A Season Wrapped in Sweetness: Letter from the Executive Director
This spring, a few miles from our fields, a first strawberry ripened in a garden at the Adelphi Street Shelter.
The garden belongs to RISE Housing and Support Services, one of our partners in the Sovereign Gardens Initiative, where Pitney Meadows supports gardens grown by and for local community-based organizations. This particular garden began with the vision of one shelter resident, and several residents tended the garden through the season. When that first berry turned red, RISE shared the news with all of us, along with a thank you I have reread more times than I can count.
One berry, grown with care and purpose and shared with joy. It has stayed with me all season, along with an old story it brought to mind.
My partner often recites for me the Cherokee legend of the first strawberry: the first man and the first woman had a fight that started small and grew. The woman left at daybreak, walking toward the rising sun without once looking back. The sun, wanting to help, grew huckleberries and then blackberries along her path, but her eyes stayed fixed on the distance as she passed them by. So the sun made something entirely new, something so fragrant and so sweet she could not help but notice it. She stopped. She tasted. She remembered. When the man caught up, she shared the strawberries with him while he apologized and she forgave him. The story teaches us to pause in our moments of anger or rushing, to notice the sweetness all around us, and mostly, to share it with the ones we love most.
As we close out this season, I keep thinking about that moment when she stops and shares what she has found. It was hard this year to slow down, to look up from the work in front of us and the chaos around us, and to notice the sweetness growing right along our path. It has been a hard year to be a neighbor in this country. So much of what we hear tells us we are divided, that the people around us are on the other side of something. But this season, on this land, I kept seeing evidence of something else.
This was the year we learned, again and more deeply, that trust builds trust.
We leaned into asking for help, which does not always come easily to a small team used to doing it all. Then we did the harder part: we trusted the people we asked, not only with the tasks but with the culture of this place. Our CSA picking windows were staffed entirely by volunteers this year. They warmly welcomed fellow members, offered harvesting tips, and set up and broke down our new welcome wagon at every pick. Those rows became a place where members got to know one another. People who might disagree about plenty knelt side by side in the same herb row and found plenty to talk about. There were so many smiles, so much laughter, and a shared sense that this land is cared for by all of us. And because our community stepped forward, our farmers got something they have rarely had in the height of the season: evenings at home with their families, and time to tend to the other important work of the farm. I am not sure I can fully express what that gift has meant.
The same thing happened at our farm stand. This year brought what felt like an explosion of new customers, and our small team quickly found we could not restock the shelves as fast as they were being emptied. Before we had even figured out what to do, volunteers stepped in to clean and stock on a regular schedule. Customers and staff alike have felt the care they bring to that work. Inside our team, too, we found ourselves sharing the load on long days rather than each carrying our own piece alone. That is the quiet magic of a shared space: the more each of us offers it, the more there is for everyone.
Not every moment this season was sweet.
For the first time in our seven years of operating the farm stand, we were robbed. In broad daylight, someone took $600 from our cash box, along with invoices from local farmers whose products we carry. It was a hard day for our team, and it shook a part of us that has always run on an honor system and good faith.
Several days later, the man who took it returned what he had stolen. When police found him, he shared that his wife is sick and that he had made a bad choice. When asked if we wanted to press charges, we made the decision as a team, board and staff, to instead offer this couple the remainder of the CSA season as members.
It would have been easy to act quickly out of hurt. Instead, we sat with it, we thought about the person on the other side of that choice, and we answered taking with sharing. Acting in alignment with your values is not always easy, and we won’t always live up to that aspiration, but this season, we chose repair, and I have never been prouder of this team. At a time when so much of public life rewards choosing sides, choosing grace felt like its own quiet act of hope.
Meanwhile, the whole campus has been alive in a way I’ve not seen before. Humans, animals, insects, and every player in our ecosystem have been buzzing with activity. Kids in Nurtured in Nature spent their afternoons muddy and smiling. Young runners logged laps on our trails and through our farm fields, sampling bok choy and beets. New composters joined our Community Garden, and gardeners across the county, on our campus and off of it, came to learn and to share. Birders, walkers, bikers, and visitors of every kind found their way here, and many of them found their way back again.
Every week, volunteers packed and delivered our Food as Medicine and Farm-to-Pantry produce. And every week, participants greeted those boxes with real excitement, peeking inside to see what this week held, already planning what they would cook. Food grown a few miles from home, handed over by a neighbor, becoming someone's dinner that night. So much of the joy this season came from people giving a little of themselves to this place and discovering that it gave back even more.
Growth does not come without growing pains.
We feel them in the parking lot on a busy Saturday, in the stretched capacity of our team, and in the needs of our historic buildings and aging equipment. These are the moments when it can be hardest to stay in that spirit of sharing. When space feels tight, it is only human to reach for what we need. Three years into this role, I am learning that leaning into generosity in exactly those moments is what carries us through, and that the outcomes are better for our team, our community, and this land we share.
That is the spirit our Visionary Projects Committee, staff, and board are bringing to the design of the campus of our future, one that will meet the needs of this community and deepen our mission impact for generations to come. If we can stay grounded in our values and keep our promise to one another to co-create a space built on trust, I believe we can weather whatever growing pains come next.
Which brings me back to strawberries.
This year, our farm fields welcomed our first-ever berry patch. We planted it hoping for a sweet summer harvest. We never imagined it would keep fruiting into fall. Yet, as the hardwoods along the edge of our fields began to turn, our farmers walked in with pints of strawberries, bright red and perfectly ripe. Strawberries, in October!
I think the Sun in that old story would understand. In a year when so much seems to pull us apart, we need places like Pitney Meadows to remind us that we still know how to cooperate. We can tend something together, share what it gives, and discover that it gives back more than we ever thought to ask for: something so sweet that we cannot help but stop, look around, and remember why we’re here together.
To every volunteer, member, customer, partner, supporter, neighbor, and team member: thank you. I’m so grateful to share this beautiful and bountiful project with you. Tell us, what sweet surprise did you find at Pitney Meadows this year?
With gratitude for every hand,
Brooke