The Echo Valley Farm group offers a beautiful example of how collectivizing food production can create not only healthy systems but healthy human cultures.
Robert Birch, who has been farming together with his neighbours on their patch of south-end ground since the project’s inception, thinks of the Echo Valley Farm as a social experiment in neighbourhood connection. The project really gained momentum during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a way to counter isolation and, at the same time, boost the community’s immune system.
One of four gay men — all survivors of the AIDS years — who founded the project, Birch says, “This wasn’t our first pandemic. We already knew community mobilization is the single most effective response, the necessary partner to biomedical interventions. This mutual care and interest gives respite to trauma-based reactions by providing two hours a week of hands-in-the-earth relief from having to deal with a world seemingly coming undone.”
After years of working the soil together, the Echo Valley group have a new nickname for what they do Sunday mornings in a small valley, under the sun. They call it “Dirt Church.”
“We’re healthier because of each other’s willingness to overcome our fears. Kind-hearted enough, resourced enough (for now) to take responsibility and care for ourselves, together,” Birch adds.
Just as a seed contains a universe within it, so too do each of our individual gardens hold the potential to incubate community. Gilkeson’s Feb. 12 workshop is a chance to connect with people who want to proactively participate in a response to climate change that transforms grief into a practical process of repair.
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