By Alex Scheinberg

Growing up in cities and urban centers all her life, Renata Kersus never imagined herself to be a gardener. She always considered herself a city person.

Born in Ukraine, she immigrated with her parents to Brooklyn, New York, when she was 8 years old, and remained there until settling into the Boston area for college.

When states across New England began issuing stay-at-home orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, she, like many others in the region, started pulling up weeds in the yard of her Framingham home that she shares with her husband and two children.

“I have always been a city person,” she said. “This was my foray into suburban life, and my first foray into gardening.”

Kersus, an alumni of Boston University’s College of Communication, is one of many first-time gardeners who took advantage of the stay-at-home orders to start a vegetable garden, but store closures presented some early obstacles for getting essential supplies like planters and soil.

“You couldn’t get soil delivered in small quantities,” she said, “and I didn’t want Cubic tons of soil delivered to my house."

She scoured the internet and sought out local community gardens and exchange groups on Facebook for advice from her neighbors.

To her surprise, she was not alone in this new endeavor. Many of the groups she found, such as Boston Area Gardeners (BAG) and Framingham Natick Wayland Perennial and Plants Exchange had people collaborating, offering trades, and posting notices for free seedlings.

"Last year I got Irises from someone, and she had a huge gorgeous garden. she had three wheelbarrows of irises just to give away."

The difficulty of meeting those increased demands was compounded by the restrictions and CDC guidelines on public gatherings. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the farm had been clocking an average of 5,000 volunteer hours per year, but following the restrictions placed on public gatherings, only 450 hours of volunteerism were recorded in 2020, and many of those shifts were absorbed by the farm team.

“If you have a farm team of 3 and you have a COVID outbreak, there’s no one there to manage the farm,” said Sandstrum.

Despite these challenges and personnel shortages, he and his staff were able to manage all their responsibilities during 2020, with the help of volunteers who came on an individual basis, instead of the groups that they typically bring in.

“I’m glad to have a farm team that stepped up,” says Sandstrum. “We kept our heads down and kept the mission on track.”

Todd Sandstrum, who was recently promoted to farm manager of ReVision Urban Farm, explains the farm's activities in a 2019 video from the organization's YouTube channel.

Katie Shields, coordinator of the Milton community garden, said that they have ordered seedlings from ReVision Urban Farm for a long time, and noted a definite growing interest in garden space as she spoke over the phone.

“We’ve always had a wait list, and it has increased in the last few years. There are definitely people who aren’t getting off the wait list as often.”

The "victory garden," as people in the town call it, has stood in Cunningham Park since the 1940s, following the Second World War, and currently has 40 plots divided between 50 families. Shields has coordinated the garden for the past eight years.

The Trustees of Cunningham Park allowed for the town to install a water line to bring water to the garden, and despite the growing demand for garden space, Shields said that expanding gardens throughout Milton could be difficult.

“There would definitely be space available, but getting the water to new spaces is a real challenge. It’s a very generous situation we have with the park.”

When asked about difficulties faced by families who maintained plots over the past year, Shields said that the community navigated the pandemic guidelines smoothly.

“We don’t really gather much as a group, and in that way we have been lucky. People wore masks when they were there, and there was plenty of distance between plots so we could socially distance.”

In other parts of the Greater Boston area, however, where yard space and access to resources is limited, gardeners have had to be a little more strategic.

Nicole Burkart, of Haverhill, runs the organization The Tomato Fairy, which she said aims to solve some of those problems.

“If you’re poor you cannot even go down to Home Depot and get the things to start, so the project is meant to help bridge that gap.”

The Tomato Fairy project started four years ago, when Burkart grew so many tomatoes that even her neighbors refused to take anymore.

Burkart started taking her extra tomatoes around to cashiers at local stores and gave out plants to SNAP recipients at local farmers markets.

“It got me to think, it wasn’t just about the amount of food, but the quality of food. I realized that I could address that problem by working with food pantries and that kind of stuff.”

With the stay-at-home orders issued at the beginning of last spring, Burkart saw that it was obviously time to ramp up local production.

“Last year, I planted all of my seeds, because I’m a seed hoarder,” Burkart said as she chuckled over the phone.

She started out by delivering seedlings to doors, since many people did not want to leave their houses.

Cambridge City Growers, a project that spawned out of the pandemic lock-downs, took 72 seedlings from Burkart and used them as part of their Food For Free project.

Burkart went to the Trinity Baptist Church in Arlington, which she said usually grew tomatoes, and gave them 150 of her tomato plants. Upon receiving the tomato plants, the church began plowing their field and putting the plants in the ground.

“Arlington has a lot of hidden poverty, and they don’t qualify for some subsidized programs,” Burkart said. “The overwhelming wealth in the community means they cannot get resources to those who need them the most.”

Some food pantries did not want to take fresh produce because of concerns around spreading COVID-contaminated produce, said Burkart, but she cited the recently passed Good Samaritan Act, which absolves donors of food of any liability if the donations were made with good intentions.

She also noted the efforts of groups like Boston Area Gleaners, who enter farms to pick any produce that does not meet market-quality standards, and send their pickings to local food pantries in the region.

“There are all sorts of great projects, but they are small and isolated. I had been working with these organizations before to see how we could expand.”

As gardeners across the state prepare for the spring, Burkart too has been preparing. This year, having had some time to plan, as opposed to last year’s frenzy, Burkart plans to take the funds from selling her produce to buy seeds wholesale to help expand the operation she started four years ago.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that 98% of seedling sales from ReVision Urban Farm are to recipients of WIC, SNAP, and other supplemental food programs, and only 2% are from cash from wholesales. The article has been updated to clarify that these numbers were from one specific market, DotHouse Health Farmers' Market, and do not reflect the entirety of the farm's sales.