FRESH Through the Years
A FRESH Approach Is Taking Root In New London
By Stephen ChupaskaPublished in ‘The Day’ on 4/26/2009
New London — The urban garden movement, popular in cities around the country, has taken root in New London.
And according to Emily Lerner, the co-founder of FRESH New London, the popularity of its Community Garden Center on the corner of Mercer and Williams streets, is growing like a weed, with a waiting list of more than a dozen people.
All 60 of the raised beds available to the public are spoken for and the organization is looking for a second location.
But on Saturday, several members of the Community Garden who have secured plots took advantage of sunny skies and 70-degree weather to do some planting, watering and listening, to a lecture on raised-bed gardening.
“It's a great day for this,” Mirna Martinez of New London said. Martinez was looking after the strawberries and arugula she and her husband, Jesse Good, planted.
“This works out well for us because the soil at our house has lead and arsenic in it,” she said.
Good said that they had more arugula that they knew what to do with.
Cheryl Cote and Carol Jones, who work around the corner on Broad Street at Alliance for Living, maintain the three beds the AIDS organization keeps at the garden.
“We use the vegetables in our group dinners,” Jones said as she prepared a row of green beans.
Lerner, a Lyme native, and her husband Arthur founded FRESH, or Food, Resources, Education, Security and Health, after moving to the city in 2005.
They studied agriculture and social change at Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass., and looked for a place to start an urban garden.
“New London is like a microcosm of a city,” Lerner said.
FRESH, which is funded through a combination of grants and donations, has a staff of four and also employees up to seven teenagers in the summer through the New London Youth Affairs Office.
Also, FRESH has a “mobile market,” that travels to city neighborhoods and sells bags of vegetables for as little as $5.
FRESH opened the Community Garden in 2007 on the former site of a tennis court that had fallen into disrepair.
Lerner and her husband and partner in FRESH contacted the city about leasing the spot for a garden.
The city agreed, though FRESH was not allowed to dig up the pavement.
“So we went with raised beds,” she said.
FRESH has 90 beds but 30 of those are reserved for education programs it runs with several school in the area.
The nonprofit also has a larger, more traditional 1-acre garden for students at Waterford Country School.
The Community Garden, however, mirrors the density in the city.
The plots are right next to each other so gardeners have to be on the lookout for insects and weeds that could easily infiltrate their neighbor's spot.
Also, the garden is organic and no pesticides are allowed.
And like life in row houses or an apartment building, the proximity of spots makes for easy interaction with other people.
“The garden is really a social thing for us,” Martinez said. “We knew we would see people here today.”
Building a healthy community as well as a healthy diet is the crux of Lerner's mission.
“Food is an universal organizing tool,” she said. “Everyone eats, everyone has a connection to food.”
Linda Turner, owner of Plantasia, holds up a tomato plant during a raised bed and container gardening workshop at the FRESH community garden in New London on Saturday.
Carol Jones, left, and Cheryl Cote water newly planted seeds in raised beds that will be cared for by the Alliance for Living.
F.R.E.S.H. on Connecticut Public Broadcasting
FRESH New London is a project that aims to transform our food system
Rising prices, and food safety scares are forcing us all to become more aware of where our food comes from and how it reaches our plate.
More and more people are taking matters into their own hands, and planting food in their backyards.
As part of our periodic series about the shifting economy called “This Economic Life”, WNPR’s Harriet Jones reports on a group of New London teens who are ahead of the curve.
They are part of FRESH New London, a project that aims to transform our food system.
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Program Invests $500,000 To Give Youths Summer Jobs
By Patricia Daddona
As he harvested green beans in a FRESH Farm field at the Waterford Country School, Tylon Flowers, 14, of New London said he liked cleaning and bunching the vegetables.
But Reynaldo Sierra, 14, of New London, who was working beside him, piped up, “The best part is getting paid.”
The Eastern Connecticut Workforce Investment Board has made it possible this summer for nearly 350 young people to earn the minimum wage of $7.65 at a wide range of jobs throughout the region.
Fourteen of those youth, including Flowers and Sierra, worked for eight weeks at the farm through the nonprofit FRESH New London, whose mission is to transform the local food system and in doing so, empower the consumer to eat healthier.
”I love the satisfaction of getting them employed, knowing they're gaining the necessary skills to be competititve and especially in a program like this, they're really gaining the knowledge to do the job,” said Joelle Garrett.
Garrett is an outreach coordinator who works for New London Youth Affairs, which helped run the program for those 14 youth.