Farm Values and Growing Practices
Nordica Street Community Farm is more than just a little neighborhood farm. We are part of a larger movement of activists and farmers dedicated to building healthy and just food systems and environmental stewardship.
Our roots were nurtured by Springfield's Gardening the Community (GTC) and the passion of the young people there who became leaders in both growing food and system change. We continue to be inspired by GTC and many other urban and rural farm partners across Massachusetts who are organizing to change systems and policies while also growing food in harmony with the land and in ways that nourish their communities.
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Environmental Stewardship
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We do our best to take care of our farmland and forest in a sustainable way that supports the health and resilience of the ecosystem around us. We understand that the community of living creatures in the soil and in the environment around us is essential to creating a life-giving space. We accept responsibility for stewarding this beautiful land so that it is here for generations to come.
We use organic practices to grow the food we sell; we occasionally spray with things like clay, fish emulsion, or neem oil to help the plants and fruit trees stay strong and resist pests. Everything we use is safe for humans. We also farm by hand and do not till the soil, which means that the living organisms that make up healthy soil thrive, and therefore the food we grow is more nutrient-dense than what you will find in the supermarket.
Our farming practices ensure that we have a very low carbon footprint and that our farm will be more resilient in the face of climate change and extreme weather events.
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Racial and Economic Justice
We believe that everyone deserves healthy, culturally appropriate food. We organize to open up access to good food for all our neighbors, both through the farm and through movement building and policy change. We believe that we can create a racially and economically just food system that works for all communities.
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We have learned deeply from farmers of color in Springfield and beyond about the ways that racism has pushed people of color off farmland and created a food system that is not equitable. We understand that poor communities and communities of color often have limited access to fresh, healthy food, especially locally grown food, while wealthier, whiter communities have abundant access. We want to be part of a movement to change this.
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We try our best to be accountable to our community in deciding what to grow, how to grow it, and how to price it. We love growing cultural crops so that families in our community can cook the dishes that give them joy and comfort.
We offer a sliding scale pricing system for our Farm Share to open up access to all families who want to participate, and to encourage those with more resources to pay more to support those who cannot afford the full price. We accept SNAP at our Farm Stand and Farm Share program, and hope to participate in HIP (Healthy Incentives Program) once the program opens up for new farm enrollment again.
The land we steward is part of the unceded ancestral homelands of the Agawam people, who took care of this part of the Kwinitekw River Valley (now known as the Connecticut River Valley) for thousands of years. The land was taken from them by Colonial settlers whom they had befriended, through a series of broken treaties and violence. We acknowledge this painful history and are committed to supporting land back re-matriation movements of the indigenous communities active in our region today, including the Hassanamisco Nipmuc, Mohican, and Pokanoket Nations.
Climate Change and Conservation
Farmers understand that the climate is changing because we are dependent on the weather for what and how we grow. Our changing climate in New England includes more rain and severe rain events, droughts, and changeable weather patterns like late frosts in the spring or warm periods over the winter months. All of these things affect the soil, insect life, and our plants.
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We have also seen an increase in mosquitoes and ticks, more very hot days during the summer, which makes it difficult for us to work and to keep some of our produce fresh, and more invasive and challenging insects that damage our crops. Bees are also challenged with new diseases and the loss of nectar sources, and we need bees for pollination!
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Conservation practices help us respond to this changeable and difficult situation. We have been fortunate to receive funding from the Natural Resource Conservation Service (a division of the USDA) for a frost-free irrigation system and high tunnel to extend our season. NRCS has also helped us buy materials for covering our rows with a white fabric (row cover) to protect plants from damaging insects and cold snaps. They have helped us purchase supplies for planting cover crops in the fall, which add nutrients back into the soil and protect it from erosion over the winter.
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In the future, we plan to plant more perennial flowers for pollinators and wildlife, and to create a hedgerow along the road to better protect the farm from pesticide drift from neighbors. We are also renovating our barn and will have walk-in cold storage which will give us much more capacity to keep our fruit and vegetables fresh! We will install solar on the barn to create power for our operation.
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We are seeding clover wherever we can (so much better than grass!!) and will be planting more shrubs and plants along our forest edge. The forest edge was highly traumatized by a developer's clear-cutting in 2010 and has become home to many aggressive plants and trees (bittersweet, black locust, sumac, Japanese Knotweed, and brambles), which we hope to replace with less invasive plants.
