Harvard Community Garden and Food Literacy Project
Grace and Carolyn in front of a student-made poster.
As a small, local garden, we understand that it is easy to narrow our vision of sustainability to a single, isolated effort. Therefore, as garden director, Grace is taking intentional steps to reach out and make connections with other agricultural groups. One of the first groups she contacted is the Harvard Community Garden and Food Literacy Project.
Through email, Grace arranged to meet with Carolyn Chelius, who is manager of the Food Literacy Project (which is in connection with the community garden at Harvard). Because Carolyn had experience in coordinating programming for food literacy, Grace thought it would be a great opportunity to develop some ideas on how to institute similar programs over at Gordon.
I joined Grace as we met Carolyn at her office in the Harvard Campus Services building over at Cambridge. We sat for about an hour and a half and asked questions about Carolyn's role in incorporating the garden into the Harvard community as well as the Cambridge area.
One of the most interesting takeaways from this discussion was the importance of cooking in food sustainability. Carolyn expressed that if people received education on how to cook food without wasting any components that still have a substantial amount of nutrition, it would result in less waste and a healthier consumption of food. In order to put this knowledge into practice, Carolyn integrated an aspect of cooking food from the garden to multiple environmental classes at Harvard. For one of the classes, she had a chef from Harvard dining services teach how to make a simple Thai dish. Carolyn even dedicated a whole class to cooking-- an after-college class that was specifically designed for seniors to help them become more independent after coming off of a meal plan. While describing this class, she highlighted the importance of international foods in encouraging student involvement. We also believe in the importance of sharing foods from different cultures at Gordon, since it brings great understanding of one's culture.
Another great idea from Carolyn was having a mini farmer's market to display our produce for sale and creating an opportunity to reach out to the community. Although Harvard's community garden does not sell their produce to students (they instead donate all their produce to a nearby homeless shelter), they have multiple events where they connect with their community. For example, they have an annual October event at the end of the growing season, where they enjoy activities such as pumpkin carving. Another event involves a taste and display of 100 different types of squash from the garden; both increase awareness of food while providing a place of community.
We discussed many more topics during the meeting, ranging from the technicalities of selling produce to external buyers to summer internships that students at Harvard partook in while living on campus. We also spoke of the differences between Harvard's garden, located in the city, and our garden, which is located in a field in the suburbs. Although we have different structures and locations, we are both united in our efforts to promote sustainability and put it in action. We are excited to have connected with the Harvard Garden and Food Literacy Project, and look forward to exchanging visions and projects with one another. Thank you to Carolyn for meeting with us!
