NH Farms, Land Trust Celebrate $50,000 Harvest

Gloria Serrano gathered her first-ever crop of eggplants, poblano chili peppers, scads of tomatoes, and, coming up soon, feathery green cilantro plants. Her labors also helped New Haven Farms gather money to keep the crops — and the good health that comes with them — growing in New Haven. 

The scene of Serrano’s harvest, and that of 21 other families on their first plots ever, was the Incubator Garden of New Haven Farms and New Haven Land Trust on English Street near Ferry.

The Incubator Garden, which is on the site of the Land Trust’s community garden, was the focal point of a celebration and feast Wednesday evening as Serrano and other members of the most recent graduating class of the New Haven Farms’ farm-based health and wellness program marked, in effect, their “graduate” work: creating, planting, caring for, and harvesting their own garden of healthy vegetables, losing weight in the process, and taking steps to more healthy, sustainable living.

That work—a partnership between New Haven Farms and the New Haven Land Trust—caught the attention of the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation, tied to an insurance company that has entered the Connecticut market.

In the picture-perfect, green and sun-lit setting of Wednesday’s celebration, the foundation’s representatives, Kim Moore and Laura Smith,  announced a $50,000 grant to advance the work of the Incubator Garden and promote more opportunities between community gardeners and local hunger relief organizations.

The New Haven Farms health and wellness program takes place once a week for 16 weeks at the group’s main farm down by the Q River. There families referred by the Fair Haven Community Health Clinic—and now other health organizations—as part of the prescription to help counter diabetes, obesity, and other problems spend an hour on cooking and nutrition and an hour on the fundamentals of gardening.

Serrano, Maria Ocotecatl (pictured with her just harvested eggplants), Susan Arias, and 19 other people finished that program in the summer.

Yet there was no formal next step or place for these would-be gardeners to try out what they learned or to take their place teaching others in their families and neighborhoods what they had learned.

Enter the idea of the Incubator Garden.

It came to the New Haven Land Trust​‘s site because last year Livable City Initiative (LCI) purchased the adjacent nearly one half acre, and leased it to New Haven Farms.

This new location, the second largest of the group’s growing fields in the city, emerged after neighbors abutting the two-acre green space nearby, called English Mall two years ago rejected a previous New Haven Farms plan.

That’s when the city, through LCI, stepped in.

On this expansive new site, adjacent to the Trust’s garden, the New Haven Farms Farm Manager Jacqueline Maisonpierre is now growing a wide range of crops (pictured), turning the corner of Ferry and English Street into a green wonderland; she and her team are on track to well surpass last year’s 11,000 pounds of produce, said the group’s Executive Director James Jenkins.

“We saw it as an opportunity to collaborate [with New Haven Farms],” said the Trust’s Executive Director Justin Elicker.

And collaborate they did.

“In February we gathered to talk about this, as an idea. To look at it now, to see all you have accomplished is so impressive, and very emotional,” he said addressing the gardeners in English and in Spanish as they and their families stood beside their flourishing plots.

For gardeners like Maria Ocotecatl, the achievement — and value — of the gardens goes way beyond the the harvest of peppers, tomatoes, collard greens, carrots, cilantro, some tall corn, and other bounty.

She said she was going to take home the two egg plants, soak them in water and make a kind of astringent liquid to cleanse the body; that’s one of the lessons she learned in her diabetes prevention lectures at the New Haven Farms health and wellness program.

But there was more.

Connected To The Earth

In testimony to the spiritual power of gardening, Ocotecatl delivered a profound thanks in Spanish that was translated by Maisonpierre: ​“This garden has allowed me to feel connected to the earth. Especially when I’m stressed. The energy of the garden is powerful. The energy of my garden has brought me inspiration and taken me through a lot,” she said.

So in her remarks, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation Senior Program Officer Laura Smith said, both to the organization’s officials and to their gardeners, ​“We’ve been inspired by your vision and your execution [of that vision]. Thank you for demonstrating how valuable your work is.”

The grant, which is renewable for two more years for a cumulative total of $150,000, is the largest the foundation has awarded since it began doing business, and providing philanthropy in Connecticut two years ago, she said.

Gardeners with the two organizations mentor each other, help each other with watering tasks, share produce, and, very importantly, share experiences and company.

The next step: erecting a greenhouse on the now set-aside section of the New Haven Farms property. The issue is to come before the Board of Zoning Appeals at its upcoming meeting.

Because the 30 x 32-foot plastic structure will be built closer to English Street than current zoning ordinances permit, a variance is required..

If the variance is granted, the greenhouse, to be heated by natural gas, will likely be erected in the early spring, and even as early as February, Maisonpierre said.

It will enable Maisonpierre to grow starter plants much earlier and in greater number that she can now, increase yield, and help even more families in starter gardens.

She said funding for the greenhouse is already provided for in her group’s five-year lease arrangement with LCI. The hearing on the matter is scheduled for Oct. 13 at 200 Orange St.