Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Gardener Spotlight: Afreen Fahad

The Land Conservancy of New Jersey’s Community Garden at South Branch Preserve would not be successful without all of the talented and generous gardeners who maintain plots there. One gardener in particular has been using her plots to benefit the community and spread awareness about organic gardening practices.
Afreen Fahad, with the help of her family and friend Rohana Chase, has been cultivating four plots at the community garden and plans to donate all of the produce to local food pantries. Afreen and Rohana are both incoming juniors at Mt. Olive High School.

In the plots, they have planted zucchini, tomatoes, three types of bell peppers, beans, oregano, rosemary, basil, rutabaga, cabbage, eggplants, and jalapenos. Recently they have harvested the cabbage and rutabaga. They have been harvesting the other crops weekly. Also, at home Afreen has started a small seedling project with her family growing spinach, leeks, and beets. As soon as they grow a little more, they will transplant them into the plots also.
Afreen’s goal is to start a kitchen garden club at Mt. Olive High School. Right now she and her friends are meeting the costs on their own, but she hopes to set up the club formally through the high school, so they can obtain funding.

Afreen is very passionate about organic gardening and the various positive impacts it can have. She has several objectives in starting the kitchen garden club at Mt. Olive High School. First she wants to donate all of the food grown to local soup kitchens and food pantries. She has already made two donations to the soup kitchen of Dover at Trinity Lutheran Church where she plans to volunteer this year.  This soup kitchen feeds about 70 people a day and also puts out small quantities of produce for people to take home.  Anindita Fahad, Afreen's mother, has graciously offered to pick up produce donations from other gardeners to bring to this soup kitchen.  Please let her know if you have extra produce that you would like to donate.

She would like to help other community members donate food to local pantries as well. Another objective is to involve her schoolmates who have an interest in gardening or environmentalism and put their interest to work. In the future, she would like to contact local nurseries to request donations of seeds and plants to produce food that will later be donated.

Besides the goal of planting and donating food, Afreen also has a broader goal of spreading awareness to her classmates about hunger, childhood obesity, and the environmental impact of importing food long distances. Now more than ever, the cheapest and most readily available foods are processed or canned and not very healthy. “Americans have historically proven resilience and self-reliance through the establishment of Victory gardens. At the time of the Second World War, when the war put a constraint on supply lines and affordability of Americans, people grew vegetables and fruits in gardens in their backyards or public parks,” says Fahad. She wants to empower her classmates by showing them that access to healthy foods doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive. She also wants to spread awareness of the fossil fuels that are wasted on transporting food long distances and the chemicals needed to preserve these foods for long periods of time, not to mention, the nutritional value that is lost during these processes. “Growing one’s own produce ensures access to foods that are organically grown, seasonally available and nutritionally the best, because they do not lose any nutritional content through travel from far away farms,” says Fahad. When you grow your own food, you know exactly what is in it and that you are getting the highest nutritional value.

In setting up the kitchen garden club, Afreen wants to create roles for her classmates to cultivate the garden plots, raise funds, keep track of expenses, collaborate with other community organizations, and spread awareness of broad social issues concerning food.

It’s wonderful to have Afreen, her family, and friends as part of our garden community at South Branch Preserve. Her work is truly inspiring!

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