The new position of NOFA/Mass Land Care Coordinator is now filled, and the person who occupies it, Marilyn Castriotta, says a few years ago she dedicated the rest of her life to protecting the environment.
"I literally actually woke up one day realizing this was it," she said. "Like a light went off." She has her masters in anatomy and physiology and had been doing diagnostic medical work in hospitals for ten years. Now, since moving out more into the environment, she wonders why she didn't "realize this earlier...I'm more of a preventative person!"
Marilyn, who lives in Cambridge but grew up in Barre, said another flash of insight came when she learned that there's more non-farm land than farmland under active management in the Northeast. "I always thought I'd work with organic food," she said. But she realized all the organic agriculture in the world wouldn't improve the treatment that land got from non-farmer owners and professional landscape maintainers and forestry people. This summer she joined the land care crew of Priscilla Williams' Pumpkin Brook Organic Gardening. Priscilla is the NOFA/Mass member who, along with Don Bishop of Gardens Are... played a key role in the development of the new NOFA-administered program. That's where Marilyn heard about the position, funded for its startup year by Massachusetts Environmental Trust and New England Grassroots Environment Fund.
She started two months ago overseeing the training program for land care professionals to become accredited organic. That allows them to offer land care labeled organic in Massachusetts and Connecticut. She is also responsible to educate wider and wider circles of landowners about the benefits of non-toxic, indigenous-oriented, low-energy approaches to landscaping and land care. She says it's "very exciting to be meeting people who really want to do it. It seems like the audience is gathering itself."
At the same time, there's much need for information. "People will earnestly go to a garden center wanting to do things less toxically and sometimes get the wrong information because the people giving the information haven't been taught the answers."
Organic land care isn't just about the fertilizer and pesticide issue; it's an effort to lighten the energy impact of land care by lighter use of power equipment, more nearby sources of fertilizer (compost), etc. In general, it's about increasing the consciousness of property owners about the life of the land entrusted to their care and the ways they can let it do its ecological job better, themselves and through enlightened land care professionals.
"The awareness of the great need for protecting the Earth is starting to take hold," Marilyn said. Already in her job, she sees "the great number of non-related activities, all of the people from different parts of the picture, their interests converging. That's where I hope the spirit of change will make a difference," she said, "in our interconnectedness."
This page was last modified on January 14, 2008 at 12:25:47 PM.