 The brightest day of the year has come and gone. As the rhythms of the living world change from activity and growth to contraction and rest, it's a good time to pause and look back over the year so far, taking stock of what we've done and what we'd like to do before winter returns. Since our last update, we had a successful plant sale in which we raised more than 500$ for future planting efforts, finding homes for or more than 100 fruit and nut bushes and trees into the suburban landscape of the valley at the same time.
With funds from last year's grant and fundraiser, we made some massive orders from nurseries, and found ourselves host to more than 1,300 bare root plants, mostly fruit and nut trees and shrubs. We ordered from Miller's, the New York and New Hampshire State Nurseries, Prairie Moon, Cold Spring Farm, and Tripple Brook Farm. Having found homes for most of them, and the rest healed in at Tripple Brook, we can take a breather and focus on streamlining maintenance, and maintaining the momentum we've been building. We have begun lasting relationships with many organizations around the valley. In partnership with Community Action, Safe Passage, Amherst Conservation Land, Hampshire Council of Governments, First Churches, the Northampton Housing Authority, the Greenfield Parks and Recreation Dept., almost a dozen public schools and more, we've put hundreds of trees in the ground so far. Over time, we'll expand them into connected forest garden beds. For more info about current projects, check the project page. We have a few good young and energetic summer interns, and a few already signed up for the fall semester. We continue to meet bi-weekly. There's still plenty of weeding, designing, outreach and fundraising to do, and some exciting, high profile projects lined up, like the country's first public paw-paw orchard in Amherst, the Forbes Library, and an edible bike path corridor through Hadley. If you've been wanting to get involved, there's no better time than now!
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