Sacramento’s approach to growing food, growing plants, and growing people.

Soil Born Farms from Soil Born Farms on Vimeo.

Soil Born Farms Apprentice 2011

By Emily Pearson
December, 2011

When Shawn Harrison speaks he has the uncanny ability to make people listen. This has come in handy during his years as co-founder and director of non-profit Soil Born Farms – an urban agriculture and education program that is changing the way his native town of Sacramento thinks about food. The project’s home base, the American River Ranch is a testament to his vision and to the possibilities that urban agriculture holds for transforming our food system in North America.

The 40-acre property sits on one of the oldest pieces of agricultural land in California and is home to the multi-pronged approach that Soil Born Farms has to changing the way we think, interact and experience our natural and agricultural environment. Behind the organization’s many lofty goals and activities lies a powerful mission statement. Created in 2000, Soil Born Farms aims to “create an urban agriculture and education project that empowers youth and adults to discover and participate in a local food system that encourages healthy living, nurtures the environment and grows a sustainable community.”

Nowadays it is not uncommon to read about stories such as Soil Born’s and to find similar examples popping up all over North America. The food revolution is alive and well and Soil Born’s work is further evidence of the demand for fresh local food, food education, and the opportunity to connect with the natural environment. Walk the American River Ranch (that is after you miraculously discover it deep in the suburban jungle) and on any given day you will encounter chickens, sheep, cows, and pigs happily munching on perennial pastures (that were established by Soil Born to replace the many acres of Star Thistle) or maybe on the end of season corn stalks. Having animals born and raised on the American River Ranch, only minutes from supermarkets, taquerias, and fast-food restaurants, is an effective way for the farm to communicate to its community about where its food is coming from, the cycles of life on the farm, and how their meat, milk, wool, and eggs could be produced in ways that are more aligned with nature’s principles.

While not only bringing the historically significant American River Ranch back to life, the organization is also encouraging the local community of Rancho Cordova and the greater Sacramento area to familiarize themselves with the farm and find a way in which to connect with its mission. Soil Born provides four different avenues for this interaction to take place: Food Education, Food Access, Food Production, and opportunities to Connect with Nature. For Harrison it’s about “trying to become a regional resource…where people can come and learn about food, health and the environment. Historically this farm was not accessible to the public. So now that we’ve been charged with stewarding the property and bringing it into the public domain…we have to make it functional.” The public has the opportunity to participate in the CSA program or purchase from the farm’s weekly farm stand. As part of its food access goals, Soil Born Farms also works with the Sacramento Food Bank and provides around 10,000lbs of produce which get distributed through mobile markets throughout the city – helping to ensure that the food insecure of Sacramento are not denied access to healthy, organic food.

At the present moment the Food Education branch has been receiving a lot of positive attention, which comes as no surprise since they are tasked with a myriad of activities that are each effectively transforming the school system, food literacy and helping to ensure that organic farming has a future. The farm hosts numerous school groups, runs a high caliber apprenticeship program, is working towards participating in an incubator farmer project, teaches local teachers about how to establish native plant gardens at their school, runs adult education classes about growing your own groceries and then somehow also manages to fit in the Green Corps program – a green jobs training program for low-income high school seniors.

In the youth garden (a separate plot that facilitates youth exploration, discovery and experimentation, but without the risk of destroying all the carrots destined for market) you’ll find every seasonal vegetable you could want and often hear a child exclaiming their new love for kohlrabi or lettuce wraps dipped in hummus. The overall goal is “frequent interactions that build upon themselves.” The children may start out food illiterate and uncomfortable, but they soon find themselves spouting out nutritional information about vegetables, reciting the basic process for making compost, and having the so-called light go on when they connect their recent science class with a real-life experience down at the American River. “The education program is really built upon creating experiences – hands on interaction with the natural and agricultural world,” says Harrison.

No class knows this better than the 4th graders of 2008 from Phoebe Hurst Elementary School. After numerous educational experiences at the farm the students decided to hold a fundraiser for Soil Born – the goal $1000, enough for one cow. And what an amazing cow she has been. Fittingly named Phoebe, she has since given birth to two calves that are being raised on the farm and reminding every adult and child who visits just where their milk and meat comes from and providing valuable services to the farm. These intimate experiences make Soil Born a unique educator and facilitator for interactions with food, agriculture, nature, and the community.

Harrison hopes that the children and youth who are coming to Soil Born are “taking the experiences they got here and bringing them to their home and school environment. We are trying to create experiences and awareness that ultimately translate into behaviors and preferences for how they might live their life and make change in their home environment. Whatever they are hearing from us and experiencing or observing, we want them to take something. Whether it’s a cooking experience, or some kind of service project like planting native plants, or they were out their in the field. That’s the goal of this place.”

Come out on any Saturday during the summer and you can’t help but feel how palpable that committed energy is and you too are sure to take something away, even if it is just a simple tomato (an area in which Soil Born’s farmers particularly excel). The friendly chatter in the farm stand, the laughter from a nearby bee class, children running around to visit their favorite animals and get a hug from a friendly farmer, a student eagerly showing their parent what they did on the farm that month, and the sight of a group of volunteers toiling away in the fields all with smiles on their faces. Sometimes we forget that a piece of land and some determined people can provide all these experiences on top of producing nourishing organic food. It’s why Shawn Harrison believes that Soil Born Farms in “not just farming food, we’re also farming habitat. We are land stewards. We are growing food, growing plants, and growing people.”