We are pleased to report that The Field Fund was honored at the Massachusetts State House for the second year in a row by UMass Lowell’s Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI). The Field Fund was joined by other grant recipients from around the state — Don’t Take That Receipt! of Haydenville, The Lawrence Fire Department, and Worcester Public Schools — who are all working to make the commonwealth a safer place to live and work. “These leaders prove that improving environmental performance protects the public as well as the bottom line,” said Michael Ellenbecker, co-director of TURI, who welcomed legislators, honorees and their guests in the Great Hall.

It was an incredible day and we would not have been there without the generosity of our donors and the terrific work done by Clark Myers, Daniel Rogers Excavation, Bettencourt Irrigation and our partnerships with the Island elementary schools and towns who collaborate with us to improve their fields. Big thanks to the Chilmark, Edgartown, Oak Bluffs and West Tisbury schools, and to the towns of Chilmark, Tisbury and West Tisbury. Because of what we are accomplishing together, towns across the state and around the country are looking to us to see how to improve their grass fields not just for play, but also as climate mitigation tools, sequestering carbon and helping to cool our warming planet.

So here’s to grass and let’s keep growing.

Mollie Doyle, Dardanella Slavin, Rebekah Thomson

Chilmark