The Collective
On March 17th, we gathered in Katherine and Tom’s front yard. Katherine had set up a table and put out a selection of Guinness Stouts, both alcoholic and non-. I provided a variety of seltzer (you can always count on me to provide seltzer) and sourdough crackers made with rosemary from my garden. Discussing this meeting a few days beforehand, Katherine and I reminded each other not to get our hopes up. We’d sent out a friendly email to everyone on the Spencer Street email list and heard from two people who were interested in our proposal, which went like this:
Hello! It’s your Spencer Street friends, Katherine and Frances. Since last fall, the two of us have been talking about ways to build community here on Spencer Street. We feel lucky to live on a street where people not only get along but also seem to like each other a lot. Why not make the most of it?
This conversation began after last summer’s two-day power outage. We’re both concerned about the bigger storms we fear are headed our way as the climate continues to change and destabilize. We wondered how we could prepare ourselves for weather events that might disrupt our lives even more dramatically than two days without AC in August.
We’re both gardeners with an interest in permaculture, so naturally we started digging into ways we could become more self-sufficient—or even better, how we might become more interdependent so we might be prepared in times of crisis. We’ve already seen how our Spencer Street neighbors quickly established a system of mutual aid during Covid; what can we do to build on that?
Our conversation continued over the course of the fall and led us to all sorts of delightful dreams and plans. But to keep things simple, we thought some sort of garden share would be a great place to start. Gardening together—not just our two families, but all of us here on Spencer Street—might be the first step toward making our bigger dreams possible. (For more of our big dreams, see below!*)
Interested? Curious? Want to discuss? Let’s get together on Sunday, March 17 at 4PM in front of Katherine’s house if the weather is good, or on Frances’s screened porch if it’s not. We’ll provide drinks and snacks. You bring questions and ideas (and drinks and snacks, if you want to).
*Our big dream—what we’re calling the Spencer Street Cooperative--includes the following:
Converting sunny lawns to fruit/vegetable/herb production.
Adding native understory fruit trees into yards.
Including native plants in the gardens for native pollinators and birds.
Having several areas for leaf/food scrap composting.
Assisting each other with production (if you are comfortable going into other people's yards or having people come into your yard).
Sharing general knowledge of food production and storage (canning, mass freezing, drying, etc.).
Sharing care of chickens for egg production.
Bee hives?
Would anyone besides Ryan (and our husbands) show up? We decided that if only Ryan showed up, that would be fine. That was a start.
I’m’ happy to say that seven households were represented at our meeting (and one neighbor wanted to be there was out of town but pledged her support). Given that our street boasts sixteen households, that was a very solid showing. Since the meeting, I’ve spoken with another neighbor who’s very interested, but also very pregnant and worried that she and her husband (who have a two-year-old) wouldn’t be able to contribute much.
That’s not a problem. Anyone who contributes in any way, even just if it’s with enthusiasm for the project, can be a part of the collective. We were very clear in the meeting: we’re not creating a market; we’re creating a mutual aid society.
(That Katherine was able to convince everyone that we should call ourselves a collective is pretty hilarious; while there are no MAGA hats on our street, the general vibe is upstanding, lawn-mowing, law-abiding citizens, some of whom lean left for sure, but others who would happily vote Republican if the Republicans would give them a candidate they didn’t despise).
Our next meeting is this Sunday, April 14th, the day before our last frost date. Siena, our young compost project director, will be signing folks up for compost duty and compost bin hosting. We’ll be discussing who will be growing what (we’re trying to avoid too much zucchini), and—most exciting to me—we will begin planning for the chicken coop co-op. There’s an empty coop mid-street whose owner has said she’s willing to turn it over to the collective. Chickens! Eggs! Chicken poop for compost!
What I enjoyed about our first meeting is that everyone talked and everyone listened. We all agreed that we had a lot to learn and that plans would be made, revised and scrapped as necessary. We hope that once we figure out what we’re doing that we can expand the collective out into the neighborhood (we already have member from the next street over). We have big dreams and a lot to learn. Wish us luck!