Preserving agricultural landscapes and helping people develop a deeper connection to where and how their food is grown is at the heart of our mission. With six working farms across the state, and as the largest nonprofit owner of gardens in Boston, The Trustees is uniquely positioned to support food access and connect people to nature in their own neighborhoods.
Each year, tens of thousands of people travel to Trustees farms, shop our farm stores, and engage in culinary programming featuring Trustees-grown ingredients. One of our most popular programs for Trustees members looking to get involved is our community supported agriculture program (CSA), which not only provides Trustees farmers with vital funding, but gives participants a true farm-to-table experience by providing them with fresh, healthy food grown at our farms.
You can learn more about our many different CSA programs on our CSA 101 page, or visit our Shop The Trustees page where links to sign up for 2023 CSAs at our farms across the state are now live!
A major component of our agricultural work moving forward is our agroecology initiative, a pillar of our statewide agricultural and climate resilience strategies. The initiative was launched in 2021 with a comprehensive statewide soil assessment, the start of a three-year grazing study at Appleton Farms, and the hiring of a full-time agroecologist. This initiative will treat Trustees farms as living laboratories to identify and test climate-smart production practices, with the objective of sustainably producing fresh, local food while sharing our findings with other small farmers in the state and promoting thriving ecosystems.
To learn more about our agroecology program, read our blog post from last summer, or visit our agriculture page to learn more broadly about the work on our farms. As we shared in last year’s post, implementing best practices in agroecology allow our farms to produce healthy, local food while promoting biodiversity and functioning ecosystems. To hear directly from those spearheading our agroecology initiative, check out our Conservation in Action webinar from this past week, led by Jennifer Core, Trustees director of agriculture; Alejandro Brambila, Trustees agroecologist; and Julie Richburg, Trustees lead ecologist. Visit our Conservation in Action page to watch last week’s video and find out about other upcoming webinars. And, watch our 2022 Conservation in Action series here.
Moving from the farms to the city, our Boston community gardens will spring to life next month. The Trustees will kick off the growing season on March 18 with our 47th annual Gardeners’ Gathering. The free, all-day event brings together Boston-area gardeners for a day full of informative and engaging workshops, exhibitions, networking opportunities, and more.
While last year’s event was fully remote, this year’s event will be held at Northeastern University. You can check out all the how-to gardening videos, as well as historical and agricultural programming from last year’s Gardner’s Gathering, on our YouTube playlist.
