WESTERN MASS. – A nonprofit organization is working to bring access to healthy food across Western Massachusetts while also helping the environment.

Felix Lufkin, director of Help Yourself, explained the non-profit works to “partner with organizations, institutions and municipalities” and plant fruit trees and bushes across the Pioneer Valley. The fruit bearing vegetation is planted in areas of public access, which allows for free, public access to fresh, healthy food.

To date,  Help Yourself has a total of “75 sites from Springfield to Greenfield,” he said. The size of the makeshift orchards vary from one or two trees and/or bushes to small orchards. “Some are just a tree or two, some are a little more extensive,” he said.

Lufkin told Reminder Publishing Help Yourself began in Northampton in 2012 while he was living in the city. Later, he said he moved to Holyoke, where he had the opportunity to pursue more projects there. “We started in Northampton. I was living there at the time and ended up moving to Holyoke and had that as an opportunity to start more additional projects,” he said.

He added that while there are planting sites and projects all up and down the Pioneer Valley, the organization’s mailing address is in Holyoke, making it based in the Paper City.

Projects have been completed in several areas of Holyoke so far, including fruit trees at several schools. “There’s trees at a number of different schools, the high school might be the biggest [project,” he said. Lufkin said to plant the project on the campus, Help Yourself worked “with the students participating in a United Nations sustainability project.”

Lufkin explained that while some orchards are open to the public, some are also used for donations. Specially, Help Yourself works with schools and areas of conservation across the Valley. “Most often or commonly [we’ve] worked with K-12 schools or different kinds of parks, conservation lands, bike paths,” he said.

While school projects have been temporarily place on hold due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, he said there are other sites around the city including on Beech Street at the River Valley Counseling Center and on a number of properties along Beech Street and Appleton Street belonging to his former landlord, Lufkin said.

Projects begin when a piece of property is spotted. “How it starts is we notice some piece of real estate that, from my perspective, is a little behind the times in landscaping,” he said. From there, a proposal is made and the project progresses.

Help Yourself chooses to plant bushes and trees, rather than field for a variety of reasons. Lufkin said fruit trees and bushes tend to live longer, require less upkeep and are good for the environment. In addition to the fruit-bearing vegetation, flowers also get planted at the base of the trees. “The trees get a companion planting of flowers that help meet their needs,” he said. “It’s all organic. And the companion beds offer an additional harvest of food, spices, veggies. And the bees and insects like it all.”

Lufkin said Holyoke has a lot of land and potential for planting opportunities. “Holyoke is unique for me in that there’s so much opportunity and potential. There’s lots of open spaces, parks, and lots of institutions and so on,” he said. “There’s so much need, and that combination deserves our focus and I’ve tried to focus on that area.”

As a nonprofit, Lufkin said the majority of the funds to cover needed costs are donations and crowd sourced based. Lufkin said the easy part was the planting, the difficult part was raising the money and running the economic side of the organization. “The easy work is planting a tree, the tree grows on its own,” he said.

However, he said Help Yourself was growing. Now eight years in, the organization began paying organizers for the first time in their history. “The vast majority of person hours are volunteers. This year, our eighth year, is the first year we’ve had paid organizers. It’s such a blessing because that isn’t a bottleneck for that tier of work, it doesn’t have to wait for someone’s free time,” he said.

Additionally, he said that planting shared resources also encourages different people in the community to see themselves as stakeholders in the project. “There’s so many different stakeholders for people throughout the space, people in the commons. This is kind of new, how people are excited to engage in the space in a newer way. You can’t just go to a park and dig a pit,” he said. “We don’t typically have the freedom of interacting with a shared landscape that changes their designs.”

Those interested in making a donation, getting more information about ongoing projects or has a space they think would be ideal for a planting project should visit helpyourselfedibles.org. Lufkin said Help Yourself is seeking areas all across the Pioneer Valley to plant fruit trees and bushes.