BRATTLEBORO-May the 4th: Be with us!
Edible Brattleboro is rallying the community to kick off the spring gardening season at the new Brattleboro Food Forest at 805 Western Ave. When it feels like the world is falling apart, it's time to grow together.
This is an invitation to the whole community to grow more resilient and connected, through local food and cultivation. The event will run from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Food will be provided, as well as tours of the Food Forest project and overviews of the other programs that will run this year. No RSVP is necessary, but if you can bring your own chair or blanket and your own dinnerware, please do!
Come learn about opportunities to make new friends through volunteering in the garden and preparing nutritious food. Edible Brattleboro has year-round opportunities to connect, but the summer is, of course, the busiest season.
We have volunteer roles to fit people of all ages and abilities. Maybe you'd like to adopt a fruit tree? Maybe you'd like to help cut vegetables for community soup? Maybe you have an hour a week that you'd love to spend in the garden, helping to grow food for the community, or handing out food at the farmstand?
Our mission is to improve accessibility to healthy food; our motto is "Grow food everywhere for everyone." We do that by transforming spaces in and around town into edible landscapes, interplanting vegetables, herbs, and fruits among the ornamentals.
We strive to replace lawns with help-yourself gardens and tree plantings and to inspire our community and neighbors to do the same. We use and encourage practices that improve biodiversity and regenerate the soil to support life.
We address food insecurity and increase access to nutritious food by providing free fresh produce at our Share the Harvest stand from July through October.
Our events include free hands-on workshops on growing, preparing, and preserving fresh fruits and vegetables. We model and instruct regenerative soil-building practices.
We envision a community where abundance and beauty thrive in edible landscapes, while improving the overall health and resilience of our community and our planet. And we can't do it without you!
Brooks Memorial Library will also be there, with samples of offerings from its Seed and Tool Libraries, which are geared toward helping the community garden and prepare healthy food. Access to these resources is free to anyone with a library card, and library cards are free for all Brattleboro residents!
In our work to cultivate the land in this community, we must also acknowledge the indigenous people of this place, the Abenaki, their ancestors, and their allies, who have cared for this land for many generations and continue to do so.
More details can be found at ediblebrattleboro.org and the Edible Brattleboro Facebook page, or by emailing ediblebrattleboro@gmail.com.
Edible Brattleboro
Brattleboro
Charis Sonne (formerly Carissa Brewton)//Stephen Dotson
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