Urban Farm

Speaker 1: 00:00 An urban farm in city Heights is becoming an anchor for the community. I'm a dependent letting people pay what they can for fresh food. And this audio postcard from our speak city Heights, partner, media art center, San Diego farm cofounder Adrianna. Barraza tells us more about how they're keeping city Heights fed. Speaker 2: 00:21 I love with the farm is a partnership and, um, it's myself and my neighbor and old friend Rica. And we grow micro greens and shoots here in city Heights. Um, with the goal of making fresh food, more accessible and affordable in our area. One of the reasons why we focused on city Heights is because in our farm as Ella with the farm, we, we always envisioned this as being a business. That's a kind of force against gentrification. And so we want to grow these delicious, you know, beautiful greens, but not just going, sell them in LA Jolla. There's a lot of immigrants here in this neighborhood and everywhere, um, Mexican immigrants, Latino immigrants, but also from all over the world that have these ways of, of eating and existing and living. That's more in connection to, to the land and the seasons. But when they immigrate, there's this idea that you have to, you know, assimilate or adapt to the way of life here. Speaker 2: 01:18 There's this quick loss that happens from like our, our traditions. And so people think that's just not possible to have that fresh, you know, the fresh greens that you used to harvest the, the chillers, the, you know, whatever, some of our neighbors come by and they see what we're growing in the front yard. They're like what you have changed the beam. This is amazing. You know, I didn't think you can even grow these. I thought they had to be wild harvested. And so, so there's a real awakening. I think that happens when people start seeing like are small urban farms that are growing these traditional foods. And there's also just the, that it feels like, Oh, wow, this is worst doing. And it can be done. It's been really cool to see our customer base growing here at, in city Heights at the Fairmont urban garden, uh, pop up on Saturdays, uh, because we do have a lot of, um, Latino women and families and kids that are, that are excited to be picking up their bippy nose. Speaker 2: 02:14 And it's pretty cool cause some of them share their photos, but those are the kids, super excited eating. What was in the box of seek the strawberries, the watermelon it's been really fulfilling for me to find myself in this role of being able to share healthy food and the recipes and the access with other people in my family. First and foremost, and in my neighborhood, having the core of our business be committed to equity was there from the start. And then with COVID, you know, we see that there's so many people that are unemployed right now, or are struggling and having the super power to grow fresh food and be able to share it with our communities is something that we're really excited to share. So pay what you can is, is just feel like that's the only just way to be, to be functioning right now in these times, you know, cause it's not all about profits. It's about sustainability and how do we keep, not just ourselves in, in a safe place that feels stable, but our communities Speaker 1: 03:15 That was an audio postcard from our speak city Heights partner, media arts center, San Diego.