The members of the Kitchen Table do lots of things in New York City, much of it centered around finding, preparing and eating great food. But one thing we don’t do, for now, is grow our own food. We called Paula at Justfood NYC, an organization who’s main mission is to connect farmers and NYC communities who want to begin C.S.A.s. We called her looking for an already established C.S.A. that was still open, and had subsidized shares, but she replied that she had a farmer looking for a community in uptown Manhattan, and did we know of any organizations?

When we told her that we were a collective who were open to organizing a C.S.A., the rest quickly became history.

C.S.A. stands for Community Supported Agriculture. This is a new name for an ancient practice: a farmer forms a relationship with an urban community, who together buy a share of the farm at the beginning of the growing season. The community is assured a share of what is planted, and agrees that they will accept losses due to drought, flood, insects, etc. The farmer is assured that she or he will be able to support themselves financially throughout the season (rather than relying solely on weekly markets which can bring in no business if, for example, the weather is bad), and agrees to plant what the community wants to eat. The farmer brings the food to the community, who splits it into “shares”, on a regular basis, often every week. This type of relationship was the basis of urban settlements being able to form in the first place: if people were sure that they would have food, they could busy themselves with making crafts, trading and doing all the things we do in cities.

In April and May, we sent information out to people in our communities, and managed to find enough committed individuals and families to fill 15 shares, the minimum that Claudio Gonzalez, a first-time C.S.A. farmer, needed to begin. Each member paid a minimum of half the price of the growing season ($150) by June 1st, the week we began receiving weekly produce.

A C.S.A. Thursday goes like this: Claudio, “our” farmer, brings the food that he grows for us from his farm, Gonzalez Farms in Pine Island, NY, to the Project Harmony Garden, on West 122nd Street in Harlem. When he arrives from his 90 minute journey, around 9:30am, members who live on 122nd Street meet him and help him unload our food and put it on the table in the garden. Claudio tells them how much of each vegetable or fruit there is, and those folks divide by 20, the number of members’ shares. They leave a note for the “lunch shift”, members of the Kitchen Table collective who have been meeting to cook, eat lunch, chat and play in this garden on Thursday afternoons for almost two years. Using the list left by the morning shift, we spend the afternoon sorting the food into 20 baskets. This often becomes a project that the youngest ones ask to take on: during any given Thursday between 12:30 and 3:00pm a visitor to the garden will find several babies, toddlers and children putting green beans in our scale to measure 2lb shares, counting apples, or hefting a cabbage or butternut squash into each basket.

When the baskets are full, most of the lunch shift goes home, and one member, a different volunteer each week, arrives to help facilitate members picking up their shares from 5:00 – 7:00pm. Members come with children, parents, bicycles, dogs and friends in tow to put their weekly haul into bags brought from home. Any unclaimed shares are given to neighbors who live on 122nd Street.

The reasons to join or start a C.S.A. are many.

On a global level, you are pulling out of the flawed and unhealthy food system that most Americans rely on, one that benefits the globalized “free” trade economy of multi-national factory farms and plantations that bring bananas from Jamaica, apples from Australia and garlic from China to the suburban mega-markets and ghetto bodegas of the U.S. This system, which costs more in gasoline used (to transport food) than it does in real wages (farm workers are often paid substandard wages and receive no benefits), is actually far less healthy than buying locally: while large factory farms must rely on dangerous chemical pesticides and herbicides – which further endanger farm workers – small family farms grow many things as a matter of survival, and as a result are able to employ centuries-old organic soil enrichment and protection from weeds and insects.

On a regional level, you are helping to strengthen your region’s food security. This means that you are enabling small farms in your area to survive, which will in turn ensure your survival if food grown and shipped over long distances stops being an option (for instance, due to high gas prices). You are playing a supporting role in your regional economy, keeping your money close to home, and because you and the farmer have cut out the middle man, C.S.A. members pay far less for organic fresh produce than they would – and might not be able to afford – in a store. You are also sustaining farmers who might not be able to spend the money to pay for organic certification, but who are nonetheless %100 organic in practice, which enables them to charge less for their food.

On a local, community level, participating in a C.S.A. supports the farmers who also sell their harvest at farmers markets in your area, thereby keeping these markets healthy and sustainable for everyone. You are bringing local food into your community, as an alternative to the Whole Foods mega store and the high priced health food market. C.S.A.s are also incredible community-building spaces, where neighbors who might normally never see each other get to meet, chat and share recipes weekly, plan potlucks, even visit “their” farm together during the growing season. Often a farmer will supplement their commonly known crops with greens, roots or fruit that are not commonly seen in supermarkets, prompting members to share recipes; or send their members a weekly newsletter with recipes, ways to prepare and store the week’s vegetables, and news from the farm.

And, finally, on a personal level: besides feeling really good about all of the above, when you participate in a C.S.A. you and your family get to eat incredible, fresh, organic food every week from May through December for less than it would be to buy the same amount of conventional (non-organic, sprayed with toxic pesticides) food from any supermarket. Many of us have discovered how eat this way year-round by canning, freezing and pickling food – things our fellow C.S.A. members have taught us how to do. This year, some of us will buy no canned tomatoes because we canned the leftovers Claudio didn’t sell at the farmer’s market. He sold crates of them to us for almost nothing, so we ended up with just under 80 pints that each cost us less than half of the cheapest canned tomatoes in our local supermarkets. With jars of preserved food, and a freezer full of frozen corn, green beans and zucchini, winter doesn’t seem so long.

We’re also excited to do things beyond picking up our “farm share”: In mid-October, a bunch of us will drive out to the farm, help plant the year’s garlic crop, and share a potluck lunch with Claudio and his family. We’re working with him to find farmers who could add grain,meat and dairy to our shares, and create other ways to have our C.S.A. continue through the winter months. And we’ll be traveling up there in the Spring to help him plant our food for the coming season.

For the entire month of August in 2005, 2006 and 2007, Nico’s family (Alex, Luis and Nico) left their life in the very big, loud, vibrant and magical city of New York for the very big, loud, vibrant and magical woods of Maine.

This trip is central to our lives as individuals and as a family for a bunch of reasons. Its a radical shift from how we live at home. It reminds us that we can create real family that we keep central in our lives out of mutual respect and love. And it gives us balance – we are able to feel really thankful for our city, our home.

Below are three of the things that were profound experiences for all of us last summer in the woods. I don’t use the word “unschooling” in this post until close to the end, but for us it is all about unschooling. “Life is all you need to learn all you need to live.”

~ Pumping our water from the ground by hand every day, and then drinking it. Our friends who we stay with have a ground water well with a pump, which pulls water up from the water table under many layers of earth and rock, that is not only safe but delicious to drink. After 11 months of fluorinated tap water and the occasional super-filtered bottled stuff, this water with nothing but tons of trace minerals is really incredible.

~ Caring for, harvesting, cleaning, cooking and eating the bounty of our friends’ garden. In August there were chives, lettuce, onions, wild blueberries, yellow summer squash, zuchinni, and an obscene amount of many shapes, sizes and flavors of tomatoes. Along the logging roads that multiply yearly around our friends’ house there are large patches of wild blackberries in August. Wild strawberries come in late June, raspberries in July. Finding one of the last raspberries was a major cause for celebration, and resulted in a spontaneous chorus of “You say raspberry, I say blackberry – lets call the whole thing off!” … It is very easy to be that corny when the only ones around to see you doing show tune remixes are the birds and insects. It is also a bit of toddler-friendly, non-violent direct action: There is more logging of these mid-coast woods – some of the poorest rural communities in the U.S. – every year; as you walk the logging roads gathering berries, asserting your humanity with great joyful expressions of thanks to the berries reclaims this space from the sounds of skitters (logging machines that drag felled trees out of the woods) and clear-cutting.

~ Living as an active member of a rural community. Things that are a radical vision to be attained for most urban people – relying on community instead of cops for safety, on the earth and your friend’s animals for food instead of the store, on the land and each other instead of a computer for learning and entertainment – are, for many people from poor rural communities, often how they have had to do things for many generations and are now as basic as breathing. We ate what we grew and what our friend’s neighbor, Vendela, bartered (eggs, butter and raw milk for our veggies). We helped our hosts’ friends with their projects. They helped us. We sang, told jokes and long, long stories. We stood around all trying to talk to the same person who was on speaker, listened to the radio, read out loud to each other. A trip to get eggs / mail a letter / get gas became an all-day visiting fest. The paradox that kept coming back to me is that the friends we stayed with, who live so deep in the woods it takes at least 20 minutes to get to the nearest house, are involved in the work and the lives of their friends far more than any adult I know in the city, where we live piled on top of eachother.

Experiencing all of these things as part of the fabric of life makes them possible. The context could not be more different from where we live, but experiencing them in context gives us the tools to build similar systems of self-sustainability with our urban communities in New York.

~ The most defining thing about Nico’s life in the woods is based on something he can do there that I never, ever could growing up (in New York City): here, in the woods, he can decide to walk out the door of the house, climb off the porch, and go anywhere. He is two. Here is how Nico spent his days in the woods:
* Going on berry walks with buckets. Bringing (some of) them back.
* Picking a few elderberries from the big bush by the house when walking by. Saying “Thanks bush”.
* Helping one of us wash clothes. Hanging them with clothespins on the line.
* Following insects that did not sting or bite.
* Running from insects that tried to sting or bite (or standing very very still).
* Making biscuits.
* Weeding the garden.
* Mulching the potato plants.

* Playing with the kids of neigbors who dropped by.

* Playing with the kids of our friends from Portland who came up for a weekend.

* Sitting naked with two pots and a cup in a puddle.
* Helping gather kindling sticks.
* Tending the fire – Nico has better instincts around fire at this point that many adults I’ve seen.
* Getting lost. Calling “Maaaaaaaaaaamaaaaaaaaaaa! Paaaaaaaaaapaaaaaaaaaaaa!”… Being found by Tina the Dog, and then Mama, Papa, Carol or Michael.

* Climbing trees.
* Figuring out the tire swing.
* Picking around in the leaf litter (the layer of leaves on the forest floor). Watching a beetle.

* Grazing in the vegetable garden.
* Watering the garden.
* Helping to harvest things for an upcoming meal from the garden.

* Dumping out the kitchen compost bucket on to the big, BIG compost pile in the garden that didn’t smell at all. Aerobic bacteria. Wow.

* Stepping on Carol’s flower plants and hearing from one of us what the plant was feeling when they got stepped on.
* Talking to plants.
* Talking to the moon (Where are you Luna?)
* Counting the stars.

* Peeing everywhere except (mostly) in the vegetable garden.

* Running around without a headlamp on a full-moon night, with more than enough light to see.
* Feeding the cats and the dog.
* Falling down the stairs. Walking more carefully after that.
* Falling asleep with crickets, between his Mama and his Papa. Waking up to birds.

… I could go point by point here and say “This is science / math / reading” or “This is large motor skills / sensory exploration / developing empathy” – but how ridiculous would that be? I doubt I would have to work hard to convince anyone of the value of Nico’s experience in Maine. The importance of kids being able to go off and safely do their own thing helped fuel mid-20th century “white flight” from American cities and was a central selling point of the American suburbs. Today, thousands of New York parents pay huge sums of money for second homes in rural communities so that they can give this kind of experience to their urban children. School reform continually strives to find time for children to have “self-guided” experiences… “after test prep.” “If there’s time.”

There is time. I believe it is Nico’s right as a human being to live in ways that allow him to become who he is, on his own terms, for as much of the time as possible. It is his time, his life. We all have a right to this. Once we get home, the list above quickly changes from berries, wandering and naked puddle-play to the music of block parties, helping Papa in the workshop and weekly collective cook-outs in the community garden. It is sometimes a struggle, but it is always a vast and endless list of learning-living. A list of a rich, real life.

@lex
November 25, 2007

Last week we had our first lesson in canning. In August our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has extra produce because so many members leave the city on vacation or long weekends without picking up their farm shares. We were able to get dozens of leftover biodynamic, organic, local tomatoes for canning.

Cindy, an expert canner since her childhood living on a farm, led us through the process. The children helped us peel the blanched tomatoes and funnel them into clean jars, then we put on the clean lids and into to the boiling water bath they went for 45 minutes. Pull them out, let them cool and listen to the lids “pop” as they seal. That simple; 48 pints of canned tomatoes!

Our consumer culture tells us these things are hard or complicated to do; keeping us spending for the convenience, but it wasn’t hard at all. Not only will we save money this year on canned tomatoes but those dollars will not be given to corporate growers who abuse migrant farm workers. Those dollars will not be given to the processing and canning plants that mistreat factory workers. Those dollars will not be spent in Harlem’s horrible neighborhood grocery chains. Not bad for an afternoon with neighbors.

This is an amazing garden. There’s a little pond with turtles, goldfish and a big mouth frog. There are huge mulberry trees that make it shady, cool and secluded, great on hot summer days. There are beautiful flowers and plants everywhere, there are beehives, there’s a little greenhouse, a whole little world!

Our time in the garden has been busy with cooking and eating, visiting and playing. We’ve had a great mix of neighbors and friends. Cindy and Haja, the founders and directors of the garden, organized some wonderful summer programs. In the mornings Cindy and Raven, the gardens 18-year-old intern, hosted a story hour for toddlers, which was very nice. In the afternoons Raven did activities and tutoring with children ages 7 to 12.

One of the girls we met was Dee Dee, a spirited 7 years old who loved playing with our younger kids. She always came with her grandmother, Ms. Rogers and they often came early, which gave us a chance to get to know them over lunch. We met a woman named Ruth, an Austrian filmmaker working on a documentary about gardens in the city. She really enjoyed filming our children playing and our families cooking. Our kids even got to help in the garden by assisting Yvette, a garden member, in laying mulch. It really worked out to be a perfect activity for them and a great way for them to contribute to the space. So far we’ve enjoyed the garden with minor scrapes and bruises and only one bee sting, (to the eye).

Community spaces that aren’t segregated by family status and age are so valuable to us. It was great being mothers with our children in a community like this. It’s been so nice to benefit from all the work Cindy and Haja have done over the past 20 years to create it. We look forward to all the experiences the garden has for us next.

ANOTHER WAY OF DOING POLITICS
LIVING THE VISION FROM BELOW AND TO THE LEFT
a delegation of women of color, moms, kids, youth, and childcare volunteers
traveling together from NYC to the first ever United States Social Forum (USSF)
Atlanta, GA June 27 – July 1, 2007

WE ARE a community of organizations, cultural workers and individual activists committed to creating an intergenerational movement that is welcoming and accessible, prioritizes collectively-based work, integrates self-care, and builds on our cultures of resistance. Some of us are women, mothers or families of color, some of us are kids or people who play with kids, some of are queer, questioning, transgendered, gender non- conforming, gay, lesbian, or two spirit, some of us have been locked up or have family members inside, some of us have experienced police violence or interpersonal violence, some of us are poor or have limited access to resources, some of us are wealthy or have abundant access to resources. We contribute critical perspective, visions and practices of movement building that understand transforming entire communities and our inter- personal relationships as central to addressing the structural injustices facing us.

THE USSF, inspired by the World Social Forum, promises to be the first major gathering of grassroots movement building organizations in the country. Many times, individual paid professionals and “token” community members represent community organizations in larger strategic conversations, gatherings, and conferences. The USSF provides an important opportunity to change this dynamic. Instead of choosing a few individuals to travel by plane and rent out hotel rooms, we will use a comparable budget to enable a large group of mothers, children, youth, and childcare volunteers to attend the USSF. Ground transportation will enable more participants to attend, particularly immigrants and families with children.

THE JOURNEY ITSELF will embody our politics, fostering an intergenerational space of connection, sharing and caring for people from different communities in NYC. At the USSF, we hope to both learn from others and to share our own work. Some of the workshops that our groups are developing are around collective and non-hierarchical approaches to organizing, violence against women of color and transformative justice, alternatives to institutional schooling, solidarity work, and community-generated autonomous visions and practices. We also hope to learn and build relationships with other groups of young women, mothers, and immigrants.

UPON RETURNING TO NYC, we will produce a newsletter report-back about the USSF experience, and a popular education curriculum that builds upon the workshops we lead and participate in at the USSF. These materials will be bi-lingual (English-Spanish) and shared with NYC groups to use in-house in their leadership development work. We will also organize a city-wide gathering for reflection about lessons learned at the USSF, focusing on practices and strategies employed across the country that we could incorporate to strengthen our work.

OUR GROUPS INCLUDE

SISTERFIRE: a project of INCITE: Women of Color Against Violence. We are a network of NYC-based women of color invested in building a multigenerational movement to end violence against women of color in all its forms.

SISTA II SISTA: a Brooklyn-wide collective of poor and working-class young and adult
Black and Latina women building together to model a society based on liberation and love.

SISTAS ON THE RISE: a community organization based in the South Bronx stared by teen moms to develop leadership, promote political education, and fight for their rights of teen moms and all young women of color through community organizing.

REGENERACIÓN CHILDCARE NYC: a network volunteers who provide childcare to facilitate the participation of low-income mothers of color in building movements for collective liberation.

CENTER FOR IMMIGRANT FAMILIES: a collectively-run organization of low-income immigrant women of color in Manhattan Valley (Uptown NYC). Our stories and lived experiences are central to building a community that works towards social change and promotes justice, mutuality, love, trust, and dignity.

THE KITCHEN TABLE: an intergenerational parenting and education collective, with members in New York’s five boros and Atlanta, GA. By “teaching our own” we are building alternatives to oppressive systems of formal childcare and education for our families, our communities and ourselves.

PACHAMAMA: THE BUSHWICK CHILDCARE COOPERATIVE: Black and Latina mothers caring for each other and our children while organizing for collective liberation.

CRITICAL RESISTANCE YOUTH FREEDOM SCHOOL: connecting low-income mothers of color with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth in order to build solidarity, develop organizing capacity against prisons, policing and jails, and imagine solutions to interpersonal harm.

COMMUNITY BIRTHING PROJECT: a collective of women of color working to support the empowerment of low income women in their birthing experiences, and to challenge practices of forced medicalization, unnecessary interventions and controlled decision making.

LIL’ MAROONS: a parent-run childcare cooperative operating from a child-led African- centered curriculum. In the spirit of maroon communities children and parents model the principles of independence, self-determination and cooperation with each other and the world.

HARM FREE ZONE: provides tools and trainings to local communities to strengthen and develop our ability to resolve conflicts without the need for the police, court system, or prison industry.

MOTHERS ON THE MOVE/ MADRES EN MOVIMIENTO: a grassroots, membership led community organization fighting together for social, economic and racial justice in the South Bronx and beyond.