WALTHAM—If nothing else, the eight Americorps Volunteers who arrived in early July to work at the Waltham Fields Community Farm have developed their taste buds and their cooking instincts.
Created in 1994, more than 50,000 Americans each year serve in Americorps. They spend 10 weeks working for non-profits, public agencies and faith-based organizations meeting needs in education, public safety, health and the environment. Community Farm is the third of four projects that the local Americorps volunteers will do during their tenure.
The crew of volunteers left Community Farm yesterday. Most of them are headed to Kingston, N.Y., where they will build homes for the poor through the Habitat for Humanity program. Some will return to their regional headquarters in Perry Point, Md., where they will wait to hear if they are needed for disaster relief duty in Florida in the wake of Hurricane Charley.
During the short time they were here, the volunteers have been able to harvest the beds of lettuce and beets they planted six weeks ago. The kale is not quite ready yet.
Now, others in the local community will enjoy the fruits of their labor. The farm’s Community Supported Agriculture project allows shareholders to pay $500 for a year’s worth of vegetables.
The more vegetables harvested, the more shareholders get. Last week, the farm grew more than 1,000 pounds of cucumbers, which were shared among this year’s 185 shareholders and other recipients, including the Salvation Army and Red Cross.
In the early days, said farm manager Amanda Cather, the 18- to 24-year-olds in the national service program snacked on potato chips and made spaghetti and hamburger dinners—perfectly edible foods, but more than a little boring considering the 40 homegrown organic vegetables and fresh spices at their fingertips.
"I don’t think they knew how to cook," Cather said, reflecting on the six weeks the volunteers spent at the city’s only remaining working farm, located on Beaver Street.
Now volunteers like 19-year-old Chris Sellers from Vancouver, Wash., have come to know the pleasures of picking a perfectly ripe cucumber from the vine and munching away. And when they actually get the food as far as the kitchen, they have learned to be creative.
Earlier this week, the crew prepared vegetable burritos, taking advantage of the squash, zucchini and eggplant that they grew themselves. Without a doubt, Cather said, produce grown locally and organically will taste much better than mass produced vegetables from 1,400 miles away.
Volunteers quickly found that to be true.
"It’s going to be hard to go back and get vegetables from the grocery store," said 24-year-old Alyssa Siegfried from South Dakota, the only college graduate in the crew and their team leader.
At each of the three projects the group has completed with Americorps, Sellers said he has learned valuable lessons.
At a tax clinic in Baltimore, where the volunteers helped low-income adults work through the maze of filing taxes, Sellers said he learned the importance of "strengthening communities." During a stint with Habitat for Humanity in Hartford, Conn., he said he learned about leadership.
And at Community Farm, he learned about communication and teamwork. Sellers said he plans to enroll in community college. But before that, he said, "I just wanted to start my adult life off with something positive."
Especially since spending time in Baltimore and Hartford, he said he wants to make a difference. "I’ve never been in a poverty-stricken city," he said "I want to do something about it."
Still, Sellers, the oldest of four children, said he is far from immune from the draw of material possessions. He would like to be a social worker, but worries it won’t earn him enough money.
"I can’t imagine not making a lot of money," he said.
And so, even after their month and a half of paradise on Community Farm, the real world has already begun to creep back in.
The volunteers celebrated their last full day at the farm with a Clue-style murder mystery game in the fields and dinner—direct from Waltham Pizza.
