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Fork & Spade: A community food digest for May Ellie Viggiani, a volunteer with Grow Food Northampton, spreads mulch on one of the Giving Gardens at the community garden site off Spring street in Florence. Valley Grows Day 2021 is Wednesday, May 19, a collective fundraising effort among community-based food and land access and farming nonprofit organizations throughout western Massachusetts. Gazette file photo Published: 5/14/2021 4:30:22 PM One thing your Fork & Spade moderator loves about putting this column together is that while this monthly feature is always about food access and sustainability, there are so many different and innovative ways people are approaching these issues that there’s always something new and interesting to learn. ....
Published: 4/29/2021 12:24:22 PM Back before the plague, I used to volunteer in my son’s first-grade class at Leeds Elementary School on Fridays. This was a strenuous proposition a roomful of high-spirited 6- and 7-year-olds bursting with end-of-the-week energy meant that I often went home and had to lie down for a while in a dark room. The very best Fridays, however, were the ones when the Grow Food Kids program arrived with its cooking lesson cart, complete with kale and apples and knives for all. Then there was no question of trying to make kids sit on the rug or pay attention to the reading lesson on the smart screen; all the kids were automatically riveted by the prospect of making something edible, and learning something applied. ....
Published: 3/12/2021 4:10:46 PM Besides basic life functions eating, sleeping, breathing running may be the only activity I’ve sustained for decades without any breaks. This shocks me, partly because I don’t have a great track record for persistence, but mostly because everything about my childhood abilities indicated that I would spend the rest of my life sitting in dark rooms reading library books or watching seven hours of sitcom TV a day. I was the proverbial last pick for every game ever invented involving physical skill; I never learned to swim, ski or skate. In junior high P.E., we were forced to run The Mile on Fridays, a recurring event that gave me actual nightmares: suffocation, pain and humiliation, against which death was nothing so much as a good way out. ....
Fork and Spade: A community food digest for March Eva Fierst reaches for a crate of food in January from Sara Schieffelin, asa the Grow Food Northampton volunteers load a van at the Northampton Survival center to deliver to Meadowbrook. Gazette file photo Published: 3/11/2021 3:28:18 PM With the sap rising and temperatures warming and perhaps the real end of the pandemic in sight energy is gathering everywhere. So many community organizations have exciting events and programs planned this month to help turn that energy into sustained community change that your Fork and Spade moderator won’t waste a lot of time with an introduction today. Read on to be energized! ....
At Home with Francie Lin: The secret behind the peace at Miriam’s house, where a Florence woman and her partner run a day care, raise 7 kidsView Photo Gallery Miriam Fathallah, joined by her youngest, Sylvie, 5, calls in her kids from the back yard as she and her partner, Kathleen Hulton, reflected in door, prepare for dinner at their Florence home on Friday, Dec. 18, 2020. STAFF PHOTO/KEVIN GUTTING Miriam Fathallah and Kathleen Hulton’s kids, clockwise from left, Jude, 10, Abby, 11, Quinn, 13, Serenity, 10, Emaline, 14, Trinity, 13, and Sylvie, 5, gather in the dining room of their Florence home before dinner. STAFF PHOTO/KEVIN GUTTING ....