Manchester farm epitomizes group’s food- access priorities
Manchester doesn’t have a grocery store. With the exception of a little convenience store, it has no retail at all.
When Lisa Freeman started her farm on Juniata Street in that North Side neighborhood, her effort was an exemplar of one of the top goals of the Pittsburgh Food Policy Council: to help people grow food accessibly and affordably.
The council last week released its Greater Pittsburgh Food Action Plan, which identifies five goals that include enhanced collaboration; healthy food production based on equity, sustainability and environmental stewardship; and increased availability of healthy food.
A particular priority is to “support food entrepreneurship by addressing the barriers faced by women, immigrants, people of color and other marginalized communities,” according to the action plan.
More than 10 years ago, Ms.
Freeman, a social worker and community organizer, started thinking about creating a farm in her neighborhood. She had moved to Manchester in 2002 after buying a condemned Victorian house on Liverpool Street. It took years to renovate, and in that time, she began planting flowers on the property.
She formed a partnership several years later with Manchester Elementary School to operate a garden on the school grounds — something she did for five years, teaching youngsters about growing and eating vegetables.
Meanwhile, she bought four lots near the school on Juniata Street. She had a vacant house on the land demolished and began developing those lots into what is now the Manchester Growing Together Garden and Freeman Family Farm.
The family farm part is her business; the Growing Together garden is a nonprofit that has held cooking classes and given food to families. With a permit, she had a 30- by- 48- foot greenhouse erected to grow food year round.
“We will be feeding the neighborhood,” Ms. Freeman said one recent day when she held a soft opening of the garden. “We’re going to partner with local chefs and have an outdoor venue where people can come for cooking classes.”
Her business includes providing boxes of produce to subscribers of her Community Supported Agriculture enterprise.
“We will soon have a signup for that,” she said.
The farm is 10,000 square feet and includes a hen house; plum, apple, peach and pear trees; and a vegetable garden.
She hired Shane Pilster and Max Gonzales to paint a huge mural of a rooster on the side of her property, which abuts the New Zion Baptist Church.
“Randy Gilson [ the owner of Randyland, a colorful complex of buildings in the Mexican War Streets] connected me to them,” Ms. Freeman said. “That’s what I love, connectivity and building community.”
She said the lots had once been used for “negative activity.” She said she would haul mulch past guys who were dealing drugs.
In a YouTube video, she said, “Eventually, the elements we assumed were bad began taking part in the garden. I would say, ‘ Come here and hold this hose since you’re not doing anything.’ ”
The city has come a long way in allowing urban agriculture to flourish, including an ordinance that gives residents the opportunity to raise chickens and bees. It also allows people to grow gardens on city properties.
Food insecurity is a threat to so many families, and that was true before 2020. This year, widespread job loss has affected people who were not vulnerable before, compelling them to seek help from food pantries for the first time in their lives.
Last spring, I stood in line with many first- time gardeners to buy vegetable plants, and on numerous walks through the summer, I spotted tomato, pepper, squash and cucumber plants on people’s decks and in pots in front of many homes.
It had become clear to many people that growing their own food was one way to ensure having it.
I grew up helping my siblings and parents tend a large vegetable garden, hoeing weeds from around the plants, shucking corn and stringing beans. It was a gift for a lifetime, helping me to develop a love of growing my own vegetables, cooking and holding to a nutritious diet.
None of our city’s majority Black neighborhoods has a grocery store, so the more farms in these neighborhoods, the better. More opportunities for our kids in the city to learn how to grow food will give them and their families easier access to it and ensure them a better chance of growing up with a diet that will nourish their bodies and minds.