By: Sister Anna Gilbert-Muhammed, NOFA/Mass Food Equity Director

The 2024 NOFA/Mass Winter Conference, held earlier in January, was organized around the theme of Building Community through Collaborations and Partnerships.

At the conference, youth leaders from Tapley Garden led a workshop showcasing their continuing work, which is a result of a 7 year collaboration with Home City Housing and the families that call their sites home.

As mentioned before in past articles, the garden is located on the property of Tapley Court Apartments, in the Bay Neighborhood of Springfield, MA. For 7 years, the families have used the garden as a produce store, and as a bridge to traditional foods that they missed after moving to the area. It also serves as a site for youth development and education around food security, soil health, cooking, and food preservation. Thanks to a grant from MDAR (the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources), the youth team will be developing and eventually marketing value-added products from crops grown in the garden.

During the workshop, the youth (Mateo, Kim, Ariana and Marc) led two demonstrations. They first displayed the tools the group uses to improve soil health at the garden.

Youth leaders showed conference attendees how they use tools such as the microBIOMETER and the microscope to determine soil fungal/bacteria and to find and identify microbes in the soil.

The second demonstration, led by Kim (one of the newest Youth Leaders), focused on making refrigerator blueberry jam.

This demonstration was a preview of the value-added products that will be coming at the end of 2024.  Look out for Mass Remediation Salsa and Tea!!!

Coming Up:

In the next edition of this newsletter; we will spend a little time interviewing one of the farmers for the Local Food Purchase Assistance (LFPA) Farmshare program – Hameed Bello from Agriorganics.

If you want any information on the Food Access Program and other sites, please contact Anna Gilbert-Muhammad, Food Access Director, [email protected]