Food for Thought Newsletter
Urban Tilth
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In this issue:
- Rising to meet the challenge of Covid-19
- Loss of a dear friend, brother and staff member
- Feeding 440 West County Families every week
- Expanding the Farm to Table CSA
- Introducing the Farmers to Families FREE box program
- Support the CSA Van Fund
- Farm Construction News
- Girls Garage Chicken Coop is Complete!
- Expanding the Farm with 5200 sq ft of NEW growing space!
- Responding with our hearts to the Murder of George Floyd
- Urban Tilth Turns 15!
- Support Urban Tilth
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RISING TO MEET THE CHALLENGE OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
HOW URBAN TILTH PERSEVERED AND EVOLVED DURING THIS CRISIS
What a crazy time it's been these last couple of months. As you may recall, n March 13th, Governor Newsom announced the shelter in place order for the State of California ordering the shutting down schools, nursing homes, and non-essential businesses in California, with hopes of re-opening on April 7. Many businesses had to shut down operations, forcing millions of people into unemployment and uncertainty. Urban Tilth was able to remain open under the category of "Essential Services", but with limitations and struggles.
We had to close our school sites, volunteer events and community programs, and was only allowed to continue with farm work and the Farm to Table CSA. And unfortunately, we had to cancel many of our summer events such as our 4th Annual Festival of Flowers Mother’s Day Celebration and our Summer Youth Apprenticeship Program.
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Since the beginning of the shelter in place, Urban Tilth remained committed to the safety of our staff and community above everything else. Which is why we immediately began with giving our most vulnerable staff, and those staff living with family members who are vulnerable to the virus paid family leave. We didn’t have the funds to do this, but felt it was the right thing to do. Our elders and other vulnerable staff had already given so much to this community, they should not have to put themselves in jeopardy to maintain their households. Soon we realized that some staff had no options for childcare, so we took another leap of faith and extended this leave option to all staff who felt they needed, or wanted, to stay home during this time.
To our surprise almost half the staff wanted to continue our work and grow and distribute food to help during these seriously challenging times, and some who needed to be home wanted do what they could from home to help Urban Tilth survive this moment of crisis.
The last 8 months have been some of the most challenging times in our history. With the pandemic, then the uprising against police brutality and for racial justice and the the catastrophic California wildfires the literally blocked out the sun from our skies stealing our daylight - at times we just could imagine what new challenge would be coming.
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In the midst of the chaos, we lost our dear friend, brother and beloved staff member, Rudy Lozito. He was an anchor within Urban Tilth. An under-spoken truth teller, wise far beyond his years. His passing was a shock to our Urban Tilth family . We miss Rudy everyday. Our hearts are so utterly broken, but we felt it was important to struggle through our grief and keep delivering food to those who needed it. That's what Rudy would have wanted. He always said this was his dream job. So we can't let him down by letting Urban Tilth succumb to this moment of crisis.
During these months many staff members have also lost immediate family to the virus. Its threat is palpable to us and our hearts ache for all those who missing their loved ones, like we are, today.
With the election on the horizon we know we are not yet on the other side of this challenging year but we wanted to a moment now to share our stories and say THANK YOU to everyone who have been helping us make it through.
To all of our staff we are sending our deepest admiration and gratitude for your sacrifice, hard work and all the love you've met and continue to meet this moment of crisis with. We are so strong together <3
THANK YOU!
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Feeding 440 West County Families each week
in this Time of Need
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Tripling the Farm to Table Membership in Two Months |
Needless to say, we struggled to keep the pace with the demand. Our Farm to Table membership jumped from 80 members to 250 by the end of April 2020, tripling our numbers! We applied for grants to help expand our packing area to be able to house more boxes at once and meet new COVID related health standards, cover delivery costs (we had to shift from pick up locations to home delivery for all 250 CSA members), and to purchase vans so that we could stop renting U-hauls for deliveries, with the help of Community Vision.
The rapid expansion of the Farm to Table CSA wouldn't have been possible without the donations from our members, supporters and friends so from the bottom of all our hearts, THANK YOU!
and to join the waitlist...
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The Farmers-to-Families FREE Box Program |
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In May 2020, we created a new FREE CSA box program called the Farmers to Families program, where we deliver CSA boxes to residents of Richmond who were most impacted by the COVID-19 Crisis, such as those living in public housing, veterans, elders, and low-income families free of charge.
This program was initially made possible by a grant from the USDA. With support from the USDA we were able to purchase produce from small local organic family and BiPOC farmers and Veritable Vegetable so that we could serve 190 families fresh, healthy produce each week.
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With a loan from Community Vision, we were able to add two brand new vans to our CSA family making it possible deliver all 190 boxes to these families in need during the pandemic.
We still need to raise funds to pay off this loan and keep Urban Tilth financially stable. If you'd like to make a contribution today to help us pay off this loan, we would be extremely grateful.
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This project and all of the COVID response work we've been doing wouldn’t be possible without our amazing crew, which has rapidly grown in the past 4 months from three people to seven! To go from 80 members a week to now over 400 is truly impressive and we are extremely grateful to have people working for us who are so dedicated to not only keeping families fed, but doing it during such wild, uncertain times.
Over the course of this pandemic, we’ve seen a significant increase in the number of donations we’ve received and we would just like to say thank you to those who have supported us in whatever shape or form that’s been, from beautiful handmade masks, to bleach, soap and hand sanitizer when the shelves were bare, N95 masks and gloves to keep our crew safe. Our local community and Climate Justice Alliance community really came to our rescue and made it possible for our crew to continue get food out to families.
THANK YOU!
And THANK YOU to those who reached out to show their gratitude, wrote thank you cards, sent delicious baked pastries and chocolates in
your returned CSA boxes :) for our drivers and staff.
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Building Community one Coop at a time: Girls Garage Chicken Coop is Complete! |
Or, should we call it the Chicken Palace?!
The coop and chicken run for up to 50 chickens was designed and constructed by Girls Garage, a Berkeley-based program for girls and female-identifying youth ages 9 to 18 who want to learn construction.
The completed coop is rodent-proofed and large enough for a person to walk into, with roosts and nesting boxes for the hens, and outside access doors for collecting eggs. The chicken run has extra wire reinforcement for protection of the hens from predators, and there is an automatic door to the coop that closes after all the hens are in at sundown.
Thank you such again Girls Garage for helping us truly build a Community Farm!
#FearLessBuildMore
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EXPANDING the FARM: Grow More Food, Support More Jobs! |
The North Richmond Farm crew have built more than 25 new crop rows (5200 square feet of NEW growing space!!!) in less than 2 months! This was originally intended to take about 2 years, but with our increase in personnel at North Richmond due to the pandemic, we were able to complete this in just a few months. These new rows will be planted once the new irrigation system construction is complete.
The high tech farm irrigation system was also installed by a local contractor, Gardener’s Guild. This system will allow us to water the crops and orchard in a water-efficient and crop-specific manner, and has been designed to incorporate the additional crop row areas areas after the farm is completely built out.
We were really happy we could do this project with such a great Richmond based contractor. Thank you Gardener's Guild!
The irrigation system construction is funded by a Contra Costa County Measure WW grant.
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Two New Wash and Pack Areas
With the expansion of the Urban Tilth Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) veggie box program to meet an increased demand for fresh local food, it was necessary to improve our area for washing and sanitizing boxes, washing produce, and packing boxes for distribution to CSA members. Two new, large wash & pack facilities were constructed by two more Richmond based contractors Overaa Construction (shade structure and anchorage) & Madriz Landscaping (building pad and interior tables and produce wash stations and grey water infrastructure). Gravel for the structure pad and K-rails for structure supports were supplied by Ghilotti Brothers’ EcoTerra facility just across the street from the farm. The shade structures were supplied by FarmTek. Funding for these facilities was provided by an assortment of grants and donations from the Climate Justice Alliance, Justice Justice Foundation, Common Vision, and Katayl Foundation and many other individual donors. THANK YOU!
and what's next for the North Richmond farm!
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RESPONDING WITH OUR HEARTS to THE MURDER
OF GEORGE FLOYD
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The video of the Police killing of George Floyd rocked our staff to our core. There was no way we could stay inside or hidden off growing food at the farm. We had to stand up, and stand with everyone who knew how INJUSTICE this act and all of the act of Police brutality targeting Black people. We joined rallies at City Hall, marches to the Richmond Police Department calling for policing reforms and reallocation of funding and participate in 2 street mural demonstrations.
On June 21, 2020 Urban Tilth staff and members other local organizations came together to create the #ReparationsNow Street mural on MacDonald Avenue, in Richmond as a tribute to George Floyd and Black fathers who've lost their lives at the hand of the police. We felt it was important to not only uphold the fact the BLACK LIVES MATTER but also to say that it's time to address the centuries of injustice perpetuated against the Black Community in the United States. The mural is a reminder to all of us that the fight for racial justice is everyone's fight and the history of oppression of Black people is everyone's responsibility.
"When we say save the whales, we don't mean
we don't care about all of the other fish"
'No one is free until everyone is free'
#BlackLivesMatter
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Urban Tilth is 15 YEARS OLD! |
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Due to all the craziness, we didn't say it but we turned 15 years old this June!
It's been a beautiful journey.
We look forward to what's next...
With immense love and gratitude,
Urban Tilth
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