Farming

Connecting Food, Health & the Environment

Soil Born Farms Urban Agriculture & Education Project has always considered the “farm” to be the nucleus of the organization. In fact, a small urban farm is where everything began. Our original vision for the project was to create an urban organic farm that not only preserved and nurtured a plot of undeveloped city land but fostered a sense of community by reconnecting people with locally-grown foods.

We are consistently making great strides toward this vision. The permanent preservation and development of our 55-acre American River Ranch site, begun in 2007, is a great community resource.

Three times a day we cast our vote for the kind of world we want to live in—how we want people to be treated who are picking our food, what we want sprayed or not sprayed on our food and so on. Many people living in the urban environment have been removed from where their food comes from. People used to grow their own fruits and vegetables in their back yard or they were on farms and they knew what was going into their food. Now there’s a big gap in actual awareness of what it takes to bring food from the farm to the table. There’s a lack of education, even though there’s certainly not a lack of information. You can Google anything and you’re inundated, but what’s missing is more of an experiential learning where the wisdom goes into your bones.

We see magic happen when people come out to the farm to walk and see their food growing. The experience gets people to think about and ask questions like: Where does my food come from? How is it grown? Why is it grown that way? And why does it matter? Just that alone initiates huge changes. ~Janet Zeller, SBF founder and co-director

To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds and watch their renewal of life—this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do. ~Charles Dudley Warner