GROW YOUR OWN
How to feed the hungry fresh food? Run a farm
Edmund Carman was an Englishman and a farmer who, in 1837 — that’s 11 years before Wisconsin became a state — settled with his family outside of Milwaukee in what is now Franklin.
A couple of years later, he established a farm on 160 acres he purchased from the federal government. That same year he established a cemetery on the farm.
And that same year, in that cemetery, he buried his 18-year-old daughter, Eliza.
The cemetery is still there. It’s one of the oldest marked burial grounds in Milwaukee County.
So is the farm, a neighbor of the Milwaukee County House of Corrections.
And not only is the old farm flourishing, it has become but one of a handful of its kind in the country.
It’s owned by Milwaukee County, which began leasing the land to Hunger Task Force in 2012.
Now, with the support of HarleyDavidson, a small full-time staff and an army of volunteers, it is producing about a half-million pounds of fruits and vegetables each year.
It is a crop worth nearly a million dollars, says Matt King, who is the Hunger Task Force’s farm director, and it is distributed, without cost, to soup kitchens, shelters, food pantries and low-income senior facilities in the Task Force network.
For Hunger Task Force, the value of the crop exceeds what it might bring at the market.
“If there is one thing that food banks across the country struggle with, it’s access to high-quality, fresh produce in adequate amounts,” Matt says.
Hunger Task Force is one of the few agencies in the country that meet that need by growing its own.
Nine hundred fruit trees. Asparagus. Broccoli. Cabbage. Squash. Cauliflower. Cucumbers. Zucchini. Sweet corn. Peppers. Tomatoes. Beans. Watermelon. Cantaloupe. Lettuce. Collard greens.
A fish hatchery helps to stock Milwaukee County streams and ponds.
Also on the farm is an ecological jewel: a 43-acre oak savanna, cleared of invasive plants and trees, fully restored and accessible by trail.
Oak savannas — open grasslands dotted with thick-limbed oaks — were once common throughout the American Midwest, according to the Madison-based Savanna Oak Foundation.
“They are now among the rarest plant communities on earth,” according to the foundation’s website.
“Operating a farm and restoring a nature preserve is a little out the wheelhouse for what a food bank or what a hunger relief organization would be doing,” Matt says. “But we are stewards of the farm. Conserving, protecting, restoring this area is the right thing to do.”
So is feeding the hungry, Matt says.
A recent visitor to the farm didn’t agree. He told Matt that he thought that what the farm was feeding was a culture of dependency.
But Matt considers what he does, what the farm does, a mission. A calling, though for him not necessarily a calling tied to a particular religion.
He quotes the Dalai Lama: “My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”