This is the fourth article in an eight-part series running that will follow our Chicago urban farms through harvest. Go back to part three. Go ahead to part five.
It’s a bumper summer crop here in the food desert. On harvest days, bins overflow with slicing tomatoes, sweet corn, cucumbers, cabbages, turnips, beets and green beans destined to be distributed to the community’s low-income people at no charge. This is FarmWorks, Heartland Alliance’s two-acre urban farm in Chicago’s East Garfield Park neighborhood.
This is a unique relationship between Heartland Alliance’s urban FarmWorks and Vital Bridges Center On Chronic Care, a network of food pantries that offers services across the city. Also a part of Heartland Alliance, Vital Bridges supports people of low income living with HIV/AIDS and other illnesses through food pantries, staff dietitians, and case management. Like a high-end restaurant with its own farm (think Stone Barns and Blue Hill or Rick Bayless’ Garden), Vital Bridges gets fresh, sustainable produce from FarmWorks throughout the growing season. In fact, this year every pound of produce harvested at FarmWorks will go to straight to Vital Bridges participants, an estimated 10,000 pounds. Staff from Vital Bridges picks up vegetables from FarmWorks directly after harvesting, and distributes the fresh produce the next day, meaning it’s less than 24 hours from field to plate.
” Produce from FarmWorks is local, sustainable, and grown with care by Heartland participants.”
“We want to keep this produce in the community,” said Jessica Surma Urban Agriculture Coordinator at Chicago FarmWorks, who admitted that selling some of FarmWorks produce at a farmers market or to restaurants could make more money to support the project, but that’s not her interest. “We’re located in a food desert where it’s hard for people to get access to good produce. We’re filling that need.”
Fighting hunger has been FarmWorks’ mission from its beginning. In 2010, at the same time that leaders at Heartland Alliance were having initial discussions about starting an urban farm, the Social IMPACT Research Center released its influential study about food deserts in Chicago: Running on Empty: Nutritional Access for Children in Cook County, Illinois. That study continues to be a source of inspiration and determination for the FarmWorks team. Everything the farm produced for the last three seasons has been distributed to low income people in the community at no cost. This season, it’s all going through Vital Bridges.
“Connecting our programs was a natural fit,” said Laura Samnadda, Food and Nutrition Manager for Vital Bridges, who described her program and FarmWorks as cousins in the Heartland Alliance family. “FarmWorks is growing food on the westside and we need food on the westside.”
But the relationship is about more than just getting food to people, she added. “Produce from FarmWorks is local, sustainable, and grown with care by Heartland Alliance participants. Most of our participants at Vital Bridges couldn’t access that kind of food otherwise.”
” FarmWorks is growing food on the westside and we need food on the westside.”
On a recent Friday morning, people milled about the Vital Bridges food pantry on West Lake Street, a lively space that feels like a mixture of office, grocery store and community
center. Volunteers were busy assisting pantry recipients get their groceries and bagging vegetables from FarmWorks. Visitors to the pantry were enthusiastic about the produce. One said that she loved getting fresh produce from Vital Bridges while another said that cooking with produce he gets from Vital Bridges helps him stay healthy.
One man named Gregory said that he’d actually worked at Vital Bridges until recently, when unexpected health problems set him back. Now he visits Vital Bridges as a pantry recipient.
“Vital Bridges is a great place,” he said. “It fills in the gaps and really helps me get through the month.” He grabbed some of FarmWorks’ turnips for both the bottoms and the greens. “The food is good quality, better than Aldi. More like Whole Foods.”
Of course, you’ll never find FarmWorks turnips or tomatoes or greens at Whole Foods. These veggies are staying in the neighborhood.
This is the fourth article in an eight-part series running that will follow our Chicago urban farms through harvest. Go back to part three. Go ahead to part five.
Dave Snyder is a writer and gardener whose poems, essays and criticism have appeared in Best American Poetry, Gastronomica, Colorado Review, The Iowa Review and elsewhere. He is currently Farm Director for Pisticci Restaurant in New York City. From 2012 – 2015, Dave worked for Heartland Alliance managing Chicago FarmWorks. This year he returns to tell FarmWorks’ story.
