Final report for FNC23-1394
Project Information
Nick Speed, Founder of George Washington Carver Farms. Nick has been an urban farmer for 5 years, managing multiple community garden locations in North St. Louis city. In 2016, he served as an AmeriCorps member at EarthDance Organic Farms School, a 14-acre organic farm in Ferguson, MO. During this time he learned about organic farming, permaculture farming practices, and environmental stewardship. Currently he manages the Clay Community Garden (2.5 acres) and GWC Farms (.75 acre). In 2023, these growing spaces will produce over 3,000 pounds of produce, flowers, and herbs. The spaces will produce crops like sweet potatoes, collard greens, kale, onions, radishes, tomatoes, peppers, basil, mint, zinnias, sunflowers, lavender, sorrel, hyssop, marigolds, lemongrass, and pumpkins.
Our urban farm site is located in Fairground Neighborhood. This historic north St. Louis community has been devastated by food apartheid and environmental racism. Most of the land we own has sat vacant for decades. The soil, water, and air quality have been compromised due to illegal dumping and the dilapidating buildings that surround the property. Our education will be centered around urban agriculture and environmental stewardship. There is a serious lack of comprehension about our food systems and how our food is grown among young people. There are also high rates of unemployment for Black residents in St. Louis. Black St. Louis residents are nearly 5 times as likely as white residents to experience unemployment.
Our research will be centered around increasing pollinator diversity and soil rehabilitation. GWC Farms will partner with institutions like Tyson Research Center and Lincoln University to track the pollinator traffic at our urban farm sites before and after we complete the installation of our native garden, outdoor classroom, demonstration garden, and herb spiral May 2023. We will also be tracking soil health on our properties after incorporating plants like sunflowers, bamboo, hydrangeas and native plants. Our education will be centered around urban agriculture and environmental stewardship. We will partner with other local farmers on urban agriculture workshops including Leah Burnett (Confluence Farms/Growing Food Growing People), Tyrean Lewis (Heru Urban Farming), and Vince Lang (Odds & Ends Farm). Not only do we want to create educational opportunities, we want to create networking and job opportunities for Black and other marginalized youth in agriculture. GWC Farms will work with over 400 students from the greater St. Louis Area and engage them in outdoor education experiences. In addition, we host an annual summer Apprenticeship Program for 5-10 high school students that focuses on urban agriculture, culinary arts, entrepreneurship, and occupational therapy.
Objectives
- Complete construction of native garden, outdoor classroom, demonstration garden, and herb spiral
- Host 400 students for outdoor education experiences at the farm
- Host 3rd annual summer Apprenticeship Program
- Host networking event for local farmers
- Observe and identify pollinators occupying space in our native garden, herb spiral
- Plant sunflowers, bamboo, hydrangeas and natives in our demonstration garden and native garden
- Test soil at community garden site and urban farm before and after 2023 growing season
- Share research and education results during tours, outdoor education workshops, social media, and our newsletter
Cooperators
- - Producer
Research
We didn’t get a lot of development in 2023 due to fundraising shortfalls, but the good news is that we got more fruit trees for the orchard that year. Then in 2024, we planted additional fruit trees. Unfortunately, we lost our community garden, but we were able to move all of our equipment and tools and supplies over to the urban farm. Now we’re all set, and I’m really proud of the progress we’ve made in the last 6-9 months. We’ve had great support from partners like Earth Day 365 (for our neighborhood clean up collaborator…we’ve cleaned up probably 5,000lbs of trash) and Forest ReLeaf (who’s donated at least 15 trees).
We have planted hydrangeas on the front border of the farm, sunflowers near our orchard and in our raised beds. We were able to get (through our partnership with BioSTL) 15 native plants that we added to our native garden (asters, milkweed, coneflower, etc.). We got serviceberries, pawpaw, and hibiscus flowers from Forest ReLeaf. A friend gave us some bamboo, but we did not plant as originally planned. We didn’t get as much done with the outdoor classroom, but we did get the demonstration garden built and expanded the native garden. The Mission Continues donated four new picnic benches. They bring a lot of volunteers out for service days.
We did have some things that didn’t work for reasons beyond our control, but we are adapting. We didn’t get to do the bee surveying in 2024 like we had hoped, but we’re partnering with the Missouri Dept. of Conservation for 2025, and we’ll be doing additional surveys on our own. Our partner for soil sampling was Lincoln University, but there was staff turnover and so we didn’t get to take samples during this project. However, we’re working to reengage, and we’re actually collaborating on an event later this spring.
The work with young people has gone really well. That’s in part because we’ve increased our school partnerships. More on that in the Outreach section. The Sunflower Institute (our apprenticeship program) has also been a strength. We did it summer 2024, with our largest group yet: 10 teenagers and young adults. We have 10 signed up for 2025 as well.
We attempted to do the farmer networking event, but no one came. Instead, we shifted to field trips. We visited four urban farmers in the STL area doing tours and hands-on activities at the farm. This let us engage with farmers and build out the network.
Best practices for working with young people, specifically. Having conversations with folks – not just in farming, but in nonprofit spaces – there’s been a lot of disconnect on working with young people, and the way to best keep them engaged. I think through our work with the Sunflower Institute has shown farmers in our network that it’s possible to work with young people in a meaningful way, and that they’ll want to come back multiple years.
The youth tell us that our programs are working: In 2023, 100% of the graduates felt more optimistic about their future after completing the program. Over 80% felt better about their mental health and support systems.
Educational & Outreach Activities
Participation Summary:
Usually, when kids come to the farm, the teachers ask for a topic-focused trip. Sometimes they want to talk about our environmental justice work, or how food justice shows up in our work. Sometimes they want us to talk about George Washington Carver, specifically, or the neighborhood we’re in (a historic neighborhood) and how it got there. And I always do an overview of what we grow, a little history for this space (like what it took for us to get the land. And I always include time for them to taste something or plant something.
We exceeded our goal of engaging 400 students, and actually reached over 800 students. One of the biggest reasons is our partnership with Bryan Hill elementary’s field day activities. We work with the whole school that day (250 students, once in 2023 and once in 2024). We have pots they can decorate and put their name on, they plant zinnias and take those home. We also partner with one of our goat farmers, and they brought a goat for the kids to pet and get to know. We also have schools that bring kids to us for garden tours throughout the year. During the grant, that includes 8 field trips with Principia school (25-30 kids per trip), 2 LEAD STL Field Trips (30 people per trip), and one for St. Mary’s High School (25 people).
We were one of four sites on a Black Farmer bus tour run by Support the Culture STL. We were a site in both ’23 and ’24 (40 people per year, including farmers, growers, and extension/ag professionals). These visits let us share about our farming practices, our work with youth, and more.
Learning Outcomes
We did a really good job of being flexible these last couple of years, because there were variations in funding, we lost our community garden, and even though there were lots of challenges we were always ready to pivot as needed so that we could keep things happening.
The huge number of partnerships played a huge part in our ability to recover. It ended up being on the news a couple of time, and maybe 50 volunteers came out over two weeks, and people donated funds. It was really neat to see how the community showed up for us.
Project Outcomes
We’re helping farmers understand how to work with youth, for example: A farmer friend was able to hire on an alumni of the Sunflower Institute – she’s working two days a week on that farm, and then with us at the SI as an alumni intern part-time. That’s a neat outcome that happened organically.
I found that our collaborations with chefs have been really fruitful. For example, Chef Queenie has been really awesome – she’s catered some events and our camping trips with the teens. She’s someone who we’ve donated herbs and produce and she’s giving us ideas on potential products and things we can make with our surplus. She inspired us to get a dehydrator, and now we’ll be able to make tea blends that we can make with our herbs. Another chef friend, Sadiq with Way Too Fresh Eats, has been able to utilize some of the produce and engage the young people with culinary skills.