Tenders of the soil: The urban farmers
It’s hard to grow things in Cambridge? Tell that to Iceland.
By Greg Harris
Cambridge Daily
September 30, 2023
Excerpt:
It’s also proof of concept for other locales. There’s already a second farm, at Riverside Park, a third one in development on the grounds of Cambridge’s Rindge and Latin School and a fourth to be built near Jerry’s pond in North Cambridge. Alongside other urban farming groups such as Cambridge City Growers and the educational nonprofit CitySprouts, and with the enthusiastic support of the city’s Community Development and Public Health Departments, Green Cambridge is working to make urban agriculture a cornerstone of Cambridge’s identity. “The way some Texas places are ‘football towns’ that pump out NFL stars, I want Cambridge to be known as a town of cultivators, and for kids who grow up here to be at the forefront of the urban farming movement,” Nutter says.
At the very largest level, this is a vision about climate change, and the decisions that shape how we live as a society. “Dealing with climate change is going to be hard,” Nutter says. “We’ll need strangers to plan and work together over the long haul, in awareness of the limits we face. In farming, your yield – your survival – depends on completing the work of a season that starts in February and ends in October. People used to know how to organize around that and to form communities that helped each other. Those are lessons we need to relearn.” He points out that 20 percent of the land in Cambridge is sidewalks, roads, pavement of one sort or another. “We could raise all the food we need to support ourselves, and more, in that much space,” he says. “This is not to say we should. But that we take for granted the urban landscape we’ve built, and we forget there are other choices.”
