Farming Allison Hill
October 11th, 2010
If you’re at all familiar with Harrisburg’s Allison Hill neighborhood, you probably know it as a violence-plagued, drug-dealer-infested blight zone.
Who’d expect to find a cutting-edge, fully functioning, 1-acre urban farm in the middle of it?
A section of Joshua Farm.
I sure didn’t when I went over to Joshua Farm this past weekend with a group from Slate Hill Mennonite Church to dig sweet potatoes.
This was no meager rectangle with a few tomato plants and a patch of beans.
I was dumbfounded to walk up the steps from the stone parking lot to find wide row after wide row of every imaginable veggie — plus herbs, raspberries, blueberries and a quince tree.
There’s a large greenhouse in the middle for seed-starting, a canopied work area, a two-tank rainwater collection system with irrigation lines, a cold-storage shed, even a wooden outhouse with a nouveau trendy composting toilet. A grant from Lowe’s funded most of it.
An innovative high tunnel — kind of an open greenhouse that’s the latest experiment in farming — is under construction.
It’s remarkable what’s here compared to just 5 years ago.
The 1-acre lot at 213 S. 18th St. was once an athletic field for the long-closed Edison Junior High, now subsidized housing.
For years, the tract grew weeds, trash and rust until Kirsten Reinford came along. Kirsten is one of those special people who not only has a servant’s heart but a gift for making things happen.
Neither she nor husband, Darrel, had any background in farming or horticulture.
Kirsten did work in a greenhouse in college and got some hands-on dirt time by working 4 hours a week in exchange for food as part of Goldfinch Farms’ Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.
One day Kirsten and her little boy discovered the blighted Edison lot on a walk 3 blocks from where the family was living.
Somehow, she saw shining red tomatoes where others saw beat-up old sofas.
The Harrisburg School District, which still owned the tract, agreed to a 3-year lease on the condition that it be run by a non-profit and that it benefited city youth in some way.
Planting potatoes at the Joshua Farm.
Enter Kirk Hallett and the Joshua Group — a non-profit already working with at-risk youth, primarily on Allison Hill.
Hallett saw a working farm in the neighborhood as a great way to teach teens a new skill.
Long story short, grant money pays for a handful of youth to work what became the Joshua Farm. They garden side-by-side with volunteers from Messiah College, Elizabethtown College, Penn State University, church groups, Scouts, neighbors and beyond.
The harvest first goes to those who subscribe to the farm’s CSA. Most of the rest is sold at a farm stand on site Mondays and Thursdays from June through October. Kirsten hopes to add a second stand off site next year.
For someone with no training in this, it’s incredible what she and her many helpers have accomplished. The food is just one part of the harvest.
Learning how to garden is sure to give a future to at least some of the teens working there.
Seeing a successful garden has to encourage neighbors to give it a try in their yards.
And to see old blight transformed into new life is the most immediate and encouraging result.
I’m inspired. To learn more or to support the cause as I plan to do, visit Joshua Group at www.joshuagroup.org or call 236-4464. Or see the farm’s blog at http://joshuafarm.wordpress.com.