Ghetto Grown

Braddock Farms is an urban farm spread across eight city lots on the edge of the severely dilapidated borough of Braddock. Outside of the farm is a virtual wasteland. The streets are populated only sporadically, an ailing hospital is dying a few blocks away, a Dollar General is the only other market in the area, and the rest is a whole lot of nothing but abandoned steel mills and the tears of history. The low income housing and the people who live there are clear on the other side of the main drag, a good eight or nine city blocks from the farm. I was told by one of the farm workers that the residents who are in the area don't often make it to the farmers market that is there for their benefit, primarily because the borough has set strict rules on the farm's market hours, from 2:30-5:00PM. "A lot of these people work and just can't make it down on time" he said.

The farm is run in part by a non profit organization called Grow Pittsburgh (www.growpittsburgh.org), which is largely modeled after a bigger NPO called Bioneers (www.bioneers.org). This summer, the farm was also tended to by six local urban youths who did so as paid interns. The Braddock Farms urban farming project is in it's third season and making a valiant effort. Aside from the blight of some of the tomatoes this year, all of the other crops seem to be doing very well. There are melons, different varieties of greens, beans, and berries, there is a peach tree, there are peppers, herbs of all kinds, radishes, sunflowers and quite a few more options growing on the farm. I would love to see this happening in all of the urban neighborhoods around the city that really don't have the market options of the more affluent neighborhoods. For now it is a small oasis on the edge of a slum that with a little luck and a lot of love hopefully won't turn out to be just another ghetto mirage.