Help us build our second farm, LOVEWELL FARM!
We are building Lovewell farm, our second farm, in order to create another productive growing space where we can offer more environmental education programs, demonstrate regenerative farming practices, and provide more locally grown food to our community. We need your help to make this second farm a reality. Funds from this kickstarter will be used to build a deer fence around the field’s perimeter, tools such as a jang seeder, broad fork, tilther, caterpillar tunnels for season extension, irrigation supplies, and building supplies.
We built our first farm with the help of Kickstarter! The Fresh Roots Farm.
In 2015 we had the dream of building New Jersey’s first educational community farm in partnership with the County of Bergen. With the success of that kickstarter campaign we have built productive sustainable farm venture that has had a HUGE community impact. Over the past five years the Fresh Roots Farm has grown food for Northern New Jersey families & restaurants, has educated thousands of people & students about sustainable agriculture, provided volunteer opportunities for thousands of people, and empowered hundreds of college student interns with the skills needed to create their own farms and pursue an environmental career. We want to do it again and even better!
Lovewell Farm
The new farm is located on one acre of historic farmland in a backyard within the suburbs of Mahwah, NJ. It is designed to address the root causes of environmental degradation and biodiversity loss by demonstrating innovative design and regenerative methods of farming, just like our Fresh Roots Farm. Fresh Roots Farm is the first farm of its kind in our region. It demonstrates that high yields of nutritious food can be produced in an environmentally friendly way, on a fraction of the land that industrial farms use.
Our goal is to create a scalable model for regenerative and ecological food production which can be easily replicated in other communities throughout the state and region. Lovewell Farm is another step towards making this vision a reality.
What’s Different about Lovewell Farm?
Following the success of our Fresh Roots Farm, Lovewell Farm will continue to employ farming techniques and using stylistic influences from market-garden and permaculture practices, which work alongside, rather than against natural systems. A mix of these techniques allows us to minimize our water usage, increase the productivity of our land, and convey to our community the power of ecologically minded small-scale farming. Through cultivating our farm with these practices in mind, we are working to address major global environmental issues associated with food production by starting at the local level. Lastly, we believe deeply in the power of community based farming and here in the suburbs this type growing is needed more then ever. Lovewell is located in a suburban backyard among the sprawl of mansions & condo developments. Growing food here demonstrates that food can be produced in any backyard and envisions the possibility of converting more land.
Increasing Access to Local Food
Lovewell Farm will improve the well-being of our community by increasing access to healthy locally grown produce and reconnecting individuals with the source of their food. Our Fresh Roots Farm provides local families in our area with a source to buy local organically grown produce through our Community Supported Agriculture program (CSA), and the produce from Lovewell’s farm will support a larger and more diverse CSA. In addition, the food grown at the farm will be sold to local restaurants to further support to economic sustainability of our farming program.
Current Progress:
Since we began working on Lovewell Farm in 2017 we cleaned up trash off the property, conducted soil tests, put down occultation tarps to eliminate invasive weeds, and planted cover crops / green manures to enrich the soil. In 2018 we brought in fresh compost and built two sections of the field to grow garlic and leeks (which are hardy & deer resistant). This past month we planted our 2020 Garlic Crop, prepared the farm for winter, and cleared back a few trees casting shade on the field.
2017 Clearing Trash Out of the Lovewell Field
2019 Folding Up Occultation Tarps: We use these tarps as an organic weed control.
2019 Building raised beds with fresh compost
2019 Garlic Harvest
November 2019: Planting the 2020 Garlic Crop
What the funds will be used for: INFRASTRUCTURE & TOOLS
In order to move forward with developing Lovewell Farm, we need to invest in key infrastructure and tools. We will be establishing the layout of the farm, including constructing over 70 new raised beds, building tool storage, installing irrigation, and building an education circle.
Most importantly, we will be constructing an 8 foot high deer fence around our farm. This fence will keep out deer and other animals that would damage our produce, thus enabling us to grow a wider variety of annuals and perennial fruit & vegetables that the deer would munch on and destroy.
In addition to the fence, we will be installing a sprinkler irrigation system that will enable us to water newly planted seeds and crops throughout the season.
We will also need tools and supplies for the day-to-day operation of the farm including wheelbarrows, shovels, trowels, rakes, broad forks, bed preperation rakes, solarization tarps, seeders, drills, hoses, biochar soil amendments, and seeds.
What is MEVO (Mahwah Environmental Volunteers Organization)?
We are a youth-led not-for-profit environmental organization in Northern, New Jersey founded in July of 2008 by a group of Mahwah High School students. Our mission is to be the model for the creation of scalable ecological solutions that inspires and empowers people to take action for a better future. We engage individuals, families, community groups, businesses, not-for-profit organizations, schools, and youth in high impact hands-on volunteer projects and experiential environmental education.
MEVO addresses a variety of local environmental concerns which include stopping illegal trash dumping in the indigenous community of the Ramapough Lunaape Nation, creating regenerative community farms, and building miles of low-impact hiking trails. We have mobilized over 7,000 volunteers to carry out over 60,000 hours of environmental community service.
Our primary focus the past five years has been the Fresh Roots Farm that was initially funded here on Kickstarter. Now, we are expanding our impact by revitalizing one acre of historic farmland in a suburban backyard to create a new farm: Lovewell Farm.
We are empowerig the next generation of environmental educators, farmers, and activists.
The primary group of individuals that our farm engages is young people. Young people consist of 80% of our volunteer base and are responsible for all of the organizing and decision-making within our organization.
One of the most effective ways in which we empower young people is through our internship programs which run in the spring, summer, and fall. Our internship program provides college-aged students with training and practical experience in the environmental field. They learn how to operate our farm, lead volunteer groups, and effectively educate others.
By educating young people and providing them with the tools and experience to succeed, we are empowering them to take an active role in shaping their community.
Launching Lovewell Farm will enable us to increase our environmental education and internship opportunities.
History and Success
For the past five years, MEVO’s Fresh Roots Farm has been offering environmental education programs, and growing nutritious produce in Mahwah, NJ. With each year our Fresh Roots Farm and the programming we provide have grown. Last year we grew & distributed 10,000lbs pounds of fresh local food to our community. We provided environmental education programs for over 1,500 students in ages ranging from kindergarten through college and welcomed 3,000 volunteers to our site. This year we have had students from multiple schools including Dwight Englewood School, Teaneck Community Charter School, Seton Hall University, Paramus High School, and Ramapo College, and more participate in our environmental programs.
Lovewell Farm Programs:
Environmental Education
Our environmental education programs engage individuals from all across our community including students in kindergarten through college, scout groups, corporate groups, and service groups. We offer field trips and group visits to our farm which give individuals the opportunity to interact with the earth and learn about regenerative farming. In addition, we visit a few schools to teach students about soil health, composting, and pollinators.
Volunteer Opportunities
Fresh Roots Farm provides a community space that offers volunteer opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds. The volunteers who visit our farm learn about how we regenerate our soil, conserve water, and grow nutritious produce. Our volunteers assist us with projects around the farm including rotating our compost, preparing our raised beds, planting vegetables and harvesting produce.
Internships
We offer spring, summer, and fall internship opportunities for passionate college-aged students interested in small scale, ecologically-minded farming. Our internships empower upcoming young farmers and students with opportunities to learn the craft of bio-intensive agriculture and market gardening. We provide them with career opportunities in the environmental field, responsibilities running the day-to-day activities of the farm, and instill in them a strong value for growing good healthy food. They emerge from our program with leadership experience and skills which will help them as they move on to pursue their careers and futures.
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
We sell our produce and honey through our CSA program which supplies families in our area with a source of local, organically grown fruits, vegetables, herbs and honey each week from June-November. Our CSA program encourages community connection and involvement while simultaneously providing the opportunity to outreach to members of the local community and educate them about the benefits of regenerative and small-scale agriculture.
Beekeeping
On our farms, our bees serve as both a tool to teach about pollination and as a demonstration of our farm’s reliance on a healthy ecosystem. We teach those who visit our farms about the bees’ importance to both our food systems and the environment and practice responsible beekeeping techniques to ensure that our bees are healthy and well taken care of. Many species of bees and other native pollinators are currently threatened by habitat loss. Our farms benefit not only the honeybees which we raise but also the native species of bees and butterflies which rely upon our crops and pollinator meadow as a source of nectar.
Our Team
MEVO has thousands of volunteers working with us every year to create a more ecological world. The people below are some of the staff at MEVO that will make this farm possible.
Isabel Arrieche, Farm Manager
Isabel is MEVO’s Farm Manager and has been hard at work growing Fresh Roots Farm since 2015. Isabel majored in Environmental Studies with a minor in Food Studies at Ramapo College. While attending Ramapo College, Isabel was the Co-President of 1STEP (Students Together for Environmental Progress) and spent her senior year in the Sustainable Living Facility on campus. She is deeply interested in preparing food and growing food as a source of physical and spiritual healing for individuals, communities, and the land. The medicinal value of plants, minerals, and experiences never ceases to amaze her and she plans on channeling this energy into becoming trained in traditional forms of medicine, such as Ayurveda. Another part of Isabel’s life’s work is to ensure that under-served communities have access to fresh, organic produce. She is grateful for her family, her professors, and her study abroad experience in India for revealing her passions so that she could begin her journey of servicing humanity.
Van Trat, Volunteer Coordinator
Van is MEVO’s Volunteer Coordinator, and a senior at Ramapo College majoring in Environmental Studies. She can also be found working at the Meadowlands Environment Center where she assists with environmental educational programs for K-12th grade. Van cares about preserving the environment, loves to travel, and is not afraid of getting dirty! She is a resident of Mahwah and was first interested in MEVO when learning about the pollution on Stag Hill. She hopes to see Stag Hill completely remediated in the future! Over the summer of 2017, Van was a Stag Hill Research Intern and a Farm Crew Intern. Conservation is very important to her as well as sustainable agriculture. She strongly believes that MEVO is an amazing organization to be a part of because of all the different environmental projects it has to offer. Van also encourages everyone to volunteer with MEVO and hopes to see you at our next clean-up event!
Violet Reed, New Executive Director 2020
Violet is the New Executive Director for MEVO. She graduated from Seton Hall in December of 2018 with a major in English, a minor in Environmental Studies, and the completion of the Honors Program. During her time at Seton Hall, she implemented a campus-wide environmental campaign, Blue Goes Green, to increase environmental awareness and action on campus. Violet’s environmental efforts at Seton Hall awarded her the Vice President’s Award for Exemplary Student Service in the spring of 2018. In 2019 Violet spent four months at Punta Mona, a permaculture botanical farm and retreat center, on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica where she received her permaculture design certificate and spent her time volunteering by living with a community of volunteers tending to the farm and later managing the hospitality-end of the center. She feels strongly that there is power in the role that small-scale organic agriculture can have on the coalition of local communities and that humans can heal the damage they have done to our land through restorative agriculture, permaculture principles, and most importantly through an encouraged and shared vision for a healthy earth.
Eric J. Fuchs-Stengel, Executive Director & Beekeeper
Eric is the Executive Director and Founder of MEVO one of the most awesome youth lead environmental organizations in the Northern New Jersey region. In his day to day work at MEVO Eric has a very eclectic job. On any given day you can find him planting seeds and driving the tractor at the MEVO Fresh Roots Farm, working in the office applying for grants and meeting with community partners, or knee deep in mud hauling tires and trash out of the forests of Stag Hill. He graduated from the New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study majoring in Ecological Sustainability and Social Change with a minor in Environmental Studies. He has worked for many environmental organizations such as City Growers & the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference. He has worked internationally, in the summer of 2011; Eric went to the Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan in the Himalayan Mountains and studied eastern Himalayan forests and rural livelihoods with the School for Field Studies. He spent the winter of 2018 traveling abroad in Northwest India visiting the deserts of Rajasthan, the Himalayan Mountains of Kashmir, and beyond. Among the many honors Eric has received for his work thus far, in 2014 he was declared a “New Jersey Hero,” by the NJ Heroes Foundation and that same year he was also awarded the National Jefferson Award for Public Service, “The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Award for Outstanding Public Service Benefiting Local Communities.” The Jefferson Award is positioned as the, “Nobel Prize for Public Service,” and is considered the nation’s highest honor for community service. Recently, he received the 2016 Excellence in Environmental Education Award from the Alliance for New Jersey Environmental Education the youngest recipient of the award ever.
What are our biggest challenges? Challenge: Building out Lovewell farm this summer during our busiest season: Solution: We are mobilizing our volunteers and intern crew to support building the farm this summer. We are excited to start construction and have been planning accordingly to make sure that the farm gets built out with fencing during the summer months.While committing to building out Lovewell also puts at risk other projects our organization is running, we have given a critical eye to how we will be managing MEVO this summer and are confident that our other projects will not suffer with the addition of a new one. Challenge: Planting at Lovewell without a Fence: Solution: By running this Kickstarter we are hoping to obtain the funds necessary to build a fence that will keep out deer. This will allow us to grow a variety of crops that we cannot grow at the moment due to the deer’s affinity for them! However, if we do not get the funding we need for a fence this summer we will still go ahead and plant our fall crops and we work to acquire more funding. Challenge: Managing two farms Solution: Over the past year we have implemented new crop management practices for planning and organization, continued to educate ourselves on the best practices for planting and tending to our various crops, and re-organized our administrative systems to allow us to have the time and resources needed to effectively tend to two farms so that they not only functions but thrive. We have based these practices on very experienced farmers such as: JM Fortier, Eliot Coleman, Ben Hartman, and Curtis Stone. We feel that our past four seasons of experience with the Fresh Roots Farm also will allow us to take on Lovewell farm with success.