WEST YARMOUTH — Farmer Nicole Celin pulled bright red tomatoes, and crispy, deep green cucumbers from narrow garden beds that are nestled behind the Canaan SDA Church, a Seventh-day Adventist congregation.
A sweet, earthy aroma wafted through the air as Celin piled the harvest into boxes. The last of the summer haul will eventually be distributed to feed Haitian and Cape community members who are hungry, she said.
First Church Elder Jean Butter was on hand to help Celin, and said it’s been a dream to grow, and raise crops among other Haitian immigrants.
“When I came here, I found a community where you can see your brother. Your sister. The ones that look like you. It’s amazing. To me, it’s a grace,” said Butter.
During the growing season, Haitian farmers have tended culturally significant Caribbean vegetables and herbs throughout the eight garden beds including okra, also known as kalalou in Haiti, scotch bonnet peppers, butternut squash, and eggplant, said Macseau Celin, who is Nicole Celin’s husband, and a church member and community farmer.
The garden is one of 10 Everyone Eats Cultural Community Garden locations on the Cape, and was established through the Cape Cod chapter of the Buy Fresh Buy Local program. Barnstable County Cape Cod Cooperative Extension oversees the program through its Nutrition Education Program.
The overall goal, said Cooperative Extension Food Access Coordinator Andrea Scarpellini, is to provide tools, and education to immigrant farmers and growers on the Cape, and to bring people of all ethnicities together to create intergenerational shared gardening experiences.
The Haitian community, she said, has taken programs to the next level by creating a self-sufficient Caribbean food pantry on church grounds.
“We’ve been able to buy food at fair market price from these local growers and we’ve created a great working relationship with this church. It’s all about getting diverse communities involved with growing cultural crops,” said Scarpellini.
Community partners collaborate and ethnic communities thrive
The Everyone Eats Cultural Community Garden program began in 2021, said Scarpellini, and gardens were established across the Cape for Haitian, Jamaican, and Brazilian communities.
In addition to the West Yarmouth location, garden beds sprouted up at local schools, the Brazilian Resource Center, and the Dennis Conservation Land Trust.
In 2022, the program expanded to include garden spaces for Eastern European and Asian communities.
“We have different sites where we grow different things,” said Scarpellini.
At each location, the cooperative extension provided nutrition workshops, food pantry nutrition education, and preschool and parent nutrition education for local growers.
The cooperative extension has also offered safe food handling classes and ServSafe instruction workshops, said Tara Racine, Buy Fresh Buy Local program coordinator.
“This is all revenue generating and that’s why there’s a lot of community alliances for this program,” said Racine. “It also incentivizes people to eat more fresh produce. And that also helps our local economy.”
Kim Concra, the cooperative extension’s nutrition and food safety specialist, found herself running seedling-to-salad classes and garden-box growing workshops at a handful of the gardens.
“We want to allow people to be self-reliant and to be able to plant things themselves,” said Concra.
How was the Buy Fresh Buy Local program established?
Buy Fresh Buy Local is a national program that aims to strengthen farmers markets across the U.S., and provide income for farmers.
The Buy Fresh Buy Local Cape Cod chapter began in 2008 and is supported by state Department of Agricultural Resources grants. The program works to connect people and businesses to the roughly 320 farms that are scattered across the 15 Cape towns, and helps to raise awareness about locally grown farm and sea products, according to its website.
The program also helps individuals and families purchase, cook, and store fresh food.
Can Caribbean crops be grown on Cape Cod?
Almost any crop that is grown in Haiti can be raised on the Cape during the year’s warmer months, said Macseau Celin. The real difference, he said, is the resources available in the U.S.
“When we were in Haiti, we had trouble accessing tools. And we also had to travel really far from where we lived to get water for our garden,” said Celin, who immigrated to the U.S. in 2012, and is now a U.S. citizen.
Nicole Celin, who joined her husband on the Cape in 2019 with a residence visa, has cultivated a garden at their home, which includes every Haitian herb she could think of, she said. Gardening, she said, has become an activity she does with her grandchildren.
For Butter, the garden has brought a sense of Haitian and Caribbean culture and familiarity to the Cape. When he arrived to the region in 2006, he had experiences that made living and working on the Cape challenging.
His first job was working at a retail store in Chatham. “It wasn’t a good experience,” said Butter. “But I always remember that it wasn’t everyone that treated me badly. Not everyone is the same.”
Eventually Butter became a certified nursing assistant, and later a massage therapist. Butter’s children have all graduated college, and earned master’s degrees, he said.
“I’ve been able to create a life for myself. I’m privileged to be here,” he said.
What’s next for Haitian farmers on Cape?
With years of hands-on experience growing food on the Cape, the Haitian community, said Scarpellini, hopes to grow a more consistent supply to stock the Caribbean food pantry.
“They would love to build a greenhouse. But they need funds to continue expanding,” she said.
Immigrant farmers and growers involved with the Everyone Eats program are also looking for jobs on local farms.
“I have many of our participants asking me if I know where they are hiring farm hands,” she said. “This program is really transitioning people to being professional farmers.”
The Everyone Eats program, said Butter, has also motivated his congregation to share what they’ve learned with other Seventh-day Adventist churches across the state.
“What we’ve done here has become a model,” he said. “We want to continue to help our communities and this is a great way to do that.”
Reporter Rachael Devaney can be reached at rdevaney@capecodonline.com.
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