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Garden program flourishes at Riverside Industries greenhouse in Easthampton

A garden program flourishes at Riverside Industries

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Kara Voiland, a Riverside Industries client, and Riverside employee Jen Jakubsz look over plants at an open house Friday at the Riverside gardening program’s new greenhouse.

At the grand opening of a new greenhouse in town, gardeners watched with delight and pride as customers bought plants they had helped grow.

The event last Friday marked a milestone for the gardening program at Riverside Industries, Inc. – the public unveiling of its spacious, handicapped-accessible greenhouse.

“It’s amazing to think about our humble beginnings, growing plants on window sills and in the basement under grow lights,” said Riverside’s gardening program director, Nicholas Isherwood.

The gardening program started six years ago, he noted, “so this is a huge leap forward for us.”

Until this year, Riverside Industries clients with developmental and other disabilities cultivated flowers, fruit and vegetables on a small plot at Tripple Brook Farm in Southampton. They also grew seedlings inside the Riverside Industries building at One Cottage St.

But the 1,440-square-foot greenhouse, constructed last fall in the building’s parking lot, has allowed the program to produce five times more food and flowers because it accommodates year-round gardening.

“It’s also allowed people who are in wheelchairs or have mobility challenges, who couldn’t access the plot, to take part,” Isherwood said. Clients in wheelchairs can easily navigate the greenhouse’s 4-foot-wide center aisle and tend to its raised-bed gardens, he said.

Produce grown in the greenhouse is used by the Riverside Industries restaurant, Tucson and Savannah’s. It will also be sold at a self-serve farm stand in the One Cottage St. building and at the Easthampton Friday farmers market, which begins June 1 at the Municipal Building on Payson Avenue.

Isherwood said clients were thrilled to sell plants at the annual garden sale at Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School in Northampton earlier this month. “They are so proud of the stuff they grew,” he said. “They’re great salesmen.”

As people looked over the offerings in the greenhouse Friday, Riverside client Patty Collette said she had helped water the lettuce, cucumbers and peppers growing there.

“I like it,” she said of working in the greenhouse. “I like being outside.”

The organization built the $125,000 greenhouse with help from a matching grant from the state Department of Developmental Services.

Rebecca Everett can be reached at reverett@gazettenet.com.

Daily Hampshire Gazette
By Rebecca Everett
Created 08/20/201
Reprinted with permission from the Daily Hampshire Gazette

EASTHAMPTON – A project to construct a greenhouse at Riverside Industries Inc. broke ground Friday after nearly a decade of planning and fundraising. The 1,440-square-foot greenhouse will enable the program’s clients, who have developmental and physical disabilities, to tend plants year-round.

“It’s going to be great,” said Nicholas Isherwood, who heads the gardening program. “The program started very humbly, and with this, we can really become a full-scale operation.”

White lines painted on pavement in the corner of the Liberty Street parking lot mark where the greenhouse will be built over the next few months. Project manager Kevin Perrier, of Five Star Building Corp. of Easthampton, said he hopes to begin the $125,000 construction in early September and finish in early November.

“It cost more than we hoped, but we raised it,” said Char Gentes, director of community relations at Riverside Industries. The organization is paying for the project with proceeds from auctions held over the last seven years and with a matching grant from the state Department of Developmental Services.

“I’m very happy the greenhouse is going in,” said Kara Voilland, a Riverside client who dug in with a shovel during the groundbreaking ceremony. Voilland said she enjoys taking care of her plants at home and visiting her brother’s vegetable farm, Red Fire Farm in Granby and Montague.

Voilland is among the Riverside clients who use wheelchairs and will be able to participate in the gardening program for the first time when the greenhouse is completed. The structure is handicapped accessible, with a four-foot-wide center aisle and raised gardening beds.

The Riverside gardening program began five years ago with a small plot at Tripple Brook Farm in Southampton. Isherwood, along with Betsy Krough, a gardener and mother of a Riverside client, began teaching the new gardeners about planting, caring for and harvesting a few kinds of vegetables and some annual flowers. “I loved to garden and I just thought Riverside needed more variety of programs, so they can learn skills that are valued in society,” Krough said after the ceremony. “Growing food is definitely a valued skill.” “It’s win-win,” said Isherwood, 33, of Belchertown. “They get the training, the experience and they get paid to do the work. And they can supply the community with locally grown, organic vegetables and flowers.” Produce and flowers now grown in Southampton are sold at a self-serve farmstand in the One Cottage Street building in Easthampton. The gardeners also sell seedlings in the spring at a plant sale at the Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School in Northampton.

Construction of the greenhouse means the program can expand. Riverside gardeners will be able to grow more volume and variety of plants, and do so all year. Isherwood said his goal is to be the main supplier of produce for the restaurant at One Cottage Street, which is staffed by Riverside clients.
Daily Hampshire Gazette © 2011 All rights reserved

Share in our excitement!
Riverside Arts will have an
exhibit in the offices of
Senator Stanley Rosenberg
at the State House in Boston,
from January 14-March 16.
Over 40 pieces on display.
Reception:Tuesday, February 8, 2011-1:00-2:30
A heartfelt thank you to our sponsors.
Talens
Canson
TD Insurance

EASTHAMPTON – Tiffany Chappel of Amherst rubs pastels on paper. The shades of blue melt together to create an effect like the Monet painting beside her. Justin Kim, her art instructor, compares the two pictures.

“Look, it’s almost exact,” Kim observes.

“Yeah, it’s OK,” Chappel answers, modestly.

Nearby, as Beatles music plays, Edie Oyola of Easthampton creates an orange-tan watercolor. Kim and Cailin Gibbons, another instructor, offer to make a mix for her of Beatles music, having seen her drop what she’s creating to dance to a song.

“I don’t want a mix. I want the ‘White Album,’” Oyola says, correcting them.

Whatever the inspiration, unexpected artists are producing works in a program at Riverside Industries in Easthampton.

Ellen Morin of Easthampton looks at the Gallery’s display. Her daughter, Lisa Griffin, has a painting in the exhibit

Riverside, which provides services to people with disabilities, launched a nine-month art project last October funded by the state Department of Mental Retardation.

The program’s mission: allow people with developmental disabilities to create art. Workshops run for two to three months, for around 40 people at a time. Selections from the first cycle of artwork are hanging at Easthampton’s Nashawannuck Gallery, 40 Cottage St., until March 31.

Four local artists, Gibbons, Kim, Cyndy Sperry and Denise Herzog, facilitate the workshops.

The gallery display consists of 24 pieces by 18 artists between the ages of 18 and 60. The artwork includes mixed media with leaves, a collage on rag board, ink on brown wallpaper and a variety of art made with acrylic, oil pastel and watercolor.

One watercolor depicts a long truck with a red head and a blue trailer. Gibbons says the artist, Tony Sadlowski, uses a lot of real-world images in his paintings.

“Tony will point out how the trees are dark against the light sky, and will use that in his painting. He knows that everything in his picture is specific. He’ll tell me where in the picture the diesel fuel goes,” Gibbons says, commenting on another of Sadlowski’s paintings.

Charles Able photo———- Tony Sadlowski of Easthampton poses with his painting of the train yard in West Springfield

Recently, the artists have been working on pieces that will be exhibited at the Northampton Center for the Arts in August. Shelly Houseman of Florence just finished a pastel of dogs in different seasons. As a side project, she made a birthday card for a friend, with pastel and watercolor flowers on the front.

Annette Helgerson of Sunderland paints flowers with water and pastel. She brushes a crimson red onto paper. “I love this color, it’s going to go well in my room,” she says.

Helgerson, who started the art program in January, says painting makes her feel relaxed.

Molly Muellner, the 7-year-old daughter of workshop instructor Sperry, had been creating her own picture at a nearby table. She brings it over to Helgerson. “Here you go.”

“Thank you for the painting. I’ll hang it up in my room,” Helgerson says.

Gibbons says the program allows people with developmental disabilities to communicate in other ways. She says some were concerned that outsiders would discriminate against the work, by thinking of the artwork as no more mature than a child’s.

While a child might pick up a certain color and scribble on a page, art by an adult living with a developmental disability has a sense of organization. She points out a painting by Oyola in the silent auction.

“You can see a whole other layer here. People might stop and see that the artist has much more life experience,” Gibbons says.

Tom and Joan Carhart, of Florence, talk with their son Tommy at the Nashawannuk Gallrery

People in the program differ in their ability to handle brushes or pastels. Gibbons says the artists sometimes choose something else that appeals to them – sometimes a medium that is easier to manipulate, such as acrylic prints.

An artist’s ability often progresses throughout the program. Gibbons describes how one participant was able to dab just a single color of paint on one spot, until it almost wet the paper through. Now he paints over the entire composition, using a variety of colors.

Jonathan Camp of Westfield shows his painting of a sunflower. The sunflower has a big black center ringed with a bit of green and yellow petals. Gibbons says Camp has gone through a change since beginning the program. Before, he had trouble controlling his temper. Now he comes and leaves the world at the door, working from the beginning to the end of the session, and saying thank you to the instructors on the way out.

Back at the Nashawannuck Gallery, a guestbook lies on a table below the artwork. Comments praise the work as wonderful and lovely. One notes that the work is beautiful, inspirational and expressive.

Another claims that it is a revealing celebration of talent “we should all have.”

Riverside Industries awarded for efforts
By MAGGIE SHADER Staff Writer

[ This story appeared in 'The Summit' - A weekly section for Easthampton, Southampton and Westhampton ]
[ Originally published on: Thursday, October 20, 2005 ]

EASTHAMPTON – Behind the brick facade and quiet windows at One Cottage Street is a thriving nonprofit organization that encourages and/or enables mentally or physically handicapped people to seek employment, and self-sufficiency and realization.

In the past, Riverside Industries Inc.’s dedicated work was perhaps the city’s best-kept secret. Meanwhile, the organization continued to grow and gain recognition within the nonprofit community.

Today, the 37-year-old nonprofit serves over 1,000 people, and is now a recognizable asset and member of the growing Easthampton community.

This year, Riverside received the highest certificate given to a human service agency in Western Massachusetts for the fifth consecutive time in 10 years. The Department of Mental Retardation’s office of Quality Management, Quality Enhancement Division bestows the certificate every two years after an evaluation of the organization’s facilities and programs that takes close to a month to complete.

Part of the Quality Enhancement Division’s survey summary read: ”It (Riverside) has developed a comprehensive system to insure the safety and personal well-being of individuals across all settings …”

The international Rehabilitation Accreditation Commission also awarded Riverside its highest level of accreditation for the ninth consecutive time. In its report summary the commission wrote: ”The organization finds and implements creative out-of-the-box approaches for solving problems and enhancing supports to the persons served.”

Charlene Gentes, director of community relations, and general manager Deborah Thomas agree that they are grateful for the recognition of the services Riverside provides, but, more important, that they are open to having Riverside evaluated because the nonprofit can only gain from it. Despite the many years of awards for excellence, neither Gentes nor Thomas thinks Riverside can rest on its laurels.

”There’s always something, there’s always room to improve,” said Thomas. ”We want to stay progressive, we want to stay alive.”

Some of the programs offered at Riverside include an extensive job placement program as well as on-site employment.

According to its Web site, since 1980 Riverside has placed 241 people in jobs that ranged from supportive to competitive employment. Employers include Big Es Supermarket in Easthampton and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Riverside’s on-site jobs include assembly and packaging for businesses such as the Yankee Candle Co. and Hasbro Games.

On a recent day in the work room, Riverside clients on the job put together green plastic parts for the game Hungry Hippo, and filled small jars with glue that arrives by the barrel.

All the products are checked for quality after assembly and before they are shipped out to companies.

Another opportunity for employment at Riverside is Tucson & Savannah’s Cafe, at the heart of the old factory building on Cottage Street. Cafe customers are mainly drawn from the artist community there and other tenants of the building, as well as Riverside clients and employees. However, the eatery’s doors are open to everyone. The cafe features equipment designed to enable Riverside clients to more freely work and eat at the cafe. At the counter is a computer touch screen that displays pictures of the day’s menu that, when selected, order the item for the customer.

In addition to a slew of other services, Riverside provides clients with an expansive rehabilitation program that includes occupational, physical and speech therapy.

”The focus of what we do is therapeutic,” said Amy Gleason, director of the Day Habilitation Center.

She added that her staff seeks to create goals that are meaningful to the clients’ lives, and fit with their dreams and aspirations. A key theme of the work is promoting and working toward independence by developing practical skills., Gleason said.

”We’ve got to have enough tools in our bags to help people reach their goals and dreams,” Gentes said. ”It’s an exploration that brings that about, so Riverside has to be prepared to offer a variety of resources.”

Article by Kristin Palpini. First appeared in the Gazette August 16, 2005

EASTHAMPTON – The proprietors of Tucson & Savannah’s Cafe aren’t that interested in profits.

The owners judge a successful day not by how much money is in the cash register, but by how much their employees have learned.

The eatery is run and supported by the nonprofit Riverside Industries, Inc. as an on-site work training facility for its mentally and/or physically handicapped clients.

‘The restaurant can’t support itself, but it’s not about that,’ said cafe manager Dennis Foley. ‘It’s a skill training program and the proof in the pudding comes when (clients are hired for) jobs (outside Riverside Industries).’

The small cafe, open to the public most days from about 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., serves breakfast and lunch to approximately 175 people each day. The menu changes daily. Some items that have been served at Tucson & Savannah’s include fruit salad, home made soups, fresh salads, sandwiches, hot-dogs, and pasta in cream sauce.

‘I think it’s great,’ said visiting artist Trish Shepard as she stood in line to purchase lunch Thursday aftenoon. ‘It’s nice that we have somewhere that serves fresh food for lunch.’

Riverside Industries is a nonprofit service that provides approximately 1,000 clients with training and therapy programs aimed at garnering clients employment and improved self sufficiency.

The cafe ‘is designed to give people real job training in this line of work,’ said Riverside Industries General Manager Deborah Thomas.

‘It’s become kind of like the social hub of One Cottage,’ added Thomas who also pointed out there is no other cafe or food service located at the One Cottage Street building.

One of the cafe’s most recent success stories is 22-year-old Anna Kolodzieji. She has been working at the cafe for ‘a long time’ and is ‘excited’ to start working in a cafeteria at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in the fall.

‘It’s easy work now that I got used to it. It took a while to get used to it,’ said Kolodzieji, whose favorite food to prepare is cream of broccoli soup.

Riverside’s goal with Tucson & Savannah’s is to teach the restaurant’s staff how to overcome their disabilities in the work place by providing them with plenty of practice and simple job modifications. For example, the Tucson & Savannah’s Cafe has a lowered register so someone in a wheel chair can operate it.

The cafe also provides extensively detailed outlines on how to carry out basic restaurant tasks such as baking brownies or sweeping the cafe floor. The task list for baking brownies has 44 steps.

‘One size doesn’t fit all,’ Thomas said. ‘So we had to make ways to teach everyone.’

Tucson & Savannah’s started in 1978 as a food cart. Clients would wheel it around Riverside’s training and therapy facilities selling chips and sodas. In 1981 Riverside officials decided to expand the food operation and open a small take-out cafe.

‘I like working here on dishes,’ said Kim Pietrazskiewicz, 40, a Tucson & Savannah’s chef who has been with the organization since the 1980s. ‘I cook with my mom at home and I show her how to cook. I show her all this stuff.’

Former Riverside employee Susan Tallon designed the organization’s culinary arts program and the cafe. Tallon now works at Tri-County Schools on East Street where she recently established an on-site cafe training program for high school students.

Tucson & Savannah’s was expanded again in 1984 when Riverside officials moved the cafe to a renovated space at the heart of One Cottage Street. The restaurant, painted in warm shades of orange and red, now has a dining area, a small kitchen with industrial cooking equipment and a ‘dynavox,’ an ordering system that allows customers to order a meal by choosing a picture of that food.

‘The restaurant has become a very integrated kind of place,’ said Riverside Industries President Ron Bittel. ‘One great thing about the restaurant is it pulls together people with disabilities and crafts people and artists – it pulls all kinds of people together and that’s one of the things Riverside is always trying to do.’

Tucson & Savannah’s is just one of three Riverside Industries on-site job training programs. Riverside also offers on-site training in factory packaging and outdoor maintenance.

The 2004 recipient of the Riverside Industries, Inc. Human Service Scholarship is Ashleigh Domina.

Ashleigh ranked tenth in her class and was a very active participant of
the Key Club community service organization and volunteered as a member of the National Honor Society.

Ashleigh will attend Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island
in the fall.

The Riverside Industries Human Service Scholarship was established in 2001 to encourage students to choose a career in the human service field.

Awarding the scholarship is an extension of Riverside’s mission to educate the community about people with disabilities and also allows Riverside to give back to the community.

The scholarship is awarded to an Easthampton senior who is in the top half of his or her class and who will be continuing his or her education in the human service field.

With the award Riverside seeks community betterment through the professional development of an upcoming generation interested in work like ours.

Daily Hampshire Gazette
Monday, May 5, 2003 Kristin Palpini kpalpini@gazettenet.com

Putting on a fresh face for spring

The city got its spring cleaning out of the way Saturday morning thanks to more than 100 volunteers who participated in the annual downtown cleanup.

This year volunteers spruced up the area in record time, starting at 8 a.m. and taking about 21/2 hours to put a polish on the business district.

“This is the best turnout we’ve ever had. There are so many people,” said Thomas Brown, chairman of the Easthampton Development and Industrial Commission, one of the event’s organizers. Next year “we may have to do a breakfast cookout instead of (offering) lunch. Every year it takes less and less time.”

After each cleanup, volunteers are rewarded with a community barbecue at noon. This year, members of American Legion Post 224 were behind the grill at the Senior Center, cooking up food donated by Big E’s Foodland.

Brown said the growing number of volunteers makes the work go by faster. He said that encourages more people to give a couple hours of their weekend instead of the day-long commitment required when the project started.

For eight years, EDIC, the Greater Easthampton Chamber of Commerce, Cottage Street Stations and Easthampton Rod and Gun Club have been organizing the event.

“It’s real good to see people care about the community and come together to make (the city) look good,” said Susan Flynn, one of 20 volunteers from Riverside Industries. “It’s nice to be a part of something larger than just your regular Saturday.”

Barbara Mitchell, right, of Easthampton and other Riverside Industries staff,
clean the hillside in front of One Cottage Street as part of a downtown
cleanup Saturday.

Volunteers cleaned Pulaski Park, put fresh mulch around all the trees on Main, Cottage and Union streets, raked the Historical Society’s yard, cleaned the Pleasant Green playground, picked up trash at the Eugene Flaherty municipal lot and dredged up debris from the bottom of Nashawannuck Pond.

The Hammerhead divers, who handled the last chore, found TV sets, tires, light poles, barrels and a washing machine. “I like to see the pond pretty and clean. I took the weekend off to come here,” said Barbara Janik, an Easthampton resident who helped plant flowers at the intersection by Nashawannuck Pond. “I like to fish down here and just hang out… it’s a good way to relax.”

Besides residents, many people who work in the city volunteered their time
“I think it’s important to
volunteer where you work as well aswhere you live,” said Glafyra Ennis- Yentsch, who lives in Northampton and
works at the Senior Center.
“I believe in public service
and unity in community.
This is a good community
and it’s a great thing to participate in.”

Ennis-Yentsch said she’s helped in the cleanup for several years. Asked if there was a downside, she replied with a smile, “Well, why don’t you ask me back the next morning?”

Sibling devotion yields scholarship

In 1999, when the Hills lived in Poultney, Vt., with their father, Howie had a serious car accident. Then 15, he was a passenger in a car that slid on a patch of ice and collided with an oncoming school bus. He was in a coma for a month at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire, and was temporarily paralyzed and brain-damaged.

Physical and occupational therapists did daily exercises with him, explained Rebecca. “Since I was there at his side all the time,” she said they taught her how to move his legs and arms. “After a while, they started telling me, ‘Hey, you’re great at this, you should do this for a living.’”

After emerging from the coma, Howie was moved to Franciscan Children’s Hospital in Boston. He spent two more months recuperating there, with Rebecca’s help, of course.

“His brain-damage injuries made him like a newborn baby,” said his sister, who lives at 3 Applewood Lane with her mother, Patty Hill, Howie, and younger brother, Sean, 14. “He had to learn to walk and talk and do things all over again.”

But he did. After missing a year of school together, Rebecca and Howie have just graduated from Easthampton High School.

At the school’s annual awards night recently, Riverside Industries, a mental health facility at One Cottage Street in Easthampton, awarded Rebecca with a $500 human services scholarship for her devotion to Howie, as well as for her academic achievement.

“We perceived that she was determined to pursue a career in human services,” said Ronald Bittel, Riverside president. “She also provided major assistance to her brother … She helped him get back to a functional state.”

Rebecca will attend Springfield Technical Community College in September to become a physical therapy assistant. From there, she hopes to enter Springfield College’s physical therapist program. “Either way, I’ll be meeting my goals,” said Rebecca. “If I can’t get into Springfield’s physical therapy program, I won’t mind, just as long as I’m in that line of work.”

And Howie? According to Rebecca, he is up and walking, though he still struggles with balance and coordination, is deaf in one ear and partially in the other, and has nerve damage in his left eye.

He is taking a year off to work and save money to attend Porter & Chester Institute in Chicopee next year. He wants to be an electrician.

“He’s my inspiration and my motivation because even though he had to do all this stuff, he never, ever once gave up,” said Rebecca. “Howie totally changed my whole way of thinking. After all, if he can do it, I can do it.”