Tapley Youth Cultivate Food Security Through Soil

By: Shanyah Taylor & Anna Gilbert-Muhammed

For the Tapley Garden Youth Agricultural Scientists, this summer was filled with learning, growing (both in knowledge and pounds of food), and working with the community.

In the first weeks of the Summer Intensive, youth leaders learned plant identification, no-till, soil health techniques, and how to grow edible mushrooms. They also worked with tools such as the microBIOMETER and food preservation. Youth leaders traveled to Woven Roots Farm and Educational Center in Tyringham, MA, to learn about seed saving and farm management. They traveled to Many Hands farms in Barre, MA, to learn about cover cropping and value-added product development. To learn about community development, community-supported agriculture, and farm store work, they traveled to Just Roots Farm in Greenfield, MA. Lastly, they traveled to the Samad Garden Initiative in Bloomfield, CT, to learn about incubator farm development and value-added products.

The youth had the chance to show their knowledge of food preservation and soil health. Youth leaders Breeaisha Cobbins and Ryan Santiago conducted workshops on creating value-added products and using soil health tests to monitor soil health and plant conditions. The value-added product focused on using the garden’s produce to make a product for sale. The youth leaders demonstrated how to make salsa as a product for the Tapley Garden. With the help of a Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) grant, the Tapley Garden expanded and introduced a value-added product to generate revenue for small businesses.

Shanyah Taylor, a new Youth Agricultural Scientist, described the highlights of her first year with the garden, “We’ve learned the importance of healthiness of garden-fresh food, how it sustains life and contributes to a healthy lifestyle. We focused on how having balanced soil can lead to balanced, healthy produce, contributing to good health. We learned to communicate with each other and the natural world to understand the needs of one another and the community.”

Look for more content from the work of the Youth Agricultural Scientists, mainly focusing on the tour of several urban farms in Boston.