Meet Six Farmers, Foragers, and Herbalists Leading Philly’s Urban Agriculture Revival
They’re creating deeper connections with the earth and the community, and reimagining what urban wellness looks like.
By Laura Brzyski
Philly Mag
Feb 6, 2023
Excerpt:
The pandemic brought highs and lows: Barfield moved operations to a bigger plot in Elkins Park — where she also began running a farmers’ market — and saw CSA shares increase fivefold. In April 2021, she left the property after a broken heating system destroyed her winter crops. Despite the setback, FarmerJawn was awarded a $50,000 conditional grant from the state Department of Agriculture to redefine the concept of the neighborhood corner store and eventually made a home on five acres of the historic Elkins Estate.
Last year, Barfield opened FarmerJawn Greenery, a garden center in Germantown “where community members can feel supported and empowered in learning how to grow their own gardens,” she says. She also launched FarmerJawn & Friends Foundation Fund, an educational nonprofit meant to help Black and brown future farmers create business models that are sustainable, profitable, and community-driven.
Barfield says one of her goals is to create pathways to ownership. “For Black and brown people, food and land sovereignty are about reclamation, about feeling comfortable and welcomed — not stigmatized or traumatized. Putting seeds in soil or tilling the earth of your own accord is your ancestors’ dream, because you’re not forced to do it. I want to make farming convenient and accessible and shift the rhetoric to empowerment and autonomy.”
