Urban farm brings fresh produce, peace to vets
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The urban farm on Ball Road where Ed Carlock drives a heavy fork deep into the soil is not always a very quiet place. Planes roar overhead, and one loud rooster tends to crow all day.
Still, growing fresh tomatoes on the acre plot of Memphis land, located in a community of military veterans like himself, brings Carlock a sense of calm.
“It makes you feel like ... you’re doing something right,” he said Friday. “You’re doing something good. And this really is
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Epicenter, lenders launch $15M loan fund. my family. This is the family that I have. The people here in this garden, the staff. Here you belong. Here I belong. This is the place that I belong. I haven’t had a place to belong since I was a kid. Since I was 17 years old and left home and went into the military, I’ve kind of been out there in the wind ever since. This is kind of a return. It’s kind of a turnaround.”
Carlock, 70, an Army veteran from Tate County, Miss., who served in Korea, is part of a project that launched this year to provide horticultural therapy,
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High 90° Low 74° T-storms. Forecast, agricultural education and fresh produce to veterans. The farm is continuing to be built through a partnership between Alpha Omega Veterans Services, which provides housing and counseling to homeless and displaced veterans, and Memphis Tilth, a group that advocates for access to healthy
Alpha Omega Veterans Services fights the at-home battle.
food through gardens and community kitchen programs.
The farm has produced at least 80 pounds of food since March. Located at the veterans services’ housing facility in South Memphis at the site of the old Defense Depot, the farm features three beehives, 12 chickens and 100 feet of tomatoes. The group also grows peppers, carrots, sugar snap peas, black-eyed peas, chard, kale, sweet potatoes, okra, beets, turnips, cucumbers and lettuce.
Carlock cuts the grass, fills garden beds, plants seeds, weeds and waters.
“Just about everything you do in farming,” he said. “Except the chickens and the bees. I don’t do too much with the bees and the chickens. I’m not a chicken guy. I’m not a bee guy.”
Land, food, faith
More than 30 veterans are housed on the property around the farm. That includes Carlock, who lives in a residence there with two other Army veterans and a Navy veteran as roommates. Alpha Omega houses veterans in 122 beds at six facilities while also operating a dropin center at 1183 Madison Ave.
During a recent week, community garden organizer Becca Hart, veterans services chairman PZ Horton, community kitchen organizer Faron Levesque, farm manager Chris Peterson and executive director Cordell Walker showed guests around the farm and the site of a planned wellness garden nearby.
The farm draws volunteers such as the students from the Memphis Theological Seminary’s land, food and faith program who arrived Friday, including Steven Bradley, Aaron Cooper, Martha Lyle Ford, D’Leigh Harvell and Adrienne Wallace.
They worked with Carlock, who said he enjoys growing food for others.
“This right here it educates people about eating, and it gives people food to eat,” he said. “I guess I just feel that’s what I want to do the rest of my life. Something good, man.”
For more information, visit alphaomegaveterans.org and memphistilth. org.