New Stories From 'Urban Agriculture Notes'
Random header image... Refresh for more!

A Garden in Minneapolis Is The Frontline In The Fight Against Racial Inequality And Disease

Haley co-founded Appetite for Change as a way to improve access to healthy food and better the health of residents in her community. “I feel like the garden is truly a healing space,” says Haley. Yuki Noguchi/NPR

A group called Appetite for Change is trying to lead the community down a different path, teaching others to grow their way to healthy food.

By Yuki Noguchi
NPR
Nov 27, 2020

Excerpt:

Haley stands in a community garden the size of a soccer field on a residential block, surveying end-of-season rainbow chard, habanero peppers and purple tomatoes. She hovers over the plants, bragging about their merits: how okra helped heal her arthritic knees, and how she turned a friend on to broccoli greens when collards weren’t available.

For Haley, tragedy and healing, death and justice come together in this garden. She taught her middle child, Anthony Titus, to grow cucumbers here. He, in turn, dared her to taste manure.

A decade ago, on the Fourth of July, Anthony was walking by this garden, when a stray bullet pierced his back.

“I’m looking right at the house where he died in their yard,” says Haley, nodding across the street. “I can see the fence where the bullet hit him and his hat fell.” Titus, nicknamed Prince Charming, was 16.

“That trauma took me away from my garden,” says Haley. “It took away my appetite for life.” She isolated herself and drank to bury her anger and sorrow. Her son’s cucumber plants went neglected.

Then, one day, she felt called outdoors: “I remember the sun, clear as day saying, ‘Why don’t you go out to your garden? Why did you let your garden die?'”

Read the complete article here.