In a collective garden, those tomatoes belong to everyone

In a Burlington garden on a sunny morning in August, five people gather around a basket full of large, curvy, green squash hanging from a scale.

“That’s 19.5 pounds right there,” one of the gardeners says.

They place the squash on a picnic table with 3 pounds of kale, 10 pounds of tomatoes, onions, wax beans, peppers and more. The group converges around the table and begins dividing up the mass of food.

“Did you get any carrots?”

“What’s the spice level of these peppers?”

“Did everyone get the tomatillos that they wanted?”

Cucumbers are passed across the table, and a recipe for quick pickles is exchanged. Once the gardeners have full bags of produce and are ready to be on their way, there’s still food left over to be donated to the local food pantry.

This is often what it looks like