This week was filled with many beautiful moments of learning. On Monday we began the week at Kelly Street Garden in the Bronx where Renee (the garden head) gave me and Sammi an astounding and comprehensive walk-through of the garden’s myriad of herbs, crops, fruiting plants, weeds, trees, and the relationships between so many of them. This coupled with trying our hand at pest management for the day was a fantastic time to continue building intimate relationships between ourselves and the plants and spaces we occupy throughout the week. Tuesday and Wednesday brought about new challenges with exciting and worthwhile solutions. The difficulties with practicing photogrammetry at the Red Hook Community Farm in Brooklyn remained the same (light movement, shadow, and wind effects) but Sammi and I strategized new ways to begin to get the ball rolling and create some neat scans!

It being both Sammi and my first time to the New Roots location in Woodside Queens, Thursday was a joy. Everyone on the farm shares a sense of passion and dedication to the relatively new project and is determined to navigate the trials that inevitably come with the urban farm– especially one that is so young. Friday remains my favorite day of the week since beginning this internship. Our time at New Roots on the last day of the week was spent packing bags of fresh produce for community food distribution, watering, weeding, plotting, and harvesting across the layered and lush farm. From what I have seen, the space continues to supply its community and those who reap what the soil provides, with bountiful produce. After Sammi, Eliana, and I created a make-shift bed for some cucumbers grown in secret along the back fence of the farm, it became more and more evident what it means to be a part of a communal space. Sheryll who is the Bronx New Roots farm head, pointed out to us as she gave us the tour of the trellis-needing crop, “this is what it means to be a community garden; you just have to go with it!”, and go with it we shall!!

It is so fascinating to see the differences in the infrastructure, engagement levels, resource availability, and various other factors amongst the four farms/gardens. Some which have just received their funding resemble the bones of the older and more established sites, and the newer sites reflect what stages those that are relatively older may have gone through. Regardless, each farm and all those contributing to practice mutual aid for their communities create a very real and very evident impact on the people, the land, and the community around them.