community
Cultivating Community Planting Neighborhoods with Fresh Future Farm By Helen Mitternight
G
ermaine Jenkins remembers the day of the video. It was a rainy day own food up to a point,” Jenkins says. “The introduction of these fertilizers you in October 2015. Fall had been good for the farm and farm stand can buy in bags came after World War II when there was bomb material sitting she’d built on a tiny plot of land in North Charleston, but this was around and they turned it into agricultural products. I got on the internet and a cold, rainy day and she and her son were alone. The video, taken figured out how our ancestors fed themselves before that. When I say ancestral by her son, then 17 years old, shows her singing forlornly about the rain and conservation and farming, it’s what people are calling permaculture, but that term was coined in the 70s and people have been growing since the beginning the lack of customers. And, as she’s talking to the camera, a gush of rainof time.” water falls right on her head. Jenkins experimented at home. A concrete slab that used to hold Fortunately, Jenkins isn’t one to let a little water dampen her CLAIM OUR water was covered with soil, mulch, and waste from her chicken dreams. By February, she realized that people were not going ROOTS: coop, then planted with sweet potatoes. to brave the cold to come buy vegetables at a farm stand; Help Us Build a Com“I got 100 pounds of sweet potatoes I didn’t have to take care by May, she had built a store to sell her produce so they munity Food Operation. kickstarter.com/projects/ of,” she says. wouldn’t have to. freshfuturefarm/claimAt first, neighbors were skeptical about her methods, which Jenkins is the creator of Fresh Future Farm, a farm that our-roots-help-us-buildinvolve putting cardboard over the ground, then layering wood sits on less than an acre of land in what is known as a food a-community-foodchips, soil and mulch. Plants are watered and then, when the plant desert. She started the farm when she realized she had to operation can grow on its own, she stops watering and allows nature to take shop outside of her North Charleston neighborhood to find over. The garden is built up rather than dug down. fresh ingredients for her son, who has allergies. Making purchas“People, men especially, thought something was wrong with me because I es outside of her neighborhood was not only inconvenient, it meant her money was leaving the neighborhood, and she was determined to change that. didn’t dig any holes,” she recalls. “They’d say, ‘How you gonna’ get that to grow?’ Jenkins had taken courses to become a Master Gardener, but she wanted to We were handing out flyers to neighbors in 2014 before we had anything but build something that didn’t rely on the chemicals and expensive processes the grass. We might have been a little early on that messaging.” By fall 2015, Jenkins and her family had opened up the farm stand, selling program recommended. “A lot of folks don’t realize that everybody, 80% or more, was growing their pumpkins, some vegetables she grew herself, and some vegetables she bought wholesale from Limehouse Produce. “It was cool because folks were buying pumpkins and then taking them down the street in our wheelbarrows to their houses,” she says. But after that cold dose of rain and reality that October, she knew she had to expand. Fresh Future Farm has grown to include five employees, a board of directors and an advisory committee. The store has sold or distributed 15.5 tons of groceries, more than a quarter of which is grown on the farm. Neighbors have turned from skeptics to supporters. “The reason we were able to get this store open in two months is because of the volunteer support from East Cooper and Sundrops Montessori Schools families. They really dug in and helped us,” she says. The farm grows greens, squash and other vegetables but Jenkins says she’ll probably always have to supplement from places like Limehouse Produce and Sam’s Club. They can provide a wider variety than she can for Fresh Future’s grocery store, which is necessary since the store is about more than just selling produce grown at the farm. “The store is for people who don’t have access to transportation,” she says. “That’s what I’m most proud of: you can get the most nutrient-dense produce
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skirt . | july 2019
