Nine people gathered on a relatively sunny day on Sunday, March 27 for a work party to prepare a plot of land, recently obtained by the Urban Farm Collective, to be a new mini-farm.
The plot of land, 2,500 square feet in size, is located on the corner of NE Grand Ave. and NE Dekum St. It is the Urban Farm Collective’s tenth farm.
Janette Kaden, the Urban Farm Collective’s founder and director, says the collective reached out to the owner of the lot earlier this year to inquire whether he would be willing to share the lot. Use of the land is being donated by the owner, Dan Hatfield, and a neighbor is donating water. In honor of the donation, the farm will be called Hatfield Garden.
The bulk of the work done on March 27 consisted of digging up the grass in the plot. “It’s all going to go,” said Kari Koch, the Urban Farm Collective garden manager in charge of Hatfield Garden.
Ground from which grass was removed was covered with cardboard that was held down by rocks, old pieces of pipe, and a gray, weathered, and bare Christmas tree. That will insulate the ground and kill any weeds or grass beneath it.
For at least its first year, Hatfield Garden will be a summer garden. Koch says cucumbers, melons and squash will be planted starting in May. “This place is going to overrun with beautiful vines,” she says.
Koch says residents can volunteer with the Urban Farm Collective to help tend the garden on a regular basis and set up times to water, weed, and perform other tasks. In exchange for their work, volunteers receive a certain amount of vegetables during harvest time.
In addition to the social reasons, many of the people at the work party on March 27 attended because they care about the origins of their food.
Monica Beemer is a Woodlawn resident who attended the work party. She is also the executive director of the social service agency Sisters of the Road Café . She thinks the garden is important because it increases access to food and creates opportunities to meet neighbors.
Beemer says there are many elderly people living in Woodlawn who could benefit from the garden. “It’d be great to figure out how to get vegetables to them,” she says.
Woodlawn residents have made multiple attempts throughout the past few years to turn the vacant lot into a garden. Nothing took off. “We are so excited to see this vacant lot finally turned into something useful!” says Aimee Fahey, a Woodlawn resident and avid gardener.
“I like to see vacant lots turn into something useful,” says Jack Flynn, a Woodlawn resident who attended the work party.
Flynn’s wife Nancy says that growing local food is important to her because she believes global warming, our dependence on foreign oil and other global issues will force us to live more locally soon in the future. “I think [it’s] crazy that we ever stopped doing [small-scale farming],” she says.
The garden already has a Facebook page, and another work party has been scheduled for Sunday, April 10.
“It’s an exciting project,” Schwartz says. “I hope this encourages people to become active.”
