Have plans for Saturday September 29? Cancel them. Immediately.
Lowell may not be the first place that comes to mind when you think about the fall harvest. Change your thinking.
From 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Mill City Grows, in partnership with the City of Lowell and the Lowell Film Collaborative will hold a Harvest Festival as part of Sustainability Week at Rotary Park in the city’s Back Central neighborhood near 22 Richmond Ave.
The day will include tons of local food including harvest soup and popcorn, as well as treats from Brew’d Awakening Coffeehaus, Sweet Lydia’s and UTEC Fresh Roots.
There will be games for the kids and a screening of “Good Food,” a film festival collection of 16 short films focused on food and food production.
Workshops and activities offered include pressing your own apple cider, quick and healthy cooking on a budget, natural homemade cleaning products, veggie fueled transportation, cooking with the sun, as well as a silent auction and farmers market. Admission is free.
The lot where the festival will be held was, as recently as last year, an overgrown, ugly eyesore. As part of the City Manager’s 2012 Back Central Neighborhood Initiative, the city partnered with Lydia Sisson and Francey Slater of Mill City Grows to redevelop it into a 9,000-square-foot urban farm.
Today, the space hosts 40 4-foot-by-10-foot raised garden beds, farmed by an ethnic rainbow of community gardeners. Early in the season it was filled with a variety of produce that puts the big-name chain grocery stores to shame: eggplant, corn, beans, cabbage, lettuce, beets, arugula, strawberries, herbs, husk cherries, lemon grass, squash, bok choy, peppers, tomatoes and a variety of herbs and flowers.
For more information, visit http://www.millcitygrows.org or call 978-656-1678.
Room 50 