Noyo Food Forest Earth Day event in Fort Bragg gains an even bigger and diverse audience

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.