Over winter break I spent an afternoon volunteering at a sustainable urban farm in Anaheim, CA. It was humbly small, with beds of kale, purple cabbage, carrots, green onions, pineapples, etc. Worked daily by volunteers, the farm grows organic produce and raises chickens (4 different types) for eggs and fish (colorful coy and goldfish). It then donates it all—hundreds of pounds of fresh food every month—to underserved families throughout the area. 

The first thing one of the managers did was give me a short tour of how the farm works, how the wastewater from the fish ponds is used to water the crops (which are planted not in soil but in gravel) and then trickles down and is recycled back into the fish ponds. How is this farm different from conventional farms? No pesticides are used, so the soil (in this case gravel) is rich, creating very nutritious crops, whereas in conventional farming, chemicals and pesticides can create large cabbages, but they won’t make you full even if you eat a bunch because the soil is so nutrient-deprived. Nothing is wasted; unwanted crops are composted or eaten by the chickens, and the water is recycled. 

I planted beet sprouts 4-6 inches apart from each other, digging into the small rocks with my fingers until water appeared, plopping each one in the water, and piling the gravel around it to keep it vertical. I de-stemmed and rinsed kale that was ready to be donated (composting the kale that had too many aphids on it)—de-stemming was harder than it looked. I pulled and rinsed carrots that were ideally slightly larger than my thumb, which took some effort too. A couple carrots broke in half while I was tugging them out, and one had split in half because there was a rock in the soil blocking its growth. I took my sad-looking carrots to the sink to rinse and bag. The last thing I did was prune the kale, removing the leaves that had yellowed or rotted.  

Highlight of the 2.5 hours I spent at the farm: I held a chicken for the first time! It was surprisingly soft and comforting to hold. Until it jumped out and flapped its wings in my face. 

We need more farms like this one, I told the manager as I was about to leave. I was glad to hear they are expanding the number of their farms across the country. This farm was started for educational purposes, to educate students and the public about sustainable agriculture and its multiple benefits. We hope to scale both awareness and the number of these kinds of farms that exist, he told me.