The good earth

Getting back to the land -- at a homeless shelter in Dorchester

by Kristen Lombardi

DIRTY DEEDS: working in the gardens helps residents gain self-sufficiency.

It's amazing how cleansed you can feel when getting your hands dirty. Take the Re-Vision House, a nonprofit homeless shelter in Dorchester that has helped countless young women and their children heal by transforming abandoned lots into bountiful gardens.

As Judy Lieberman, who manages the Re-Vision urban-agriculture project, explains, "Gardens can be seen in a holistic way to help women better care for themselves and their children."

On this pleasantly mild afternoon, Lieberman and six residents can be found in the middle of these gardens, tilling soil, transplanting seeds, and gearing up for another growing season. Every year since 1995, the nearly one-acre farm has cultivated as much as 4000 pounds of onions, potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, lettuce, raspberries, cantaloupes, mint, and herbs, among other things. Food is then parceled out to shelter residents, as well as sold at local farm stands and markets.

Timna Robinson, 21, a petite yet powerful woman who supervises the shelter's farm interns, considers the Re-Vision homestead to be unique in Boston. "It's a real good thing," she says, while trimming a bed of burgeoning scallions. Through its farm, the shelter has given homeless women and children more than housing. "It offers support and hands-on training," she adds.

Robinson should know. Back in September 1998, she arrived at the Fabyan Street shelter after a series of life circumstances (which she prefers not to discuss) had left her homeless. For much of her 10-month stay, she remembers being too depressed to notice her surroundings. "I didn't even know about the farm," she says.

But one day, while puttering in the kitchen, Robinson heard voices coming from outside. She drew back the window blind, and then spotted the gigantic tanks where tilapia, an African fish, are routinely bred. "I was like, `Oh my God, it's a farm,' " she says.

Soon Robinson was out in the fields, where she hadn't been since working in her mother's garden as a child. And farming had an instant appeal for Robinson -- partly because she likes being self-sufficient, and partly because she likes the therapeutic effect. "I relieved a lot of stress," she says. "It helped me to be alone, in the dirt, getting exercise."

Iris Corchado would agree. The 25-year-old Puerto Rican native arrived at the shelter last December after a tumultuous two years. In 1998, her husband was gunned down during a robbery, prompting her to move to Boston with her young son and daughter. After living with family members and searching unsuccessfully for affordable housing, Corchado and her children ended up at Re-Vision House.

"You come here," she says, "and you worry that you're homeless and wonder how you and your children will survive."

But then Corchado, like Robinson, took a job as a farm-project intern. And although she could do without all the "heavy labor" -- the lifting of crates, the digging of dirt, the carting of produce -- Corchado says the experience has kept her busy, focused, and optimistic. "It has helped me through a tough time," she says.

Not everyone, however, enjoys getting dirty -- especially city dwellers. It's not uncommon, in fact, for shelter residents to complain about the grime, the workload, and the stinky fish tanks. Some even gripe about eating food fresh from the earth, as opposed to buying the aesthetically pleasing kind in the
supermarket.

Yet the benefits of this farm far outweigh the downsides. It does, after all, open up another world to city girls. As Lieberman says, "The urban farm gives [residents] a different perspective about the environment. It isn't just concrete and noise."

The concept looks to be catching on. More and more shelter-based and urban farms are popping up, from Holyoke to Hartford to St. Louis, Missouri.

And if the people at Re-Vision House have any say in the matter, such farms will soon become a staple of homeless shelters throughout Boston. In the words of Yvonne Miller-Booker, who founded Re-
Vision House in 1989, "This should be seen as obvious when working with women and children."