Following an outstanding TEDx Talk by Suzanne Barish, founder of Nyack’s Please Pick Project, Nyack is becoming known as the country’s first edible village. The Please Pick Project is committed to providing our entire community with free access to real, healthy food by integrating it into our suburban and urban landscape.
Last year, Please Pick Project encouraged village residents to create front yard gardens, which they would make available to passersby; they also established public gardens at Nyack Center and Nyack Library, thereby transforming streetscapes into patchwork food forests, growing fruits and vegetables free for all to pick.
Who’s Behind
“Please Pick?”
Suzanne Barish is the Director of Communications for Rockland Farm Alliance, a non-profit dedicated to preserving suburban farmland. She has a Master’s Degree in English Literature, and she worked as an English professor and writer for a decade until writing ultimately opened up the portal to a career in farming and agriculture. She created Please Pick Project in 2014 after walking past a peach tree with heavy fruit languishing, unpicked, within reach of hundreds of people who walk past on the sidewalk.
More than 2,000 pounds of food was grown around Nyack in 2015, harvested by families, neighbors, students, and visitors, many of whom were in need of better access to good food. This year, participation is increasing drastically, more education programs are being created around the gardens, and Nyack is serving as a model for new towns that are adopting Please Pick Project.
Barish made her video Please Pick Project pitch at the March 2016 TEDx conference at Bergen Community College in Paramus, NJ.
Since 1984, the non-profit TED organization has held conferences around the globe where Technology, Entertainment and Design topics — from science to business to global issues — are presented in more than 100 languages. TEDx was created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading.” It supports independent organizers who want to create a TED-like event in their own community.
To find more information and to view the 2016 Map of Edible Nyack when it’s released, follow Please Pick Project on Facebook or email Suzanne Barish.
See also:
- TEDx Talk on Nyack’s Please Pick Project by Suzanne Barish, March 2016
- Land Hoe: Nyack Community Garden Wants You, 2/6/2016
- A Growing Concern: Nyack’s Seed Exchange, 3/5/2016
- Nyack Farmers’ Market Opens For 2016 Spring-Summer Season, 4/1/2016
- New Rules for Plow Shares At Cropsey Community Farm, 3/3/2014
- TED.com