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JERREY ROBERTS

Olivia Wilson, 10, left, and Abbie Carey, 11, center, pick tomatoes as Megan Vieira, 10, waters at the South Hadley Community Garden.

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JERREY ROBERTS

Alyssa Croteau, 10, left, uses a watering can to wash a tomato for Olivia Wilson, 10, during work by Junior Girl Scout Troop 11253 at the South Hadley Community Garden. The troop is seeking to earn an award for growing vegetables and giving them to the South Hadley Food Pantry.

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JERREY ROBERTS

Megan Vieira, 10, a Junior Girl Scout in South Hadley Troop 11253, waters vegetables at South Hadley Community Garden. The troop is seeking an award for growing vegetables and giving them to the South Hadley Food Pantry.

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JERREY ROBERTS

Alyssa Croteau, 10, left, uses a watering can to wash a tomato for Olivia Wilson, 10, during work by Junior Girl Scout Troop 11253 at the South Hadley Community Garden. The troop is seeking to earn an award for growing vegetables and giving them to the South Hadley Food Pantry.

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JERREY ROBERTS

Olivia Wilson, 10, left, and Megan Vieira, 10, right, of South Hadley Junior Girl Scout Troop 11253 pick tomatoes as Meghan Carey, 7, watches at the South Hadley Community Garden. The troop is seeking to earn an award for growing vegetables and giving them to the South Hadley Food Pantry.

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JERREY ROBERTS

Olivia Wilson, 10, left, and Abbie Carey, 11, center, pick tomatoes as Megan Vieira, 10, waters at the South Hadley Community Garden.

SOUTH HADLEY

YOU don't take your eyes off the road for long driving the shoulderless two-lane ski-jump known as Route 47. You've got enough on your mind - survival first and foremost. But if you did happen to squeeze a glance toward the leafy picnic area and soccer fields about 2 miles from Mount Holyoke College, you might witness a different kind of survival.

All summer long the Junior Girl Scouts of Troop 11253 have toiled in their own plot at the South Hadley Community Garden, reaping produce they planted and cultivated in the spring. In a recent tally, the troop had harvested 71 pounds of summer squash, cucumbers, green beans, radishes and cherry tomatoes and hauled it to the South Hadley Food Pantry.

They weed, water, laugh, sweat and even cajole their vegetables to ripen.

They are all 10 or 11 and, except for Megan Fanos, of Chicopee, will be fifth-graders this fall at Mosier Elementary School. Fanos, Alyssa Croteau, Megan Vieira, Abbie Carey and Olivia Wilson were there the other day tending to their crops. Olivia's mother, Martha Guild, is the troop leader.

"No one wants to do weeding," Megan Vieira said as she yanked weeds trying to strangle cherry tomatoes.

"I like basil because I can eat it while I weed," Olivia said, munching away while she worked.

It's a new troop, this 11253, kicked off in February last year by Guild herself, a special education teacher at Michael E. Smith Middle School. Asked why she took on something like this, she answered: "Phoebe Prince."

Of the many policy changes, shakeups, resignations and gubernatorial proclamations brought on here and across the country by the suicide of a 15-year-old South Hadley High freshman who was bullied by classmates, this one might be the purest.

"Such a tragedy," Guild said. "So hard on our town. And all the things you learn about bullies - you have a lead bully, people who support the bully, and bystanders. I feared for my daughter and other girls. I had to do something; I didn't want to sit around."

Troop's founding

South Hadley and Granby share one Girl Scout unit but, with a leadership shortage, there were no spots available for new kids. So Guild talked to Olivia and some of her friends and came to a quick conclusion: "There was a need for another Girl Scout troop."

For Guild, becoming a Scout leader came with a pretty steep learning curve. "I was a Brownie dropout," she said with a laugh. But she underwent a crash course in January 2010, enlisted other parents to help, and 11253 opened for business at the United Methodist Church soon after.

"The social life of girls can get really dicey," Guild said. "I wanted to be sure that girls here have a positive place to come to. I wanted to be sure that our girls have the opportunity to get themselves and friends out of harm's way."

Right away, the Bronze Award, Junior Girl Scouts' highest honor, spoke to the girls in all its glory.

"My mom has a magazine that has a picture of it," Olivia said. "It's goldish brown in the middle."

To earn the award, the troop must take on a community project that can sustain itself and have an immediate impact.

"In all our conversations in the life of a troop, we kept coming up with ways to help the homeless and hungry," Guild said. They soon learned that the town's Food Pantry, also a relatively new entity, serves 100 families, with more than 300 families qualifying for food assistance.

"We decided we needed the Bronze Award and thought about going up to the Community Gardens," Olivia said. "My mom bought a bunch of seeds."

The troop coughed up a $20 fee and was given a small plot, maybe 15 by 20 feet. The young Scouts dove into the project with shovels and rakes.

"We did look on the back of the seed packets," Olivia said.

"You can't have one hole a centimeter away from another one," Abbie said.

Most of what the troop learned from there came from the other gardeners at the Community Gardens, like folks from the Western Mass Master Garden Association, who tend to a demonstration garden, featuring square-foot gardening and upside-down tomatoes. The Bachelor Brook/Stony Brook Resource Area represents land acquired in 2005 by the town. A new section has been added to the Community Gardens, a section larger than the acre or so already there.

"We got a lot of good advice from gardeners," Guild said, "like what to do about mildew on tomato leaves."

Abbie Carey clips off an affected branch, blemished with a fungus known for its black dot. She also knows to haul it to the woods so it won't spread to other crops.

The group has had huge success with squash and radishes and beans. Some crops did better than others. The potatoes? Not so good.

"They died - eaten by chipmunks," Abbie said.

The pumpkins also seemed destined to resemble nothing more than rain-sogged tennis balls. But Guild performed a little surgery on the vines. "It was a boring insect," she said. "I got in there with a knife and got the larvae out."

The deflated tennis balls are beginning to look like pumpkins.

"It's gonna be cool for Halloween," Megan Vieira said.

"I harvested lettuce but it didn't taste that good," she said, "so I gave it to my guinea pig, Oreo, who loved it."

The talk about pets caused Megan Fanos to confess: "I murdered my hamster. He was running inside a ball. I pushed him too hard - he broke his neck."

Is she known for killing small animals?

"No, 'cause I didn't kill my other pets," she said with a laugh.

Real hunger

For these young ladies, hungry and homeless is no abstract statistic on a governor's agenda. They know these people. They've looked into their eyes. They've imagined themselves in such straits.

"They have nothing to eat," Megan Vieira said. "They wouldn't be alive if they can't eat."

"It's hard for the homeless, sleeping outside with no shelter," Abbie said. "If it's starry, it'd be cool, but cold and rainy? I don't know how you'd do it."

Olivia Wilson remembers the first time they brought their bounty to the Food Pantry: "It was a Saturday morning at 9:30," she said. "We gave it to the people and they weighed it. We saw some homeless and they said thanks."

"Even if all we gave was a little squash, they were very appreciative," Megan Vieira said.

"It makes us proud," Abbie said. "We pray about them before we go to bed."

The South Hadley Food Pantry is open Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Will any of this lead to a career in farming?

"I don't know," Abbie said. "It's a lot of hard work, farming."

"If I was a farmer all I'd do was ride around in a tractor," Olivia said.

The spigot where water is drawn proved to be a popular spot when the air got sticky. "On really, really hot days I'd look around and find them all down at the spigot," Guild said.

To be a Girl Scout comes with responsibility, the girls, and their leaders, have learned.

"It's being respectful to each other," Megan Vieira said. "To treat the world like it's our dog - everyone loves puppies."

"It's making sure you become a good friend," Guild said. "There's more to it than going to meetings."

And the cornerstone to Scouting is the development of leadership, even in the little, everyday things.

"I'm planning to take a communications course at the Y and pass what I've learned to others," Megan Fanos said.

"I'm a baby sitter to two younger brothers," Alyssa said.

Scouts need to devote 20 hours each to the project in order to earn the Bronze. Some have logged more hours than others. There are plans afoot to lay in a fall crop so they can all win the award together.

"We also have flowers but we don't donate that," Olivia said.

No, the flowers, mostly zinnias and cosmos, play a role all their own. "The final piece of the project is to get the word out," Guild said. "Each girl will make a bouquet, pick a friend to give the flowers to and tell about what we did."

"I'm bringing flowers to my mom," said Megan Vieira.