I'm a farmer.
Those of you who know me are giggling or acting otherwise incredulously after reading that statement, I'm sure. But really, over the last few months, I've committed myself to learning the art of farming and that officially makes me a greenhorn farmer...but a farmer nonetheless. So, I graduated from high school, went to college and studied abroad for a year, graduated with a degree in political science and a degree in modern languages, became a teacher, and ultimately ended up sowing seeds and dreaming of flourishing fields and thriving livestock. It's all connected, honestly...but I'll get to that.
But I'm not interested in doing farming the way that it has come to be done. Vast fields, giant machines, who knows what kinds of chemicals, and completely unsustainable in the long term. The way we grow our food is literally killing us. How's that for appetizing?
I took an environmental politics class in 2007 with a professor that helped me discover the knowledge that every college student should hope to have when they finally make it across the stage. This was the man that taught me how to think and it began in this class, where my understandings of the world and how people approach it were methodically dismantled and put back together again. I began to see myself as part of something much larger and started to grasp the notion that what I did and the choices I made absolutely mattered. I chose to become vegetarian (long, painful process!) not because I disliked meat but because I could no longer fathom the willing consumption of so many chemicals, resources, and waste just because I enjoyed the taste of a hamburger.
Food policy was the next step. I learned that even though I was only consuming plant products and dairy, there was no telling what kind of pesticides had gone into the production of what I was eating, not to mention where it had actually come from. Apples from Chile and New Zealand, eggs from California, ice from across the state line! It was impossible to find anything that didn't come from somewhere else as well as ridiculously expensive to get something that hadn't been covered in chemicals. It was enough to push me back into apathy.
In the meantime, I had been working with a number of different refugee agencies in the city as a teacher, program facilitator, fill-in case worker, translator/interpreter, citizenship specialist, and friend/confidant. I had become something of a jack-of-all-trades with the bonus perspective of being an immigrant myself. As the years went by and the economy continued to go down the tubes, the language barrier was making it more and more difficult to place the refugees into jobs. They were going without food, without utilities, facing eviction notice after eviction notice, and being forced combine households with other families or extended families in order to keep a roof over their heads. They continued to exist outside of the Charlotte community, very rarely seen and almost never heard. At the end of a long line of heartbreak, the thing that pushed me over the edge was watching the Hindu, vegetarian Bhutanese refugees being ferried into work at a local chicken factory where their jobs frequently included killing and butchering chickens. It made me feel completely devastated. Why were these people, who were skilled, experienced farmers in their home countries, being forced deconstruct their own identities in order to survive just because they were persecuted academically and restricted by a language barrier?
Then, there was an article printed in the city paper about a woman who moved to town and invited the refugees to farm in her backyard. Lightbulbs. If we couldn't bring the refugees to the farm, why not attempt to bring the farm to the refugees? From that second onward, things started to fall into place. Through a friend of mine, I was offered a few acres of farmland outside of town. I researched for countless hours about urban farming and agriculture, agritechnology, aquaponics, and food policy. I ended up at a conference about Urban Agriculture and Food Policy hosted by the SoGreen network where I found myself in a work group with a handful of passionate, experienced people...and my little group was being led by none other than Will Allen (founder of Growing Power in Milwaukee). I think I may have said 3 words the entire conference because I was so enthralled and engaged in listening to what other people were doing and saying. At one point, Will said that statistically, only one or two people in attendance that day would put in the work to establish a successful urban farm project...I'm determined to be that one.
It began with the refugees but has spun out into a greater sense of community. Everyone should have access to good food, to good jobs, and to being stewards of a stable planet for the future. We deserve to be mostly self-sufficient, sustainable, informed communities that depend on and enrich each other. The working mission statement has become as follows:
---to provide the space for communities to produce healthy food, healthy people, and a healthy planet.
So, I am a farmer and so is everyone else in the community and until this week, I wasn't sure how we were going to be able to have to space to act on it. By absolute accident, I stumbled upon a community request on a food policy forum that was requesting resources and people for a developing refugee urban farming project. After I cried and despaired for a little while (how could someone else do this...my heart and soul, spoken for just like that!) and then decided to get myself together and email them. Turns out, I was familiar with most of the people who were working on the project already and that they were looking for a program manager. We set up a meeting and I held my breath.
The meeting came on Wednesday and it was absolutely inspiring to be in the company of others who seem to be just as passionate about this project. We had an extremely productive meeting and scheduled one for this coming week. They told me about a meeting they had already scheduled about an incredible plot of land as well as the already approved backing from another nonprofit in the city. We decided to combine efforts and loosely decided that I would become something of a project manager.
And so, Charlotte Urban Farms was born. It's a beautiful, baby project that I can't wait to tell you more about.
Like I said, I'm a farmer and now you know how I got here. I am going to use this blog to keep track of farming ideas and research, grant opportunities, other funding possibilities, as well as farm planning and project development. If you come across this blog and are interested in being involved in what we are doing, absolutely let me know. I'll put out requests and things here as well...and we need all the comments, suggestions, and questions that we can get!
So, welcome to the community! There will always be more than enough room for you to grow here.
