Alyssa Dolan’s passion for gardening may have started with planting potatoes in a bathtub on the lawn of her childhood home, but now she’s transplanting seedlings in a 30’x72’ greenhouse at Pearson’s Town Farm, preparing for the farm’s seedling sale over the next two weekends in May.
After enrolling at Saint Joseph’s College in 2009, Alyssa started to volunteer at the farm for 20 hours per week. She admits, “From there, I never wanted to leave. I became the College’s first work-study student at the farm.” In 2015, Alyssa became the Assistant Farm Manager and, with Farm Manager Michial Russell, supervises as many as five work study students, in addition to student volunteers from the environmental science, biology, nursing, and pre-veterinary programs. When she isn’t chasing goats back into their corral, she serves as a backbone for increasingly large-scale food production operations at the 18-acre, historic Standish farm.
Staff and student volunteers mix and compost food scraps from the College’s dining services with livestock manure from the farm and ground fish fertilizer to produce soil that supplies the greenhouses and garden beds.
Seeing Alyssa consolidate the sunflower seedling packets and readying them for the sale, it’s clear that this is a process both rhythmic and meditative for her. “I like to take a tiny seed and make food from it. That’s just amazing to me. I like to teach people how to garden. My hope is to help people grow their own food.”
The first annual Pearson’s Town Farm Seedling Sale will be held in the Stone Barn at 289 Whites Bridge Road, Standish on Friday and Saturday, May 19 and 20, 2017, and Friday and Saturday, May 26 and 27, 2017 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. A variety of vegetable seedlings–for example, several types of tomato, eggplant, pepper, several varieties of squashes, and a selection of leafy greens–will be available, as well as a wide range of herb and flower seedlings.
For more information email farm@sjcme.edu or call 207-893-6617.
Photo caption: Pearson’s Town Farm Assistant Manager Alyssa Dolan transplants sunflower seedlings to prepare for the sale of herb, vegetable, and flower seedlings at the Stone Barn in Standish on Friday and Saturday, May 19 and 20, and Friday and Saturday, May 26 and 27, 2017, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
