Out of floodwaters the seeds of new growth are sometimes sown, and the Matthew 25 Urban Farm is exactly such a situation. When the Boys and Girls Club of Cedar Rapids was flooded in June 2008 they decided not to rebuild in that location. Matthew 25 obtained permission from them to use their vacant land and abandoned playground to build an Urban Farm to supply our Summer Meals Program with fresh local produce. We filled multiple raised beds with many plantings using the square foot gardening model, as well as made use of the blacktop by filling swimming pools with compost and planting them to make use of as much space as we could. The produce was harvested throughout the summer and included in the Friday lunch meal.
The second year of this urban farm program we created a 9 member CSA program to introduce people to fresh vegetables grown right in their own city, as well as teaching volunteers and other interested parties how to grow food for themselves. Students from Coe, Cornell, Mt Mercy University as well as Jefferson, Prairie and Xavier High School all participated in helping plant, build, and grow food on our farm space. With this growth we outgrew our single space next to the Boys and Girls Club and the St James United Methodist Church was gracious enough to allow us to use part of an extra lot they have to grow additional food resources.
As we head into our third year of this program we are making some large changes. The drawing above is a landscape rendering of the future farm space. This is a 2 acre space that will house green houses and other season extension tools. We anticipate further growth with local high schools and we’re creating a program with Roosevelt Middle School and expanding an existing program with Taylor Elementary. As we do all of this we are expanding our CSA to cover 25 members; 15 are full price and 10 at half price. We are also anticipating that we will be able to grow enough food to supply the Matthew 25 summer meal program again. The overreaching goal of the Matthew 25 Urban Farm is to bring people into contact with small scale farming, educating them about growing their own food, how to cook, and create and build community via active labor in a fulfilling way.
Long term, our goal for our urban farm is to become the premier Iowa urban farm and to be a regional center for learning and innovation. Over time we are planning to install a diverse set of experimental plantings and hold workshops and classes on how to build these same things in your backyard. We hope that our farm will be an encouraging beacon in the city to help foster other innovation and encourage others.