The first annual Nightingale Community Garden Harvest Festival on Saturday afternoon featured a potluck of dishes picked fresh from the ground, a pickling demonstration by Bowdoin Street Health Center’s Healthy Champions, music and a few impromptu group dances. As some boogied down to the Cha Cha and Electric Slides, other attendees sampled the colorful trays of food set up on picnic tables in the garden’s open sitting area. Though there were some store-bought goodies and munchkins, the treats were no match for the delicious homegrown concoctions.

Virginia Pereira, who has called Sawyer Avenue home for 26 years, created a few dishes with squash and a simple but flavorful rice and beans combination. Valerie Dudley, who lives a 10-minute walk from Nightingale, also purchased a plot there for the first time. “I’ve got everything in there,” Dudley said of her “eclectic” garden. “Everything but the kitchen sink,” Dudley’s yoga partner, Anne Stein, noted.

The pair’s fellow yoga practitioner, Jenny Silverman of Ashmont Street, heads up the Dorchester Community Food Co-op, an initiative hatched this past March. The project has grown, with nearly 300 people signing up for a share in the market. There is much work ahead but Silverman has already connected with non-profit organizations, community health centers, City Hall, and Dorchester community development centers to move the big project forward.

The co-op will sponsor a winter farmer’s market at the Codman Square Health Center beginning on Jan. 8 and continuing every Sunday at 12 p.m. through March.

“A lot of people are looking at [food co-ops] as an alternative model for addressing the fact that so many of the large chain supermarkets either have left city areas or are not moving into them,” Silverman said. “Rather than begging them to come back, [the idea is to] have something that the residents control, we can make the decisions and also benefit from.”

According to an online survey the co-op conducted, many Dorchester residents are shopping outside the neighborhood, giving money and jobs to other communities. Residents who do not have access to transportation end up shopping at local stores that do not have a fresh, healthy variety of food.

The Healthy Champions and Bowdoin Street health and wellness coach Jen French demonstrated “10 Steps to Perfect Pickles” during the festival. The Champions are local youth who serve the Bowdoin Street and Geneva Avenue community as health ambassadors, maintaining two plots at the Norton Stonehurst Community Garden, advocating for healthy food choices around the neighborhood, and promoting food education at different local food events.

“We think it’s so powerful to have youth teaching other youth,” French said. “It’s been really incredible to see how many of their peers and family members have wanted to be involved in stuff that we’ve been doing.”

Healthy Champion and Harbor Pilot Middle School seventh-grader Danazia Jones spreads the word about healthy eating but has incorporated it into her life since she first got involved with Boston Natural Areas Network two years ago. Her advice for eating better is, “If you have a favorite fruit or vegetable, you should probably eat that more than your favorite snack.”