Tucson Village Farm—Growing Kids, Food & Lots of Hope

Every now and then, if we are lucky, we encounter a person or an organization that inspires us and gives us hope.  Such is the case when Thom and I discovered Tucson Village Farms here in Tucson a year ago.  Started as a dream in 2009 by two women, Leza Carter and Elizabeth Sparks, the goal was to build an urban farm where kids could be out in nature and see for themselves where food comes from other than grocery stores.  From an initial dream that began with a one-acre plot of raw dirt, these women created an amazing facility that now, in 2024 alone, reached 11,000 youth and 8,000 adults through 491 year-round programs.  One of their mottos is, “Changing the world one carrot at a time.”

 

In the world today it is fairly easy to scroll the internet and see successful organizations and imagine they were given extraordinary amounts of money or support to become that way.  But Tucson Village Farm (TVF) is an example of the Margaret Mead quote, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

With intention and negotiation, TVF developed their small plot of land as a land-grant program of the Pima County Cooperative Extension and the University of Arizona.  Other than hosting TVF on the property, Tucson Village Farm is entirely funded and supported through grants, private donations and program fees to sustain itself.  But probably more than anything it is the heart, soul and persistence of the founders and those they have since inspired to work together to build this amazing creation.

I think many of us are aware that in today’s world, children (not to mention adults!), are spending multiple hours every day on cell phones or behind screens.  On top of that I think we all have read that many children and adults lack access to good healthy food—and don’t have a clear idea where it comes from to begin with.  As a major goal from the beginning, the vision of the farm was to not only show children how to grow food from seeds, but then to plant, care for, and eventually harvest the produce.  But TVF doesn’t stop there…once gathered they have a fully outfitted commercial kitchen where the children are taught to prepare the food.  Truly:  seed to table!

Not only does the food grown taste better—can you remember the taste of a raw carrot when you were a kid?  It is also a sort of pay-it forward experience.  They are taught, “Today you are going to eat something that another student planted for you four months ago, and you are going to plant something that another child will eat four months from now.”  Plus, a study done by the University of Arizona reported that after attending a two-hour educational program at TVF, students showed a 110% increase in fruit and vegetable consumption.”  Hopefully through the many school field trips and other ongoing programs at TVF, the children are learning the value of fresh and healthy food.

Not only is TVF heavily invested in teaching young people about growing and then cooking healthy food, they also focus on a sustainable stewardship of the land.  They practice integrative pest management (IPM), weed management, crop rotation, and cover cropping.  All food and vegetables grown there are herbicide and pesticide free.  In addition, their recent kitchen, classrooms and office have a 25.80-kilowatt rooftop solar system supplying approximately 74% of the building’s energy needs.

Another focus that has been added to the farm is to create outdoor adventures and inspire team building programs for youth as well as a healthy living 4-H club.  This “Healthy Living” focus of the farm is an ideal setting for training youth in small-scale farming, culinary literacy, healthy habits and life and leadership skills.  In other words, a community that teaches toddlers to teenagers the value of healthy food and working together to create something valuable for all.  And yes, all of their programs are cell-phone free.

I think all of us are familiar with the story of the bad wolf and the good wolf. If all we do is feed the bad wolf, it grows and grows.  But if we instead find, focus and “feed” the good wolf, it will grow as well.  Clearly, whichever we feed, whatever we focus on, grows and take precedence. I agree that at times it is impossible to ignore the negative forces when they are staring us in the face. However, when we ignore and forget the good, we sink lower in despair and hopelessness.

I am certain there is an enormous amount of positive and uplifting things happening right now everywhere in our country and around the world. But we haven’t been hearing or talking about them much.  Still, there are people like those that work at TVF who get up every day and grow goodness and hope in children, the land and all people connected to the project.  But if we aren’t looking, we don’t see it.  Yet, when we are lucky enough to see them, it might be our obligation to do our best to support them.  That is why Thom and I have decided to put our hearts and our resources into helping this community sustain itself.  It doesn’t matter where or how each of us decides to help, what matters is we remember to find and then feed the good as much (or more) than anything else we are doing in our lives right now.  I think our future depends on it.

 

Check out this video made at their Ten Year Anniversary 5 years ago!