |
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It is going to be a challenge to continue working towards our mission when we can’t work hand in hand with any of you, but we are going to try!!!
We are focusing all our energy on maintaining basic systems (grant deadlines, communications) and growing food... as long as we all stay healthy (that is now part of our work and we are working hard on that as well. And it is no small task.
Guided by Ledge Light Health district, the FRESH Advisory Board and our fiscal sponsor ThirdSector MissionWorks, FRESH staff are observing a series of compassionate distancing protocols, including no more than two staff in the office at one time, more than 6 feet apart at all times, no face to face meetings of more than two people, and 6 feet distancing and tool/surface wipe down procedures for all outside work projects. Thus far, no one on the FRESH staff, board or close circle of volunteers has exhibited any virus symptoms. Through our fiscal sponsor, FRESH staff has adequate sick time and vacation to allow for quarantining if necessary.
In mid March that means planting tray after tray of seeds and then caring for seedlings as they grow, clearing out beds and planting early spring crops like peas and lettuces, and getting the gardens ready for community gardeners to take care of their beds while maintaining appropriate hygiene and distancing.
How can you help? You can contribute to our mission work in lots of ways:
>Order a garden box for your home
>Sponsor a Mission CSA for a low-income New London family
>Make a contribution to support FRESH’s offering of Community garden Beds for a low-cost sliding scale
>Garden your own yard or porch
>Clean up trash throughout your neighborhood and safeguard the blue economy and the green economy in the process.
>Support our Virtual Plant Sale at the end of April (standing in for our in-person Early Plant Sale which typically attracts more than 100 customers) where you can order plants online and we will offer curbside drop off of the plants you ordered. We could use some computer help with that so if you are a database or systems person, reach out to us. >Share resources, share information, share what you can - connect, connect, connect in the ways we still can.
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WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT
Interested in supporting FRESH with a tax-deductible donation?
Of course you are! Follow this link: http://www.freshnewlondon.org/support-us |
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