Urban farming brings a community together

OKLAHOMA CITY — Urban farming is not new. Ever since cities started growing and getting more populated, people have found unique ways to grow food in unlikely places.

However, what the CommonWealth Urban Farms in Oklahoma City has been doing for the past five years is a little different. In the middle of a working class, low-income neighborhood, a group of residents have created a sort of farming oasis.

“It’s a way in which a fairly diverse and low-income neighborhood can create a more healthy and resilient food,” said Allen Parleir, a resident and coordinator of the Closer to the Earth Youth Gardening program. “There are a whole bunch of neighbors who are involved in this. This is just a great way for people in a diverse community to get to know each other and learn how to live healthier.”

From a garden sitting on a one-seventh of an acre corner lot, CommonWealth Urban Farms has served as a primary source of organic produce for many families, individuals and businesses since 2011. That same year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 18 million households in the United States were described as “food insecure” — having limited or uncertain access to safe, nutritious foods.

In the production and delivery of food, bypassing intermediary channels like grocery stores in favor of a farm-to-fork relationship with consumers meant a better product in terms of quality and nutrition. Furthermore, consumers would also benefit from a personalized experience with the farmer through dialogue about their food. As a result, CommonWealth has raised community expectations for food quality and education through best practices and workshops.

“It’s really important because a lot of people have been kind of bludgeoned into eating the junk food that is most easily available,” Parleir said. “Educating folks about where their food comes from and making healthier choices in their food will reduce the health problems we have in our society around heart disease, obesity and diabetes.”

The farm was the brainchild of Elia Woods, who grew up in Chicago before moving to Oklahoma. She has always been into gardening, but a few years ago she decided she wanted to do do more.

“I’ve always loved gardening and they tend to get bigger and bigger,” Woods said. “The point came where I knew I just wanted to get deeper into it. A little seed was formed about having the idea of having an urban farm and a teaching farm. I got together with some other people who had (a) similar interest and we just spent the first year talking about what we might want to do. Out of that, the more specific vision of CommonWealth emerged.”

CommonWealth formed out of a small group of people who began meeting in 2010 with the common goal of turning vacant lots in Oklahoma City into productive green spaces that would benefit the local community. Since then, many more people have joined in to initiate and develop the urban farm, composting site and educational programming.

The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is now comprised of 30 people who pay $10-$12 a week a bag of vegetables. According to Woods, the waiting list to join the CSA is up to 50 people.

“Once you’ve eaten real food, there is no going back,” Woods said. “Once you know how corn is really supposed to taste — once I started growing my own corn, I have never gone to the grocery store and bought corn since then. You find out what food is supposed to taste like and it hooks you pretty quick.”

One of the CSA members is Devin Wason, who lives down the street from the CommonWealth farm with his 3-year-old son. He foresees more urban farms becoming more prevalent in the future.

“If it’s not, then I’ve done a bad job as a parent,” Wason said. “This needs to be normal. This needs to be something that is going on more to give him something more than what I had growing up. Which is kind of sad that having just this, a yard garden, does so much. I am definitely going to be a part of making that available so that my son can get into it.”

Parleir agrees.

“We hope that everything we do here can be a model for other folks to say, ‘hey, I have a vacant lot in my neighborhood, I can do this too,'” Parleir said. “Wherever you have a vacant lot, you can start growing food. And more important than that, you can start to grow a community around food. That’s what we’re really growing here, a community around food.”