More Fake News

Fertile Grounds

For Nurturing Vegetables and Sisterhood

By W. Hargrave for Central Sunday

Growing Out from the Center

It’s a damp and dreary night in May. We are in an unfurnished and unpretentious bar basement. Seated in a large circle are women of all ages and walks of life. In the center of the circle is a small mound of luscious, black soil. Five candles are lit and placed in the nutrient rich earth. One light to represent each month of the year that has passed thus far. Five lights all together to represent where we find ourselves in the natural cycle that determines when to plant, when to harvest, and when to rest.

They cross their arms and take each other’s hands into their own, as if they are waiting to yank open a dozen invisible Christmas crackers. Those who wish to stand up and push back their metal folding chairs. Those who prefer or need to sit remain in their seats. Many choose to keep their eyes closed. There is no evident hierarchy to the proceedings and no stated agenda. Everyone remains silent in expectation until one of the women decides to speak. I am at my first monthly general session for Black Goat Gardens, or BGG. It is open to all, but board members are expected to attend. Active participation is welcome and encouraged, but only for those who feel moved to speak, share, recite, question, and reminisce.

The meeting blossoms into its own organically, without script or prompts. I feel part of an important ritual, but not a religious one. I feel bound to the earth at the center of our circle. You might think this environment would germinate prayerful searching, or new age oversharing, but instead I witness a series of calls to action. On consecutive upcoming weekends, the 104 raised bed gardens built and managed by the nonprofit will be emptied, liners will be checked, mended or replaced, and new soil will be added. Most  of the fourteen women in attendance are following along on laptops and smartphones as they pore over complex spreadsheets to hammer out scheduling minutiae.

I also learn that longtime member Eula Thomason has improved after falling at home this winter and severely injuring her hip. She was moved from Nashaway General Hospital to the Elmsford Assisted Living and Rehabilitation facility in Smyth Grove. Those present vote to send out a group text to all active members asking for volunteers to visit Eula and bring her marigolds, her favorite flowers, if they can be found this time of year. Seconds after the message is sent, a cascade of digital pings fills the room and calls the meeting to a close. Connie Velasquez-Smyth, who is the acting executive director and whose wife’s ancestors planted the orchards that became Smyth Grove in the eighteenth century, tells me the meeting ended at just the right time. The real work, she says, is out there in the community.

Cross Pollination

The next morning, I tag along with Hannah Stratham. At twenty-two, she is the youngest member on the Black Goat Gardens’ board. We pick up her friend Rachel and I squeeze into the middle seat of her truck’s cab. The back is filled to the tailgate with gardening supplies and implements that rattle around as we drive over the newly defrosted potholes that dot and scar the side streets of Prudence. After stopping for coffee, we head to Elmsford where the receptionist at the front entrance area assures us Eula must still be asleep. Right before we take Eula’s hot chocolate off the desk and turn to leave, we hear a strong voice call out from a fragile hunched form in a wheelchair that’s rounding the corner.

“I’m awake. I’m right here now.”

Hannah and Rachel dart over at the sound of Ms. Thomason’s voice. I follow close behind once I remember to grab the hot chocolate. In the course of our hourlong visit, while Hannah and Rachel busied themselves taking turns fussing over Ms. Thomason and setting up a small window planter in her room, I learn that Eula was born, grew up, and spent her entire adult life in the Tannery, or Tanner Row Neighborhood more formally. She and her seven brothers and sisters lived within blocks of an EPA superfund site that was designated as such only five years ago. Eula is the only one who has not succumbed to cancer. Silas and Donald to pancreatic. Two of her sisters to breast cancer. Two more were lost to lung cancer, even though one of the sisters never smoked in her life. Last year, her older twin Stanfield passed. His body was ravaged so quickly by the spread of cancerous cells that doctors were unable to pinpoint their origin.

The Tannery is still in large part a dilapidated industrial neighborhood, but parts are being gentrified by younger commuters who use the rail access in Prudence to work higher paying jobs in Worcester and Boston. It was the town’s only historic black neighborhood as well. At its industrial peak after World War I, one in three residents were black. As economic opportunities faded in Prudence, black citizens were the first to have their livelihoods sacrificed. By the 1970s, fewer than one in ten black residents remained. At eighty-seven years old, Eula has been an eyewitness to it all.

Her parents, part of the second generation of African Americans born into freedom, were from farming communities in Maryland and Missouri. They moved to Prudence as young newlyweds looking to improve the lives of their children. Her father worked as a mechanic. Her mother became a nurse. At home, they always kept a small garden. Eula learned as a small child how to care for the earth so that it would care for you and your family. Before Black Goat Gardens’ founding members made a presentation at her church, she felt listless. Her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren were spread all over the United States. She was retired and her husband predeceased her decades ago due to ongoing issues with his heart. Once she joined the organization, she felt an instant connection with the other members and volunteers.

“It was so very great and wonderful,” said Thomason. “To be with all these extraordinary women of all ages and colors and languages and all that. And they really listen to you. They want to learn from you. No matter how sick I’d get or tired I’d get… that’s what kept me coming back. You go from feeling so alone to you feeling so rooted together in this thing. Can you think up another reason where two young white girls would come take their time to visit someone like me? I’ve seen a lot of life. I’m telling you it doesn’t happen anywhere else.”

Salt of the Earth

That weekend I run into Hannah- literally run into her with a wheelbarrow top heavy full of mulch. After I apologized in earnest, I tell her how nice this newest addition to the Black Goat Gardens’ portfolio is. We’re at a small, well-kept parcel with fourteen low raised beds that have tremendous views overlooking the nearby reservoir. They broke ground almost three years ago as part of renovations to a transitional housing program for elderly veterans. Hannah is patient with me and the other volunteers the organization relies on for most of the elbow grease that builds, services, and improves its sites during the all too short growing season. In spite of my inexperience and reputation as a brown thumb when it comes to houseplants, by the end of the morning, I’m dumping and raking mulch between the raised beds like a pro landscaper.

When our work is complete, we huddle up in a circle and take time thanking and congratulating one other for turning up early on a Saturday in a productive mood. Hannah closes the circle and I wait my turn to ask her a few follow-up questions. It turns out she’s visited Ms. Thomason two other times since I last saw her. She shrugs off my amazement and downplays the feat. Her dogs really love Lace Park anyways she tells me. It only takes a minute to get to the assisted living facility from there. She insists it would be silly not to bring her a hot chocolate while they’re already in the neighborhood. Besides, all the residents love seeing her dogs and try to sneak them treats even though they have to hang out in the truck when she goes inside. I can’t seem to drop the topic and prod my way to her admitting that, “there’s too much life in Eula to stay away from that woman once you know her. She’s one of those magic people you feel lucky to know.”

Armed with Hannah’s cherry quote in my notes app, I change the subject and ask about something I noticed during my morning mulchathon. Why did some of the garden beds have little black flags sticking out of them? She fills me in that most of the beds are tended by volunteer gardeners who apply and qualify to use them, but some at each site are reserved for the nonprofit as a whole. These ones are used to grow high end, heirloom produce that they sell on to a of couple local restaurants and very few individual patrons through exclusive farm shares. The proceeds fill the nonprofit’s unrestricted general funds, helping them both stay afloat and expand. Having worked up an appetite, I ask Hannah if she has any recommendation for where I can find this best of the good stuff.

Planted Potables

Not twenty minutes later, I arrived at the Black Goat Public House, the very same bar that hosted the meeting I attended in its basement. In fact, the downtown institution is the nonprofit’s namesake. The founding members hashed out their plans over cocktails here and the popular bar has been a key player ever since.

It’s busy, but not so busy that Jake Frobisher won’t step away from his grill station to fill me in on what I’ve been missing. Frobisher is young, ambitious and from a neighboring town. According to him, it’s the unbelievable produce Black Goat Gardens gives his kitchen access to that kept him from moving to a bigger city after he graduated from culinary school. Unfortunately for me, Frobisher and his comrades are committed to using that produce as soon as the volunteers pick it at peak ripeness. All that’s left of last summer for me to sample are some extraordinary pickled beets that garnish a thick Greek yogurt dip for house made flatbreads.

A regular, elegantly drinking red wine in the corner, chimes in and reminds Frobisher that there are plenty of spirits infused with herbs grown by the women at BGG, which she says out loud as ‘Bee Double Gee’. Sure enough, behind the bar is an apothecary wall full of uniquely shaped and colored booze bottles that look more like old-timey medicinal tinctures with their handwritten labels than the over the counter medicine I’m after. I’m biased to believe that anyone drinking on her own in a royal blue beret has an opinion or two with hearing out. While the bartender expertly prepares my elderflower Collins, I can’t help but ask the striking woman who tipped me off to the Gardens’ tipple about what she thinks personally about the “Bee Double Gee’. She wants her name left out of the article but is willing to give her two cents. For her, Black Goat Gardens has transformed Prudence for the better. She says its improved everything about the town, including her views as she drives through it in her antique Volvo station wagon. The drink is incredible, even for someone who isn’t a big gin drinker. Every individual note hits right and in perfect concert with its other parts, like the organization that brought it to life.

Weeding Out Dissent

Oddly enough, not everyone in the community has rallied behind the nonprofit and its work. In fact, Prudence selectman and chief administrative officer Chap Butler has used portions of town council meetings to voice dissent and rally opposition again Black Goat Gardens. According to Butler, the biggest issue for him is one of access. “Not everyone is welcome,” he said when interviewed by phone. “They take public money and they benefit from generous tax breaks as a non-profit. But they only exist for some of the people in this town, not all of them. If you’re a man, you can’t be on- you are barred from being on their board. How is this not discrimination?”

Board president Ms. Velasquez-Smyth broke into a fit of resigned laughter after letting out a heavy sigh when I brought up the selectman. She said the recent memorandum published by the Prudence Department of Strategic Planning (DSP) at Butler’s behest is nothing more than a “hatchet job aimed at taking down strong women.” She carefully guided me through the nonprofit’s organizational structure and reiterated that participation is open to all. In fact, one of the garden plots targeted in the report is exclusively used by men who live in a public housing complex for disabled veterans. She went on to point out that the report also challenged the exclusive use of lower raised beds at this site. “Well,” said Velasquez-Smyth, “of course they are all two feet high. All the people using them are also using wheelchairs. Tell me how they take an obvious, human accommodation for the community we serve and play us like it’s discrimination?”

“Honestly, discussing this is not in the best interest of our time together,” she continued. The DSP memo seems poorly researched and sourced. One endnote simply read ‘Google’ and another ‘Wikipedia’. Hardly appears to be solid ground for jeopardizing a nonprofit’s tax-exempt status. “Besides,” Velasquez-Smyth added, “the only gendered criteria is for serving on our board. And even then, it is open to any self-declared woman. We have not and will not ever challenge anyone’s self-determination and self-identification.”

Unfortunately, given the very real and prevalent discrimination women face in the world, Velasquez-Smyth believes it would be absurd to do so. “Again, why would somebody want to go out of her way to make seventy-seven cents to the dollar every man gets, or paint a target on your back and make yourself more than twice as likely to be the victim of a violent crime?” she asked. I have no answer for that. “There is not and never will be a reason for BGG  to challenge someone’s identification as a woman,” Velasquez-Smyth said. “So if he’s [Butler] serious about discrimination, maybe he should take a seat in our circle sometime.”

When I asked about the board’s refusal to provide information about their accounting practices, it triggered a fresh bout of laughter in Velasquez-Smyth. She explained that the non-profit submits a 990-N condensed annual report to the IRS for each fiscal year. That information is available to anyone via a Freedom of Information Act request. In addition to this filing, Black Goat Gardens also provides the Massachusetts Attorney General with an annual report by November 1 each year. These reports are readily accessible to anyone with internet access as they are archived for viewing in a searchable database. In under one minute, I was able to locate and open the organization’s annual reports to the Mass AG for the previous three years. As Velasquez-Smyth put it, “we’re not interested in doing their legwork for them. We are hardworking women, and we don’t have any time or energy to let a bunch of lazy men push us around into doing their housekeeping for them. No, absolutely not. My partner and I both do the dishes at home. My partner and I both shovel the drive[way] when it snows.”

Life Cycles

BGG is more than five modest garden plots scattered throughout an almost forgotten post-industrial town. Those five plots were once completely barren, devoid of life. In my short time shadowing the group’s members I’ve seen so much life and living emanating from those five plots. Men and women of different ages, races, cultural backgrounds, and sexual identities volunteering to bring life out from the once barren soil. When I drove through the Tannery to scope out the branches of Eula’s life, I saw children laughing and playing right by a series of raised gardens that she helped bring to her neighborhood. Life and living. Creating it and nurturing it. Putting it on your plate and feeding more life and living. That is the real work of women, and that is the real work Black Goat Gardens is doing out in the community. Far too often it all goes unnoticed and unappreciated. I for one, feel privileged to have witnessed these women and their work. It’s now our responsibility to protect them and their wonderful organization from any attacks it may face. Life and living. There is nothing more important.