An Interview with BFFC Stewards
Boston Food Forest Coalition’s work emphasizes and brings to life the pivotal role that trees, food forests, and urban green spaces can play in response to a changing climate. Across Boston, momentum is growing in support of equitably-distributed green space as a tool in building more climate-resilient communities.
As we close out a very hot and rainy summer, we wanted to hear from Boston Food Forest Coalition (BFFC) stewards on how they’ve experienced climate change this season and how they see food forests and gardens as tools for building climate resilience. We also chatted about favorite edible (and non-edible) food forest plants, what it’s like to learn as a steward, and how the BFFC network supports their work as climate leaders. We had some wonderful conversations, and we’re excited to share both the audio and audio transcript with you. Below you can list and read along to the edited interviews.
I spoke with 5 stewards from 5 different sites across the coalition:
Alex Klosterkemper, steward at Leland Cooperative Garden & Boston Nature Center Food Forest
Emily Carvalho, steward at Boston Nature Center Food Forest
LaRay Brison, steward at Edgewater Food Forest
Lavinia Hutchinson, steward at Savin Hill Wildlife Garden
Nellie Ward, steward at Egleston Community Orchard
Audio Transcript
[BFFC]: Could you introduce yourself and share which BFFC site you’re affiliated with?
[Nellie]: Hello. My name is Nellie Ward. I use they/them pronouns. I live in Jamaica Plain and I am a steward at the Egleston Community Orchard.
[Lavinia]: My name is Lavinia Hutchinson and I'm the lead steward of the Savin Hill Wildlife Garden.
[LaRay]: My name is LaRay, LaRay Bryson. I'm affiliated with the Edgewater at River Street Food Forest. I'm one of the stewards.
[Alex]: My name is Alex Klosterkemper. I am a steward at two Boston Food Forest Coalition sites: Leland Garden, which has been in existence for 40 years and basically joined by affiliation; and then the Boston Nature Center, which is our flagship site.
[Emily]: Hello. My name is Emily Carvalho. And I was born and raised in Dorchester and currently live in Dorchester. And I've been a steward at the Boston Nature Center site for about a year and a half now.
[BFFC]: My first question is if you have a favorite food producing species in your food forest.
[Nellie]: Our currants are my favorite plant that is producing in our garden. So, we have both red and black currants. I didn't have a lot of experience with currants before starting at ECO, and I'm always surprised by how the two different species tastes and also their color and also the reactions that people have when they try them. They have such subtle, interesting, almost savory flavors that I really love.
[LaRay]: Yeah, that was actually a really good question. A great question actually, because I was sitting there thinking, thinking, what is my favorite food producing species in the forest? And the one thing that kept popping in my mind was a black walnut tree. And the reason why it was like my favorite is because we had to work around that tree, you know? It was like our first lesson in adaptability. So, yeah, that’s one of my favorites.
[Alex]: Well, my favorite food producing species is any kind of fruit tree, particularly apple trees, because they're pretty hardy and have a great history and do a lot of things from ciders to apple pies. They produce a lot of fruit and I love them. They need a decent amount of care, but not too much care. You know, it's just twice a year pruning and for the rest of it, just make sure they've got good polycultures and then they're happy.
[Emily]: That's a great question. There are so many. My mind immediately went to categorizing them. So I'd say for trees, we have lots of black walnuts in the area. So that is definitely a big treat during the fall, harvesting black walnuts. We all really love the currants and gooseberries that were just planted and we had lots of red currants this year. I’d also say the elderberries. I really love elderberry shrubs and we've seen lots of elderberries this year.
[Lavinia]: Well, my favorite species in the garden — and I do not believe it is food-producing — is Chinese hyacinth. It's these big, showy blooms. And last year we had two plants, we still do have two plants, and they have grown so much with multiple blooms on them. I've seen these plants when they grow really large in the neighborhood and they're just so pretty; these big, big pink and white showy blooms. So that probably is my favorite right now.
[BFFC]: What role do you see the food forest itself playing in the larger movement for climate resiliency in Boston?
[LaRay]: I think design projects like the food forest can help with our connection to nature and our perception of the built environment. A lot of us are surrounded by these concrete jungles, and implementing these food forests and things like it will help us with a sense of recreation. And I believe that places of recreation, that can mean just about anything, right? You can sit down and read, you know, you can meditate, you can do yoga. There's all types of varieties of recreation that people can partake in. And it helps with our overall mind, body and soul, which helps us to become better humans. And I think that when we have this connection with nature, it then translates to this long term stewardship to the land.
[Nellie]: Community gardens and permaculture forests help to decentralize food systems… and what I mean by decentralize is to kind of intersperse food accessibility within neighborhoods so that it's more accessible to the people who live close to it. Also preparedness for climate change in general. Also, I think on a larger scale, having these types of spaces that are dedicated to more regenerative agriculture help to stabilize soil, which is a really important piece of climate change. I also think that neighborhood community gardens, especially permaculture food forests that require less inputs, are important for education and for feeling connected to the natural world and environment emotionally, spiritually, psychologically and physically.
[Alex]: I mean, it's such a wide range, what you could call a food forest, you know. I think in the urban environment that we're dealing with in Boston, I see the food forests more as educational pieces and reconnecting an urban population back to nature and making people aware of where their food comes from. For me, that is the biggest role that the food forests play in the urban space.
[Emily]: As a whole, I find a lot of relief in that [the food forest] will be there for a really long time for people to continue enjoying and for it to be a really important habitat for wildlife. That's something I feel really passionate about, not only cultivating these food forests for our use, but for the many birds and other animal and insect populations that are around the city and really rely on any green spaces that we do have.
[Lavinia]: The movement to build more climate resilient spaces in Boston I think really needs to have these wildlife spaces or these garden spaces in the neighborhoods because so often in the past you'd have an empty space, whether it's a vacant lot, these empty spaces are a good opportunity for us to turn them back to nature and help us with climate resiliency and change. Not every aspect of open space has to be built upon — that is really counterintuitive.
[BFFC]: The next question is about how the learning you do as a steward might be different from more traditional versions of learning in our culture. So like a university classroom or a continuing education class for adults. How do you see the learning that you do as a steward different from those kinds of avenues of other adult learning?
[LaRay]: I'm a big thinker. I could sit there and think all day. So when you have to actually execute it’s completely different, you know? Execution is what you have to do when you’re in the food forests. Execution and patience as well. You have to review the results, you know, in the seasons. So that's one major thing that's different from the classroom setting and being out in the food forests — you’re actually getting your hands dirty. You get that hands-on experience as opposed to the theory.
[BFFC]: Goes from theoretical to real pretty quickly out there.
[LaRay]: Real quick. And then with climate change and everything, a lot of that stuff just goes out the window to a certain extent.
[Alex]: I think in terms of learning, for me, it's about learning from each other. You're just getting to know like minded people and everybody comes with some sort of experience. I'm also a very practical learner, so just doing things with people, I learn much better than reading it in a book. So in that regard, I think just having that community helps me a lot with learning. And I think as we have all experienced, there's so much to learn. You'll never stop learning when it comes to nature. There's always new challenges and new things that you are trying out.
[Emily]: I have a really big interest in learning more about the plants. I am a gardener and a landscaper, and so I focus a lot on learning about each different plant species that we have. It's been a great space to learn more about the larger fruiting trees and shrubs on the site. But it's especially been great to learn about those things in community with others, because every time I'm at the food forest site, I'm learning something new from someone else. That feels really fulfilling to me, and I think also to the plants.
[Nellie]: I would say the types of learning that I do on site at the garden are more informal and also sort of more anecdotal. Individuals experience certain types of plants or types of recipes. There's a lot more personal history and culture that's kind of encapsulated in these transmissions of knowledge that is a very different flavor than the experience of learning in a university or some kind of standardized class where there is a lot of culture and anecdotal information that's intentionally removed.
[Lavinia]: The learning you do hands on is completely different from what you learn in a classroom. You know, I have a college degree. I also have a graduate degree, and as part of my graduate degree, I had to do a practicum. And believe me, what they were telling you in books did not happen out in the clinical practice. Hands on is totally different than what you learn in a book or even in a lecture hall. You have to be out there and see it for yourself. It's the same way with working in these, you know, in these gardens. If you sat in a lecture hall and listened, it's totally different once you actually get out there and you find out what works, what doesn't work, what you need to do. It is a lot of work and it's a commitment. So I would say that… any type of hands on would beat any type of lecture seminar or anything like that. Hands down.
[BFFC]: I'm curious how you've seen climate change manifest either in your neighborhood where you live or the food forests itself.
[Emily]: It was interesting, starting my first year with volunteering, we had a really big drought last year. It was just so hot and so dry and you could really see that directly impacting the landscape. Anything from shrubs not doing well, dropping leaves because they're really stressed out, to things like wildflowers just simply being burned to a crisp. It felt really damaging. There was a lot of anxiety that was building for a lot of us. And keeping up with maintaining such a big space too was a challenge. So that was a very visual impact that we could all see. And then with this season, it's been basically the exact opposite of that with all of the heavy rains that we've had. It’s now this super lush, untamed landscape and things really do seem to be enjoying it. But also with that, you know, the fungal life is really enjoying it too. And so we've had a lot of our serviceberries not doing so well this year because all of these wet conditions are really a good breeding ground for all of that fungus, that fungal activity. So, yeah, mostly seeing the weather, seeing climate change happening in the weather patterns has been a really big thing at the [Boston] Nature Center site. With really seeing all of those patterns shift it is so much more important that we focus on our adaptability and creative solutions.
[BFFC]: How do you feel the network of stewards at other sites has supported you in the past? And if it hasn't yet, as we're just starting to weave that web of support across sites, how do you see that network as something that you could benefit from in the future?
[LaRay]: So I think that it’s great that there is this network of knowledge being shared amongst the stewards because every area is different. So just learning from what the other stewards are going through is helpful because again, when we share experiences, you realize that you're not the only one going through the challenge of getting a crop to grow, or understanding how to get people to come to an event, or getting people to volunteer.
[Emily]: Yeah, I think that the Boston Nature Center site is a unique example, and there are other stewards that also come from different sites like the Edgewater site and the Leland Community Garden. Being able to hear about their experiences there and the events they have going on, it feels like there's some connectivity there. And being able to attend workshops that are happening at different sites is a really nice way to connect with those groups, those folks.
[Lavinia]: I think that this is a learning experience for everybody because every piece of land is different and our needs are different from, say, Uphams Corner [Food Forest] or Edgewater [Food Forest]. We're learning as we're going. So I think sometimes to give people a little bit of a boost is to remind people we're new at this, you know? We're very new at this.
[Alex]: I got involved in the Boston Food Forest Coalition because I care about the environment and I care about what we know about nature and how we can connect to nature. So I think just the volunteerism was also a little bit of wanting to put actions to words. And I think that's what motivated me a lot to work with the Boston Forest Coalition because their mission is so aligned with what I think we need to do more.
Aerial shot of the Boston Nature Center Food Forest in Mattapan, October 2023.
