FORT BRAGG, 4/22/24 — The Noyo Food Forest’s Earth Day event, held Saturday, April 20, attracted 1,212 people through the gates, up slightly from last year’s 1,206. It’s a happy revival for an educational program that was threatened not just by the pandemic, but by the decline of the local food movement on the Mendocino Coast. The organizers were delighted and exhausted by the big, sunny event and by the increasing diversity of ages, ethnicities and politics, a primary goal of the organizers who started it back in 2006. This iteration was all about the thrills of spring, from topsoil to slow dancing. While cannabis was not offered or consumed on Saturday and the program bans all bud, that was where part of the money came from originally. Now a broader base of support has been found, organizers said.
The Noyo Food Forest Learning Garden at Fort Bragg High School revived the beloved but moribund agricultural program back in 2006 when Susan LIghtfoot and two other women created it. The first Earth Day celebration began with a hand-holding circle and a prayer from a Native elder.
The Noyo Food Forest (NFF) picked Saturday for its Earth Day event, the two coinciding only once every seven years as will also happen this year for another signature Fort Bragg event, the World’s Largest Salmon Barbecue, held July 4. Earth Day is actually April 22 but in Mendocino, the date has become April 20, also known as the “high holiday” of Cannabis. Both Earth Day on April 22 and April 20 as the day for celebrating marijuana arose in the early 1970s.
2024 was a lucky year in every way, happening on 4/20, with summer-like weather and a big crowd. And not just any big crowd, but the kind the founders had hoped to someday develop — lots of kids to learn and have fun, Latino people and Natives. Originally, it was primarily attended by older mostly white counterculture folks. Despite being even older in 2024, they too were out in force, dancing in the sun to the likes of 2nd Hand Grass.
The Noyo Food Forest’s past Earth Days were often beset by bizarre unseasonal rain, rain blizzards, atmospheric rivers, high winds (like last year), chilly, overcast and cold days. Not so in 2024. Full sun and no wind to make the aerial circus performance more exciting than it needed to be. Bounce houses full of kids while the grandparent hippies rocked out on the other side of the ground.
Edwina Lincoln, a Native Yuki Elder from Round Valley, began this year’s event with a presentation about local forest issues and plans. That was followed by a performance by Circus Mecca, the Mendocino troop of young acrobats headed by Bones Newstad, followed by a presentation about biochar by the Redwood Forest Foundation..There was live music all day including 2nd Hand Grass, Gwyneth Moreland & Morgan Daniel (of Foxglove), Seaside String Sisters, and Boomdrums. There was a booth from a local chapter of one of the fastest growing environmental organizations in the nation–Latino Outdoors. Started in 2009 by graduate student Jose Gonzalez, the organization has chapters from Boston to Florida to the Great Lakes to Houston to every coastal county in California. The Mendocino Chapter is also called the Northern Pomo territory and started in 2021.
Ericka Lutz of the Noyo Food Forest said the attendance number didn’t include the large number of vendors, volunteers, musicians and nonprofit booths. The event had 28 nonprofit organization booths and eight vendors, she said.
Unfortunately, most Fort Bragg festivals and events have poor disabled access. Last year, I walked more than a mile because there were so many cars parked on streets and filling all the high school parking lots. This year, there were no high school baseball games at the same time, so I walked only about 400 yards to the gate. There was no available handicapped parking either year and no way to drive up and drop off a wheelchair-bound person at the front gate. This is true of most events in the area. An exception is the well-run Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens, which even has special wheelchairs to ramble through the dirt trails and gardens.
The Mendocino Voice covered the event last year with many photos of Circus Mecca:
Noyo Food Forest celebrates Earth Day with a big crowd and a new lease on life
Noyo Food Forest, with its signature Learning Garden — a small climate-smart production farm spread out over roughly an acre on the Fort Bragg High School campus — was founded in 2006 by three coastal women, led by Susan Lightfoot, who first envisioned accessible garden spaces for the community to use. The Learning Garden has since evolved into a thriving production farm dedicated to growing food for the Fort Bragg Unified School District farm-to-cafeteria program. Those involved in NFF found that pupils will eat nutritious food if they are involved in growing it. Fresh produce, grown with regenerative, sustainable practices by students, community volunteers, and Noyo Food Forest staff, is walked from the farm to the school cafeteria, less than a block away.NFF also models community-based agriculture, sustainable pest management, developing increased biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and other climate-resilient practices. NFF offers free and low-cost workshops, paid internships, and classes in organic, community-based agriculture to train local farmers and gardeners to feed the community. The organization works in partnership with other organizations in our community including Noyo Center for Marine Science, Mendocino Land Trust, Latino Coalition, and Parents and Friends. Noyo Food Forest is supported by plant and produce sales plus donations and grants, and operated by staff, board of directors, students and volunteers.
Fort Bragg is the 1st N. Ca Coastal area I ever visited back in 1970. Haven’t been able to go for 13 years because of health but really miss it!!!! One day hopefully I can get there! 🙏
I got this response from Ericka Lutz at Noyo Food Forest. I certainly want to give their side. My info from having been at the first and most of them is that people like Scott from Dirt Cheap were major sponsors and could be because of the cannabis industry. Now the NFF has innovative and created a much broader range of sponsors. It never openly courted this money but it was favored by many generous people, who can no longer be generous because of the collapse of the pot industry. Now they have new people over there. Never was any pot smoking tolerated, which once as a thing in Mendo, but this was for kids and never allowed.
So point taken. But I disagree on one thing…ADA Access to Salmon BBQ, Earth Day and the rest of the events can and should be better, sorry. I cant take my disabled mom in law to most any of them even with the card.
Ericka Lutz
Mon, Apr 22, 8:24 PM (2 days ago)
to me
Hi Frank,
Thanks for the write-up. You hit a lot of great aspects of the Earth Day Festival. However, the rest of the Board of Directors and I have concerns about your article, and we cordially request that you correct the items below.
Our main objection is your linking of Noyo Food Forest with the cannabis industry. Noyo Food Forest, a 501(c)3 educational non-profit, is not affiliated in any way with the cannabis industry. You assert that seed money for NFF came from cannabis money with no evidence or attribution for these allegations.
“While cannabis was not offered or consumed on Saturday, that was where money came from originally…. Now a broader base of support has been found, organizers said.”
You told me that you relied on our website for NFF history… where did you find statements that the organization was originally funded by cannabis? What organizers said that we now have a different source of support?
Frank, the pandemic absolutely threatened Noyo Food Forest’s existence. We lost board members. School was not in session (and our primary source of funding is the FBUSD farm-to-cafeteria program). Two years after our crisis, however, we are in a stronger position than ever. Our garden thrives. We have a strong expanded working board. We support the farm-to-cafeteria program, an intern program, a summer CSA box program, a vibrant community volunteer program, and garden workshops. We have multiple funding streams: fundraisers – including Earth Day –, grants, and donors. Since last fall, we have a new, exciting role collaborating with the school district and hosting the FBHS CTE Agriculture program. None of this has anything to do with cannabis.
That the Earth Day festival fell on 4/20 this year is coincidence. For 15 years we have held the festival on the Saturday closest to Earth Day, April 22.
We do appreciate the comments about needing better ADA access. There is always something to improve. However, using the example of the botanical gardens (which is a permanent institution) as a comparison with a once-annual event held in a high school field is not an appropriate comparison.
Thanks for your attention, Frank.
Best, Ericka Lutz and the rest of the Noyo Food Forest Board of Directors