Many years ago, a few stallwart land-lovers
got together...
Weston had an amicable fellow named Bill McElwain running the
Youth Office to help keep kids out of trouble. He had the idea
of getting kids to work on a farm and send the produce to the needy
in Boston. Thus Green Power was born, back in the 70's, and
generations of summer farm crews have been reconnecting to the land
in Weston ever since.
A youngster named Brian Donahue started college at Brandeis
University about the same time, and heard about Bill. He came
out to some of the fields and got hooked on farming. He pretty
much dropped out of school and became a land stewardship jack of all
trades. Someone thought he could help out doing some trail
maintenance on the Forest and Trail Association trails, so he got
crackin'...
Getting towards the 80's, the Town was getting less enthusiastic
about the Green Power program and Bill's ideas of expansion.
Bill was moving on, but others stepped in. Brian, with Martha
Gogel and Doug Henderson and a couple others, decided to start an
independent organization to farm, manage forest lands, and help
people with gardening on their own land. And so Land's Sake
came to be.
As is often the case in a small town, someone knew someone, who
knew the manager of Harvard's Case Estates in Weston. They had
a big field that they weren't using too much. The Land's Sake
folks decided they'd try farming it, to sell food to Harvard
for their students. It might be a little long to go on and on
about the trials and tribulations, the big effort to get the Town to
buy the land, and the constant differences of opinion with Mother
Nature, but that is the land where Land's Sake Farm is now,
more than 20 years later.
More of this awesome story of community stewardship can be found
by reading Brian Donahue's book: Reclaiming the Commons from Yale
University Press. Professor Donahue now runs the Environmental
Studies Department at that very same Brandeis University that
couldn't keep him away from the land all those years ago.
If you were part of the scene all those years ago, please write
me (Grey Lee) at info@landssake.org or call me
up and set me straight at 781 893 1162.
Thanks! | 