Thursday, March 25, 2010

World PEAS Cooperative, Lowell MA

World PEAS Cooperative
9 Central Street
Lowell, MA 01854
978.453.1311

Tonight, Life Alive in Lowell hosted the final film in the Lowell Film Collaborative's three-part agricultural film series. The film was Good Food. Lately, I've been reading books about industrial agriculture in the US and, frankly, it's pretty depressing. This film, however, was a hopeful one--talking about smaller-scale sustainable farming practices taking hold in the Pacific Northwest.

After the movie, one of the sponsors for this film series, the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project (NESFP), talked about their CSA, World PEAS Collaborative. NESFP is a non-profit partnership between Tufts University and Community Teamwork, Inc. It's a training program for immigrant farmers or anyone new to farming. Their office is located right in downtown Lowell and their farm is in Dracut. World PEAS has pick-ups located in Andover, Cambridge (Porter Square), Chinatown (Boston--at Tufts University), Concord, Dracut, East Boston, Lexington, Lowell, Medford/Somerville (at Tufts University), and Winchester.

Also in attendance were a couple of people from Farmer Dave's http://www.farmerdaves.net/ to answer questions about and sign people up for their CSA in Dracut. They have pick-ups in Beverly, Boston, Burlington, Dracut, Gloucester, Jamaica Plain, Lanesville, Lawrence, Somerville, and Tewksbury.

It's a wonderful thing that there are so many CSAs in Massachusetts. When I first joined Brookfield Farm's CSA in 1995, not only had I never even heard of a CSA before, but most people I spoke with hadn't either. Most people also thought it was just another crazy hippie thing I was doing (I swear I'm not a hippie, though :). It's nice to see this crazy hippie thing become more ordinary.

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