Mahwah Environmentalists Sponsor an Old-fashioned Community Garlic Harvest

Volunteers from Orange and Rockland Utilities (O&R) and its sister utility, Con Edison, joined members of MEVO (Mahwah Environmental Volunteers Organization) on a recent Sunday morning at MEVO’s Lovewell Farm in Mahwah to help harvest the garlic crop that was planted there last November.

MEVO is an environmental not-for-profit 501c3 organization run primarily by youth but supported by individuals of all ages. MEVO’s mission is to be the model for the creation of scalable ecological solutions that inspires and empowers people to take action for a better future.

The workforce, composed of more than 30 volunteers, mainly focused on trimming, cleaning, and drying the freshly picked garlic. A handful of the volunteers also pulled weeds to help clear the field.

MEVO Executive Director Violet Reed said, “MEVO is extremely grateful to have community players like Orange & Rockland who invest in their communities through acts of volunteerism, like coming to our farm.”

One of MEVO’s best-known programs has been the remediation of the forest on Stag Hill in Mahwah through organizing trash clean-ups since MEVO's first volunteer event in 2008. To date, MEVO volunteers have carried out over 200 trash clean-ups and removed well over 570,000 pounds of waste from Stag Hill.

About Orange & Rockland

Orange and Rockland Utilities, Inc. (O&R), a wholly owned subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, Inc., one of the nation’s largest investor-owned energy companies, is a regulated utility. O&R provides electric service to approximately 300,000 customers in southeastern New York State (where its franchise name is Orange & Rockland) and northern New Jersey (where it’s Rockland Electric Company) and natural gas service to approximately 130,000 customers in New York.