We’ve been busy getting our hands dirty in the Pioneer Valley, but I cleaned up enough for Sunday supper to write a blog post without soiling the computer.  

After a dry March and April, those April showers finally showed up in May.  That means the past two weeks have seen a lot of growth in our various growing spots in Franklin County.  The seeds that would barely germinate are now growing too quick for us to keep up with.  

But it’s worthwhile to take some time out from the weeding and transplanting and word-spreading to do a round up:

-The Summer Workshop Series is taking shape.  Advisory Groups in Turners Falls have provided feedback, totaling about 26 workshops that the Brick House will attempt to put on this summer.  SoS-ers will be in volunteer roles, facilitating some courses and also doing outreach and logistics.  The free workshops will range from wilderness skills to English conversation practice to Kids Gardening.  

-Several rows are planted at Harvest Moon Farm and more are in the works.  Our first SoS workday on Wednesday May 30 had six of us out transplanting tomatoes, spreading mulch, weeding and harvesting scapes!

-We have gotten a lot of great farm donations that will keep us busy filling in the rows.  Plants from Gwen’s work, transplants from Harvest Farm of Whatley, and seeds on the way soon from High Mowing and America the Beautiful. Always plenty of mulch from the farm too!

-We took first place in the Youth Biz Expo Biz Idea contest with our Garlic Scape Pesto concept!  We are now rushing to get ready to go into production, because the scapes are coming in early this year. Once we get a batch out, we now have many local contacts interested in purchasing.  In the meantime, we have very stinky breath from snacking on scapes.

-Program members have also made it out to Laughing Dog Farm in Gill and Warner Farm in Sunderland to diversify our agricultural experiences.  Replete with goats and veggies, Laughing Dog is always a hit, and Warner Farm certainly gave us a lesson in tomato suckering. 

And all this even before the program starts?  There’s no slowing down from here and we’re excited to kick off in one week with all our participants!

Keep up with our adventures this summer at http://pioneervalleysolutions.wordpress.com/.

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We’re working on a local farm this summer in exchange for space to grow our own produce, which these days we harvest in over-abundance.  The zucchini, kale, and chard all grow faster than we can eat, so we traded some friends a basket of greens for potato spuds just ready to plant.  At our Grow Your Own Food Class the next day we planted the potatoes with local kids, who will come back to tend them and harvest later in the year. Our small garden at the Brick House Community Resource Center will yield food to share around the neighborhood. This is just one instance of the generosity and interdependence we have experienced this summer.

Duncan with some of our latest produce.

This Saturday, I’ll be heading to Worcester, Mass. for the Green Solidarity conference.  As programs across the country engage in a Day of Action, I’ll be sitting in with innovators, activists and organizers from Massachusetts to learn, and contemplate further how people can transform our economy to work socially and ecologically.  How can the benefits of cooperation and solidarity I have enjoyed this summer extend to the larger community?

Coming from an environmental organizing background, and as a student of political economy, I believe that structural re-invention of our economic system is necessary to halt environmental destruction and environmental racism.  It won’t be possible to buy our way to sustainability. Change is needed beyond a “green” makeover of our current economic system.  To sustain ourselves and the earth, we need an economy that functions to meet peoples’ basic needs and aspirations.  When the demands of capital and profit drive an economy these needs aren’t met.  I refuse to believe we have no other options.

I see the change we need in the solidarity economy movement.  It originated with people’s movements in Latin and South America to self-organize economic activity to meet basic needs, when state government and structural adjustment programs failed them.  My definition of a solidarity economy is an economy people own and operate with the understanding that their self-interest is bound up in the interests of their neighbors- both down the street and around the world, both human and non-human.  A solidarity economy is made up of many parts- cooperatives, non-profits, mutual aid societies, land trusts, extended families.  What binds it together is the understanding that working in solidarity will yield far greater benefits than pursuing self-interest and profit.

The work we are doing as Pioneer Valley Summer of Solutions is helping build the solidarity economy in our community.  We are hosting free classes through the Summer Workshop Series, on practical and sustainable topics; we are learning to fix bikes and make them available as affordable local transportation; were using the Time Bank to share goods and services; we are supporting local farmers by helping grow their produce, and consuming it.  Working together, we as a community can meet our needs, and make sure our neighbors are able to do the same.  As we work to meet the needs of our local community, we in turn understand the importance of environmental stewardship.

I can’t wait, on this year’s Day of Action, to explore how we can bridge the work of the solidarity and green economy movements.  Sounds like a task worthy of Summer of Solutions Pioneer Valley!

About a dozen of us filled the living room, sitting on all surfaces available and balancing plates on knees or floor boards. The room was full of relative strangers, from high school up to mid-20s, from nearby towns and every corner of New England, sharing company and a meal of lasagna. Energy was high as we discussed the projects that lie ahead this summer, and the ideas we have for our two months together.

This is Summer of Solutions Pioneer Valley, a program in sustainable community development and youth leadership, based in the towns of Turners Falls and Greenfield in northern Massachusetts.

We are a group of about fifteen full and part-time members who are all dedicated to learning how to create solutions in our communities. This summer, that means working on a local farm, learning home weatherization techniques, improving our bike maintenance skills, facilitating and organizing free local classes on topics from food preservation to stone-masonry and much more. Beyond these tangible skills, we’re learning the pieces that make it all fit together.

How do you start a community project? How can you make environmental solutions accessible? What is solidarity? What does it mean to be a sustainable business? How do you sustain yourself while you’re at it?

Working with an exciting variety of community partners, our participants will have the chance to:
1. Become competent in bike commuting and bike maintenance. In our rural corner of New England, cars are a near necessity. We will explore how transportation in our area can become more sustainable, starting with ourselves.
2. Grow their own food and share it with the local community. Through a partnership with Harvest Moon Farm, we will be doing a “workshare” to exchange our labor for produce. We will also be creating a garden at a local community resource center, the Brick House, to provide food and education in the center of Turners Falls.
3. Weatherize a local home and public building under the guidance of a local cooperative, Co-op Power. We will also develop materials to help renters secure energy audits and improvements on their homes.
4. Take and facilitate courses at the Brick House Summer Workshop Series, which offers free classes to the community on topics from gardening to wood working to meditation.

Summer of Solutions goes beyond the tangible work we will be doing, to instill a mindset for the rest of our lives. It’s the mindset that we have everything we are looking for to solve environmental, economic and social challenges. It’s the mindset that people are the key ingredient to make the changes communities are desperately seeking. It’s the mindset that the future can actually look brighter than our present today, and rolling up our sleeves to make it so.

The substance coming out of the sky at this point was somewhere between sleet, hail and snow. My windshield wipers and headlights weren’t really enough to keep my vision clear, so I took the mountainous curves in the road slowly.  The kind voice on the other end of the phone line had told me, “If you reach the Vermont line, you’ve gone too far.  We’re a mile back.”  I passed out of Greenfield, into Bernardstown, out of Bernardstown, and on down the road.  I hadn’t hit Vermont but I was starting to wonder.  The radio announcer kept reminding me to, “drive carefully out there,” until the radio faded into static.  Finally I came upon number 682, pulled onto the shoulder, narrow with huge snow drifts, and popped the grant proposal into the mailbox.  This is only one of many moments when my expectations for planning a Summer of Solutions have been turned on their head by working in the Pioneer Valley.

En route to dropping off a grant north of Greenfield.

The Pioneer Valley spans from Springfield, Mass. in the south, north through the college towns of Amherst and Northampton, up to Greenfield and Turners Falls.  The Connecticut River snakes through this fertile and mountainous region of Western Massachusetts, which was the site of some of the earliest mills in the United States.   Greenfield and Turners Falls will be the focus of our program.  It’s the smallest location of Summer of Solutions, population-wise; Greenfield and Turners Falls combined are home to around 40,000 people.

All these factors make organizing our program an interesting and surprising experience each step of the way.

The first day Erika and I visited the Brick House Community Resource Center in Turners Falls, which was to become one of our main partners, their program coordinator walked us around town.  “I’ll have to introduce you to everybody,” she said.

However the challenges of the community are just as present as the charms.  Transportation limits many youth and adults from finding employment opportunities.  For most, having a car is a prerequisite for holding a job or pursuing higher education.  Entering Turners Falls is notoriously difficult and depends upon crossing the one bridge into town.

The employment base has been depleted over time, though new industries are emerging.   Co-op Power, a cutting-edge energy efficiency business, is based here and works around New England.  A new solar farm is being erected near-by.  The music and art scene locally is blossoming.

At a potluck for the local Time Bank (a method of skill sharing without money) at the Brick House I learned an inspiring activity that speaks to my optimism and excitement for the summer.  The dozen of us stood in a circle. One person, holding a ball of yarn, said something they needed, physically, or emotionally.  Anyone who could offer it shouted that out and they got the ball of yarn.

For example, Martin needed someone to walk his dogs while he was at work.  Turned out Ashley was in his neighborhood and could lend a hand.  Then Ashley said something he needed and so forth.  Before long we were all tied up in a web of reciprocity, having learned things about each other that would have never come up otherwise.

The lesson is that for all the needs in our communities, someone is out there with the solution, and willing to help.   If you work to build relationships, try new things and keep an open mind, whats you’ve been looking for starts to materialize.  In the Pioneer Valley we’re looking forward to sharing and receiving every step of the way.

Our car pulled up across the street from the church and we parked, grabbing only essentials on our way out. We were let in the church and bounded up two flights of stairs to a beautiful, spacious auditorium. About twenty people were seated in a circle and I beamed, taking in each face. We tried to make a quiet entrance, but everyone burst out in greeting and a round of hugs broke the concentration of the circle.

Joe and I had started in Northern Virginia at noon the previous day and wound south to Charlottesville to pick up Mary, then through West Virginia to our sleeping spot near Lexington, KY, at Marcie’s home. A stop for tofu tacos in Charleston, WV (I kid you not, the Tricky Fish, check it out) broke the twisting, rising and falling drive. Bluegrass music and socio-environmental-historic commentary on the area from Joe filled the dark January night. Occasional plumes of exhaust and waste poured from power plants alongside the highway, casting billowing white clouds into the all-consuming night sky. Their networks of lights, yellow and glaring, pierced the scenery like Christmas lights with a grudge.

We caught some winks outside Lexington, KY, and woke before the sun had risen. I drove us west in morning light that turned the hills and valleys blue and rosy. With barely a pause we headed on to Chicago, discussing youth at the Cancun climate talks, direct action against mountain top removal, favorite bands and good reads.

If you had stopped by the Roger’s Park United Methodist Church of Chicago in the past week you would have found about twenty young folks working and playing twelve hours a day and upward. The January Gathering of Grand Aspirations brought together national leaders and leaders of ten Summer of Solutions programs across the country. Represented at this Gathering (a second followed in Portland) were:

• St Louis
• Raleigh
• West Virginia
• Pioneer Valley
• Twin Cities
• Detroit
• Chicago
• Oakland
• Fayetteville
• Hartford

The Gathering focused on building national community and purpose, and embarking on the different aspects of program planning.

It was exciting to put faces to names of people I had talked to on the phone or emailed countless times and reconnect with people I had not seen since an intensive two months in the Twin Cities. I’m the national support person for the Fayetteville team, and though we had talked numerous times, this was my first time meeting Andrea, Amanda, Ryan and Sylvia. I also had never formally met Ashley, who I talk to at least an hour every week. The binds we had already started to develop by telephone lines and emails really blossomed during the week.

I can only offer an anecdotal account of the week. Each day started at eight for breakfast and didn’t wrap up until nine p.m. or later. After the last session of the night I was often preparing trainings for the next day. In my dual roles as trainer and representative of the Pioneer Valley team I often felt overwhelmed and ill-prepared. That precarity opened me up for deep learning and reflection.

To speak from the I as we would say, I took away from the Gathering a renewed commitment to the work Grand Aspirations is doing, its necessity, and the power of solidarity across the country. Even at an intentionally progressive and individualized college like Hampshire, I find during the semester my thoughts and intentions can stray and become caught up in work that does not fulfill me. We discussed in a Personal Transformation session the Buddhist concept of “Monkey Mind”- that voice that tells you you can’t achieve you’re dreams and it’s not worth it to try. Monkey Mind can get pretty strong at school, and this Gathering was exacting what I needed to remember that voice is normal and within my power to ignore.

Summer of Solutions is very local, each program shaped by the place it’s in and specific needs and assets of the community. However coming together as a national group is an amazing experience of support and inspiration. The admiration I feel for fellow organizers in places such as West Virginia cannot be fully articulated. The connections between these geographically separated locales cannot be forgotten- Massachusetts power plants still burn West Virginia coal and natural gas.

I can also say coming out of the Gathering that young folks in our country right now really have what we need to redefine what our future holds. Planning a Summer of Solutions is a huge undertaking, but its potential impacts and ripple effects are innumerable. I admire everyone I was working with this past week so much for taking on that challenge with open hearts. We’re building the road as we walk it. That can either be terrifying or create a deep sense of agency. Surrounded by people who are committed to this same undertaking reminds me why I’m doing it in the first place and the power of the collective. Our programs will each be different but collectively they will show that local solutions to environmental and economic problems exist and can work in beautiful synergy.

It feels entirely fitting that I’m blogging for Grand Aspirations around Thanksgiving.  Since my involvement with Grand Aspirations and Summer of Solutions began in May, I’ve experienced an amazing transformation in how I think about the world and the opportunities around me that I’m extremely thankful for.  Nope, I haven’t tuned out the facts that we’re already experiencing the effects of climate change, mountains are still being blown up in Appalachia and we’re in the throes of the worst depression since the 1930s.  It’s all in how I’ve started to look at those facts and the systems that create them.

I recently read in an article by two excellent researchers, Julie Graham and Stephen Healy, that captured how I used to think:

“[the economy is] understood as a force outside community and environment that effectively determines their fates.”

“If the practice of conventional economic development is about accommodating the demands of the (global) economy, environmentalism in its various incarnations is about resisting, or compromising with this same external force… …We can either say ‘no’ to economic development entirely or we can accept an unsatisfying compromise between development and environment. “

Building Community Economies: A Post Capitalist Project of Sustainable Development pages 4 and 8

This is a pretty intractable situation.  Economists portray environmentalists as anti-development and elitist, while environmentalists portray economists as, well, the source of all evil.  Enter Martha Pskowski, an environmentalist intent on studying economics.

The past year has taught me that people all around the world are forging ahead regardless of globalization, economic crisis and political stalemate.  And these groups aren’t just addressing the climate and ecological crises we’re facing, they’re redefining their community economies.  Young farmers starting CSAs and subsidizing low-income shares, community bike shops making bike commuting an affordable reality, cooperative housing keeping rent low and foreclosure at bay.  The list goes on.

Students at Hampshire College run an all-volunteer natural food co-op and keep prices cheap!

This is really what Graham and Healy wrote their article to ask:

“What if we could produce a different representation of economy that no longer functions as a force outside community that issues demands?  If a different understanding of economy were to free us from obsessively trying to satisfy (or resist) an external master, what new conceptions of ‘sustainable development’ might emerge?” Page 10-11

These are the same questions Grand Aspirations inspires participants to ask.  The options I see for myself in the economy expand and multiply every day.  And the ways our ecology can be nurtured and celebrated seem more and more accessible.  Not to say I could quit school and walk into my new job tomorrow.  But that’s the point.  We’re building the jobs of the future.   And I couldn’t be more thankful.

Students build cold frames to extend the growing season in a community garden.