New Urban Farm Opens In The Hill

Leslie Radcliffe, whose family has a history of heart disease, started growing her own beans, peppers, kale, and tomatoes in 2013 after suffering three mild heart attacks over the course of 13 months.

Four years later, she stood before a quarter-acre plot of recently spread compost and organic topsoil behind Hill Regional Career High School to help usher in a new urban farm specifically designed to help Hill residents like her grow fruits and vegetables, eat more healthfully, build community around nutrition, and moderate diet-related chronic diseases.

On Saturday morning and early afternoon, Radcliffe joined two dozen volunteers, farm and health professionals, and neighborhood supporters gathered at 170 Ward St. to celebrate the opening of the Hill North Urban Farm at Career High School, the eighth urban farm founded and managed by local agricultural non-profit New Haven Farms. As at the organization’s other locations throughout the city, the Hill farm will offer a venue for gardening, cooking, and nutritional counseling for less affluent neighborhood residents who are most vulnerable to diet-related diseases like diabetes and obesity.

A member of New Haven Farms’ Community Advisory Board, Radcliffe told the crowd before her about how 2013 was not just the year that health concerns led her to start a home garden and to get involved with the Truman Street community garden.

That was also the year she met ​“a tall gentleman from North Carolina” – James Jenkins, then director of New Haven Farms – who gave her a tour of his organization’s Fair Haven farm sites, which are built on top of parking lots on James Street and Ferry Street.

“To say the very least, I was amazed,” she told the crowd. ​“We began having conversations about New Haven Farms expanding their farm-based wellness program into the Hill. Actually, I told him: We are going to have this program in the Hill. And after many meetings, many dinners, and many conversations, here we are: at the grand opening of the Hill North Urban Farm at Career High School.”

The farm sits on a quarter-acre parcel of land just behind Career High School. The plot is owned by the city, which granted New Haven Farms a one-year lease.

Most of Saturday morning saw a dozen New Haven Farms volunteers, staff, and board members with hoes in hand, leveling the 120 cubic yards of top soil into long, low mounds that will soon be home to tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, carrots, beets, and other summer fruits and vegetables.

Sharic James, a 14-year-old freshman at Co-Op High School, leaned into the work as he helped spread the fertile soil across the plot. ​“I love working outdoors, and I love cleaning,” he said, with a hoe clasped proudly in his hands. He pointed to his home right next door on Ward Street, and said that he planned to spend a lot of time volunteering at the farm in the upcoming months and years.

Current New Haven Farms director Russell Moore explained that the Hill farm will begin in June a pilot, 12-week version of the organization’s farm-based wellness program. New Haven Farms will work with Cornell Scott Hill Health Center to identify 15 – 20 neighborhood residents who suffer from two diet-related chronic disease risk factors, are within 200% of the 2010 federal poverty level, and are interested in participating in bi-weekly courses on gardening and nutrition.

The Hill farm will also be the first New Haven Farms site to collaborate closely with a New Haven public school. Students from Career will get community service hours for volunteering at the farm, and New Haven Farms will be collaborating with the school’s biology department to develop a hands-on component of Career’s science curriculum.

“Being at this farm brings back memories,” said Rev. Ron Hurt of Deliverance Temple on Congress Avenue, reflecting on his childhood growing up in Roanoke, Virginia. ​“But it also tells me that our seniors and our children won’t be lacking fresh fruit and vegetables. This is such a blessing on this neighborhood.”

Schools superintendent Reggie Mayo agreed. ​“I was thinking this morning about why I love New Haven so much,” he told the crowd before the ribbon cutting for the farm. ​“And it’s because people who feel passionately about things actually go out and do something about it. They do little things and little things and little things, and all of a sudden, they have a masterpiece.”