Green Team

Autumn 2012 was looking like it would be a pretty typical harvest season. The returning members of our summer Green Team were busily buzzing about the city gathering the last tomatoes, bunches of basil and root veggies out of the ground, and preparing the soil for a winter rye cover crop. Following these housekeeping projects, the Green Team would typically come in for the winter and prepare one or two campaigns during the cold months to advocate for state-wide youth jobs funding, or work on designs for local parks or transit stations. However, as most of the East Coast knows, things are not so typical, thanks to Hurricane Sandy.

By no means can we say we experienced devastation up here in Somerville. Most of us, if we lost power, had it back within days. In fact, there is only one notable long-term effect our Green Team suffered, and that is the loss of our brand new greenhouse at the South Street Farm. Having constructed the greenhouse this summer, we painstakingly anchored it, tied it down, and did everything short of dismantling it completely. However, it wasn't enough, and come Tuesday, we couldn't even find it! When we did locate it, we found it over a 12 foot fence in a twisted heap of metal and plastic.

So what does this mean? This means the Green Team's new winter project is to design and build a new greenhouse so for the South Street Farm! They've already started sourcing recycled windows to build a bigger and better greenhouse. Any funding you give over the next few weeks will be essential to helping us work with a designer, source materials and make this greenhouse a reality!

Links:

• www.groundworksomerville.org