WASHINGTON, DC
In 1984, as part of the District of Columbia Comprehensive Plan Act, the then mayor of Washington, DC, Marion Barry, set out to make better and more systematic use of the district’s empty lots and vacant land. The Food Production and Urban Gardens Program stipulated that an inventory should be created and regularly updated, categorizing the location and size of unused lots, and that those lots should be made available to the community for growing food. The new city code further stipulated that DC’s urban gardens should be used for education, “programs for citizen gardening and self-help food production efforts,” and the creation of jobs.
The Food Production and Urban Gardens Program was a progressive policy move for the time, though implementation did not follow with as much vigor as some might have hoped. It was not until two decades later, as the District and the entire country began to face heightened concern about childhood obesity and diet-related illness, that citizens kicked efforts into high gear and started planting seeds for local, community-driven food production.
One standout urban agriculture project that has sprung up with the new wave of enthusiasm can be found in the LeDroit Park neighborhood of Northwest DC. Common Good City Farm sits on the former site of an elementary school that was closed and slated for demolition when the public school system was restructured in 2008. Members of the neighborhood association advocated forcefully for the land to be spared from development and left available for purposes that serve and benefit the community. They triumphed in their effort to turn the empty space into a park, and Common Good became the anchor in the plan.
The founders of the farm, Susan Ellsworth and Liz Falk, had been running a garden in another location for two years before the LeDroit opportunity arose. When they began in 2007, explains farm manager Spencer Ellsworth (no relation to Susan), “There was a dearth of nonprofits in DC focused on garden education.” Though the founders didn’t have formal training in agriculture or horticulture, they possessed an abundance of what many people lack: follow-through. “Several of us had worked on farms,” says Susan. “And several of us had community development experience through work. But it was mostly started with a vision and an interest in finding a way to use available space productively.”
Ellsworth and Falk worked alongside a broader social service organization called Bread for the City. “There wasn’t much emphasis in the food pantries and soup kitchens on providing fresh food,” Susan recalls. “They wanted to use preserved and canned food because of its shelf life.” But over the past several years, that has shifted dramatically, as more people have come to understand the real nutritional and health benefits of fresh produce.
In 2009, Ellsworth and Falk were invited to start Common Good City Farm with the support of the LeDroit Park neighborhood association. The pair recruited friends and volunteers to help them clear the land, build raised beds, and plant the first crops. With support from the USDA, they took soil samples and found that—to their surprise—the land was not contaminated with heavy metals. They scavenged cardboard, newspaper, and hay to start transitioning the land.
The design of the eighteen-thousand-square-foot farm was based on permaculture principles, dictated in part by their programming plans and also by the state of the lot upon their arrival. “When we moved to the new site, we had to contend with a lot of concrete, a baseball diamond made with packed dirt from demolished brick homes. Permaculture design allowed us to create a farm that was resource efficient.”
The permaculture design is meant to mimic a local forest ecosystem, with diverse crops planted in close proximity that function to support one another. One of the unique elements of Common Good is their extensive array of fruiting trees, which were donated by a local nursery and include peach, apple, cherry, plum, and a regional native called a pawpaw, which is similar to a papaya.
The majority of the space is run as one unified growing operation, maintained by volunteers and students who share the yield. “We wanted to create a work-trade CSA, where low-income community members could come lend a hand and take away food in exchange for their labor. It was important to us that everyone work together on the whole garden rather than having individual plots where each person is growing tomatoes and basil side by side.” As the rest of the land fills out, an area dedicated to individual community plots will also be built for community members who wish to cultivate a small private space and don’t have room available where they live, but the collective cultivation remains central to Common Good’s vision, particularly with kids, for whom collaboration is a key life skill beyond the garden.
The farm managers direct after-school education programs attended primarily by neighborhood kids. Many of the children live in the public housing complex across the street from the farm and used to go to the school that once occupied the site. Now they walk to schools in adjacent neighborhoods and some are bused longer distances. When they come home at the end of the day, Common Good is a safe space where they can learn about growing and eating healthy food. “We want to instill values and teach skills but without overprogramming,” says Spencer. “Kids are forced to sit still and be quiet enough in school, so we want this to be a place where they can play, too.”
With the addition of a playground and other recreational space on the same property, the kids have a choice of how they want to expend their excess energy. “It means the ones who do decide to be on the farm are there because they choose it over any old green space.” Activities with the young gardeners include hands-on projects that connect familiar food experiences with the unfamiliar process of growing. One of their favorites, reports Spencer, is cultivating and harvesting corn kernels for popcorn. “We put it in a pan, and it becomes what they see in the movie theater,” he says.
The kids often go home with some ingredients for their parents to cook and always with lessons about where their food comes from. Occasionally, the parents come across the street to learn alongside their kids and place requests for their favorite fruits and vegetables. The farm managers enjoy these voluntary polls and try to comply, growing extra tomatoes, garlic, collard greens, and fruit. Spencer recounts an encounter early on in the establishment of Common Good when some young men from the public housing facility came over to tell the farmers about a peach tree that had been growing in their complex for two or three decades, since they were children. They were concerned that new construction near their building might endanger the beloved tree and asked if there was a way to protect or transplant it. Although the tree couldn’t be moved, the farmers took the exchange as a good sign of the community’s investment in their local food resources, and they planted plenty of peach trees that now fruit in abundance.
In addition to the student volunteers, Common Good has two other active groups of helpers. One comes from a city program called Green Tomorrows, which gives adults who make less than a DC living wage access to fresh food. Green Tomorrows volunteers come from all over the city to dig in at the farm, and at the end of their shift, they walk away with a bag of vegetables. The other group of volunteers represents the growing population of young adult farmers who have affluent backgrounds and college degrees, but choose food production over the more conventional activities that tend to occupy well-off urbanites. “DC is changing pretty drastically,” Spencer reflects. “It used to be 74 percent African American, and that is still true in the area surrounding the farm, but soon we’ll have a plurality as more Latino, Asian, and white people move in.”
As Common Good City Farm becomes more established and diversifies funding sources, they are also building a strong network of partnerships that underscore the many important roles of an urban farm. They get funding from the USDA in the form of community food projects grants that aim to support food security; the Sierra Club provides funds for outdoor education; Kaiser Permanente supports the farm because of its connection to community health and well-being; and DC’s Department of the Environment has taken an interest in the potential environmental benefits of the farm, setting up rain gardens there that act as storm water collection demonstration beds.
The one thing Common Good limits is the amount of food they actually sell, so they can focus on their mission, which centers around supporting people who do not have a consistently reliable source of food. “But we are finding ways to balance profit with food security work,” says Spencer. They sell herbs to a chocolatier in Philadelphia and select crops to DC restaurants, and they have discussed the possibility of starting a mobile grocery modeled off of projects like People’s Grocery in Oakland, California.
Being in DC, Common Good stands near the epicenter of some of the newest movements toward facilitating food access for youth and low-income communities. Michelle Obama’s interest in obesity, nutrition, food, and gardening has accelerated the District’s progress toward programs and policies that connect schools and food banks with urban agriculture. In 2010, the old 1984 Food Production and Urban Gardens Act was amended with the instatement of the Healthy Schools Act, which is now a working model for the rest of the country. “It’s a strong symbol of commitment,” says Spencer. “Urban agriculture is an important piece of the overall work of reshaping urban food systems, and we’re a city with a lot of opportunity to do that.”
