Recipes From the Community Garden

By Nora Cannon 

Community Garden at Davis-Douglas Farm

This spring, Wildlands Trust welcomed Nora Cannon to our Community Garden at Davis-Douglas Farm. As an artist, cook, and master gardener, Nora believes that, with a little creativity, locally grown food can inspire delicious, nutritious, affordable, and innovative meals. We invited Nora to share some of her favorite homegrown recipes with the Wildlands community. 

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It has been a good growing season in our community gardens. New England overall is having a nice summer, and gardeners are looking forward to the lingering warm days of September to continue to bring in the harvest. Here are several of my favorite recipes at this time of year—one a cooked-then-cooled salad, and the other a quick bread to enjoy now and, if you’re lucky enough to have leftovers, freeze for the middle of winter, when we start looking at seed catalogs and dreaming of the warm days ahead. 

Happy Gardening! 👩‍🌾 

Nora    

Italian Potato Salad with Green Beans and Tomatoes 

Okay, it sounds fancy—but it’s so simple!  

• 2 pounds small new or red potatoes  

• Cook until tender; cut in halves or quarters  

• 1 teaspoon salt 

• 1 pound string green beans trimmed 

• Steam; cut in quarters   

• ½ teaspoon salt 

• 1 cup cherry tomatoes  

• Cut in halves 

• Combine cooked vegetables and tomatoes in a bowl. Toss with ¼ jar of your favorite Italian salad dressing (I like Paul Newman’s Organic). Enjoy!  

Best Zucchini Bread 

This zucchini bread freezes well or keeps in your refrigerator for several weeks. I recommend you bake a day ahead, as it tastes better the next day. This recipe makes a 9” x 5” loaf pan, or several smaller loaf pans and muffins. It sounds like a lot of steps, but the result is well worth it! 

• Spray or butter loaf pans. For muffins, I use cupcake liners. 

• Beat 3 eggs, 1 ¼ cup vegetable oil, 1 ½ cup sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract together in a bowl 

• Sift together 2 cups grated unpeeled raw zucchini, 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon cloves (pumpkin spice works well also), and one cup walnuts. Blend wet and dry ingredients together. 

• Bake at 350 degrees in oven. 1 hour for loaf pan and less for smaller pans and muffins. Check after 25 minutes and test center. 

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The Community Garden at Davis-Douglas Farm in Plymouth provides Wildlands members with an opportunity to grow foods and flowers of their own and meet fellow gardeners in the area. To learn more, visit our Community Garden page.  

What you can’t grow yourself, buy local! Wildlands members receive discounts at multiple local farms: Bay End Farm in Bourne, Nessralla Farm in Halifax, Hornstra Farm in Norwell, and Vineyard Farm in West Bridgewater. To become a member, click here.  

Brockton Elementary School Receives Outdoor Classroom

By Thomas Patti, Communications Coordinator

Update (9/6/2023): The outdoor classroom is officially complete! Thank you to all who helped us with this project, including students and families from the George School who came out to volunteer on August 16. See the gallery at the bottom of this page for new photos.

If you're anything like the Wildlands staff, your fondest childhood memories might revolve around the shortest part of the school day—recess. Fresh air, green grass, and warm sunlight kindled moments of profound joy and discovery. Yet when classes resumed minutes later, your window for natural exploration would close, as quickly as it had opened. Why cut this formative period short? 

A deluge of new research confirms what we’ve intuitively known to be true since we were schoolchildren ourselves, pleading with our teachers to hold class outside on a beautiful spring morning—that learning is best when it’s done outdoors. From mental and physical health to social behavior and academic performance, hundreds of studies highlight the benefits of nature-based classrooms to the well-being of students and teachers alike. 

The promise of outdoor learning peaks in urban neighborhoods, where a lack of green space has historically excluded low-income, racially diverse communities from the public health benefits of access to nature.  

This summer, Wildlands Trust and our partners started to address this need in the largest Environmental Justice community we serve. Our staff and volunteers have been hard at work building an outdoor learning space at the Manthala George Jr. Global Studies Elementary School in Brockton. Centered on the George School’s community garden, the outdoor classroom will include five recycled-plastic picnic tables in front of a foldable whiteboard, as well as a woodland sitting circle, a weather station kiosk, and an interchangeable story walk.  

Green Team weatherproofs tree stump stools for a woodland sitting circle at the George School in Brockton.

The construction effort was spearheaded by the Green Team, a joint initiative between Wildlands Trust and Manomet that pays Brockton-area teens to advance environmental stewardship in their home city, all while building knowledge, skills, and professional connections in the conservation field. Over two Tuesdays in July, the Green Team visited the George School to restore the community garden beds, install gutters for rain barrels, weatherproof tree stump stools for the sitting area, and level a pathway to the learning space. On Tuesday, August 15, teachers and students from the George School will volunteer to add finishing touches to the outdoor classroom, including by planting a native pollinator garden and filling the garden beds with organic soil for students to plant seeds in next spring. The learning area will be ready for the school community to enjoy when classes resume in the fall. 

The work is part of Brockton Kids Lead the Way, an initiative developed by Dr. Molly Jacobs of Manomet and supported by Wildlands Trust and Brockton Public Schools that strives to foster city students' connection to nature. Two more outdoor classrooms will come to Brockton elementary schools by 2025 as part of this NOAA-funded initiative. The next project site is Hancock Elementary School, where Wildlands and Manomet will spend the upcoming school year gathering input from teachers and students before building an outdoor learning space in summer 2024. 

Stay tuned for updates as our work continues this summer and beyond!  

Click through the slideshow below to view more photos from the George School outdoor classroom project. 

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Resources: Advancing Racial Equity in Southeastern MA and Beyond

On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, legally freeing millions of enslaved African Americans in Confederate states. It wasn’t until June 19, 1865, however, that African Americans in Texas were truly freed. Though declared a federal holiday only in 2021, Juneteenth has been celebrated in certain Black communities for more than 150 years to celebrate the effective end of slavery in the United States. 

In honor of Juneteenth, the Wildlands Trust staff compiled a preliminary list of resources, businesses, and partners that residents of our service region and beyond can access and support to better understand and advance racial equity, especially in the natural spaces we cherish. This list is far from exhaustive and will be updated as new resources emerge and partnerships arise.  

Suggestions for our list? Tell us in the comments at the end of this article! 

Black-owned businesses 

Brockton Beer Company | 121 Main Street, Brockton, MA 

• Support Brockton Beer Company for great food, drinks, programs, and people. Per their website: “Brockton Beer Company is proud to be the 6th Black-owned brewery in Massachusetts and is also proud to identify as Asian-owned and classified as a minority-owned business.” Brockton Beer Company has been a faithful supporter of our D.W. Field Park Initiative. Wildlands Trust was proud to sponsor their recent one-year anniversary festival. 

Affinity groups and community non-profits 

Conservationists of Color 

• According to their website, “the launch of the Conservationists of Color affinity group was a grassroots and organic response to the lack of spaces for practitioners of color within the land conservation movement.” Explore their own resources page here. 

Books and articles 

Black Spaces, White Faces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors by Carolyn Finney 

• According to her website, “Carolyn Finney, PhD is a storyteller, author and a cultural geographer who is deeply interested in issues related to identity, difference, creativity, and resilience. The aim of her work is to develop greater cultural competency within environmental organizations and institutions, challenge media outlets on their representation of difference, and increase awareness of how privilege shapes who gets to speak to environmental issues and determine policy and action.” Carolyn currently serves as an artist-in-residence in the Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury College in Vermont. She also delivered the keynote address at the 2021 Massachusetts Land Conservation Conference, whose theme was “Building a Stronger Land Movement through Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.” 

The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham 

• J. Drew Lanham is an author, poet, and conservation biologist at Clemson University. In 2013, he wrote “9 Rules for the Black Birdwatcher,” which brought national attention to the struggles that Black bird lovers face in natural spaces. (Check out the video version by BirdNote here.) He expanded on these challenges in his 2016 article, “Birding While Black.” 

Films 

“Mardi and the Whites” by Paula Champagne (11 minutes) 

• Mardi Fuller loves spending time in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. But as a Black woman, imbedding herself in the region’s predominantly white recreator community presents unique challenges. In this short film, Mardi highlights the importance of racial education and awareness for white people, especially in natural spaces. 

Podcasts 

Always be birdin’ by Samantha DeJarnett (27 episodes) 

• From the podcast description: “Birds are extremely awesome. But birding can be intimidating and difficult. Always Be Birdin' aims to change the narrative of birding. How we bird, where we bird and who is birding. Join me as I go out into the field with BIPOC birding experts, novice baby birders like myself and nature enthusiasts to do some chaotic, goofy birding while dropping a knowledge bomb or two to show that no matter what, you can Always Be Birdin'.” 

 Social media 

Alexis Nikole Nelson, a.k.a. Black Forager 

• TikTok: alexisnikole | Instagram: blackforager |Facebook: BlackForager | Twitter: @blackforager 

• If you enjoy botany, foraging, or, well, joy, check out Alexis Nikole Nelson’s work. Not a social media fan? Watch her TED Talk here. 

Local Black history 

Parting Ways was a Black settlement in North Plymouth, founded in 1792 by four former enslaved people who had fought in the American Revolutionary War. The 94 acres along Plympton Street were granted through an agreement with the town of Plymouth that whoever could clear the land could claim ownership of it. For an in-depth account, read this article by regional historian Benjamin Cronin. 

• To learn more about enslaved life in our state and region, visit the Eleven Names Project. 

Peter J. Gomes (1942-2011) was an influential Black preacher and professor at Harvard University. After coming out as gay in 1991, the reverend spent the rest of his career combatting religious arguments in support of homophobia, racism, and other intolerance. Gomes grew up in Plymouth, where his father, born in the Cape Verde Islands, was a cranberry bog worker. He graduated from Plymouth High School in 1961 before attending Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. Read his 1992 op-ed in the New York Times here. 

Check back for updates!

Brockton High School Competes at Massachusetts Envirothon

By Thomas Patti, Communications Coordinator

Brockton High School Envirothon team at the 2023 Massachusetts Envirothon.

On Thursday, May 25, nine Brockton High School students put their natural resources knowledge to the (hands-on, collaborative) test at the 2023 Massachusetts Envirothon. Congratulations to all the students for making their Brockton and Wildlands Trust communities proud! 

Twenty-five teams representing 18 high schools across the state converged on Blackstone River and Canal Heritage State Park in Uxbridge for this year’s competition. Each team was tested in five environmental areas: Forest, Wildlife, Water, Soil, and Current Issue. This year’s current issue, Climate Change in our Community, called on each team to present about the climate stressors facing their own neighborhoods, and potential ways to reduce and adapt to them. Across two teams, the Brockton students proposed interdisciplinary solutions to rival the multifaceted climate impacts in their city. One team highlighted the potential for green roofs to address flooding risk, food insecurity, and even human conflicts with Canada Geese. The other focused on improving the gateway city’s access to local, sustainably sourced food.  

Brockton High School students present about local climate impacts and solutions at the Envirothon.

Prior to the day’s events, two key figures in the Massachusetts natural resources sector addressed the students in attendance. “You are the next generation of leaders in our community,” said Brian Arrigo, commissioner of the state’s Department of Conservation and Recreation. Rebecca Tepper, secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, added, “The one thing you can do [about climate change] is work in this field.” 

Wildlands Trust has coached and sponsored the Brockton High School Envirothon team since 2015. Rachel Bruce, Wildlands’ Director of Special Projects, coaches the team alongside Brockton High School biology teacher Melissa Kelly and Manomet education manager Clare Cunningham.  

Wildlands was particularly well represented at this year’s competition, as our president, Karen Grey, also served as a judge! 

Congratulations again to the Brockton High School students on an impressive showing, including a fifth-place finish in Forestry! Additional kudos to the graduating seniors, who can now proudly say they measured water quality, estimated tree height, tested soil in a five-foot hole, and identified insect species—all on the day of their senior prom! 

To learn more about Wildlands Trust’s Brockton High School Envirothon initiative, visit wildlandstrust.org/envirothon. 

Click through the slideshow below to see more photos from the 2023 competition.

Leadership Council Honored at New Stewardship Training Center

By Kyla Isakson, Membership and Digital Media Coordinator 

Leadership Council members gather around the Stewardship Training Center front gardens to listen to remarks by Board Chair Sam Chapin and President Karen Grey.

On Thursday, June 8, Wildlands Trust welcomed over 60 Leadership Council members to explore our recent 30-acre acquisition on Halfway Pond in Plymouth. The reception honored those who have contributed major gifts this year. We were so happy to host this wonderful group and show them our deep appreciation for their generous support. 

After a hearty breakfast in our new Stewardship Training Center (STC), guests were ushered out to the blooming front gardens to hear from Board Chair Sam Chapin and President Karen Grey. Sam shared some wonderful knowledge about the property and the area surrounding beautiful Halfway Pond. Karen followed to detail the immense growth that Wildlands has experienced over the last 50 years, and how much more there is to look forward to, starting with establishing the STC to improve the skills, knowledge, and capacity of the land stewardship community in Massachusetts. Following these uplifting speeches, Leadership Council members had the opportunity to intermingle, take a short tour around the property led by our stewardship staff, and explore the impressive 12,000-square-foot Center, from the woodshop and learning area in the basement all the way to the bedrooms and attic. We were proud to show off our newest undertaking, and although there is still much to do, we are excited to see how this project will take shape and help advance land conservation through skill-building for volunteers and continuing education for professionals. 

Stewardship Coordinator Zoë Smiarowski shows Leadership Council members around Wildlands’ new 30-acre parcel on Halfway Pond.

Leadership Council gifts are the foundation of Wildlands' annual giving, making it possible for us to continue to grow and meet the conservation needs of Southeastern Massachusetts. Our region benefits greatly from the generosity of this special group of donors, including through cleaner air and water, protected habitats for diverse wildlife, and abundant open space for all to enjoy.  

To show our appreciation for the Leadership Council, Wildlands hosts a celebration in the Conservation Barn at Davis-Douglas Farm each fall and offers a Preserve Tour at a different Wildlands property each June. Leadership Council members are also recognized on a plaque that hangs in the Davis-Douglas Farmhouse at our headquarters. 

Do you, too, want to provide vital support for Wildlands’ efforts to preserve the natural heritage of Southeastern Massachusetts? Join our Leadership Council today and secure your spot at our next special event this fall! 

Click through the slideshow below to see more photos from the Preserve Tour.