Know Your Farmers Market: Growing Home's Wood Street Urban Farmstand

By Chuck Sudo in Food on Aug 31, 2012 7:20PM

Chuck Sudo/Chicagoist

Not everything in Englewood is rooted in guns, drugs and violence. A ride down Wood Street south of Garfield Boulevard shows more well-kept homes and lawns than boarded-up buildings. At 58th and Wood you’ll find one of the most popular farms in the Chicago area in Growing Home Inc.’s Wood Street Urban Farm.

The late Chicago Coalition for the Homeless policy director Les Brown founded Growing Home in 1996 as a job training program for homeless inner city residents. In 2002 Growing Home acquired the land for its first farm in Marseilles, Ill. under the McKinney Act, which offered federal surplus land to organizations working with the homeless, and implemented its agriculture job training program that same year. Today Growing Home maintains farms in Marseilles (now named the Les Brown Memorial Farm) and on formerly deserted lots on Wood and Honore Streets.

The Wood Street Urban Farm has grown in recent years to house a series of hoop houses and rows of vegetables, all grown using organic farming practices. Growing Home’s produce is a popular mainstay at Green City Market but, for those of us who can’t carve out the time to head there, they have a farm stand every Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (Or whenever the last item is sold.)

Their produce sells fast. We visited Growing Home’s open house last weekend and found brightly colored Swiss chard, onions, tomatoes and seedlings ready for planting. The job training program has given dozens of young men and women the tools necessary to pursue a career in agriculture. Many of them have stayed with Growing Home to give back, training new recruits. It’s all proof of what Les Brown wrote in 2005, shortly before he passed away.

(H)omeless people are often without roots. They’re not tied down, not connected, not part of their family anymore. Our organic farming program is a way for them to connect with nature—to plant and nurture roots over a period of time. When you get involved in taking responsibility for caring for something, creating an environment that produces growth, then it helps you build self-esteem and feel more connected.

Growing Home’s Wood Street Urban Farm is located at 5814 S. Wood St. Their farm stand is open 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. Wednesdays through October.

Chuck Sudo/Chicagoist