Melrose Acres Urban Agriculture Center — A neighborhood grows its local food system

Melrose Acres farm manager Sherry Chen recently gave a tour of the garden and property, which Agraria holds in trust.

Melrose Acres Urban Agriculture Center— 

A neighborhood grows its local food system

By Amy Harper

Tucked away down a quiet neighborhood street in South Springfield is a seven-and-a-half acre plot with two orchards of young newly planted fruit trees and shrubs. White netting encloses the tender new leaves at the top of each young plant like a gauzy glove, protecting it from insects, frost, and the ever-present, voracious deer who roam the neighborhood. When mature, they will yield apples, pears, and cherries, paw paws, raspberries and blackberries. 

Planted earlier this year, the orchards are just one indication of the growth taking place since the establishment last year of Melrose Acres Urban Agriculture Center. A $400K USDA Community Food Project grant enabled Agraria to purchase the 7 ½-acre parcel as well as an adjoining house. Agraria is partnering with the nonprofit Springfield Urban Plant Folk (SOUP), which is leading development of the property. 

Sherry Chen, a local food activist and educator, is the force behind SOUP. She and her husband have been raising pasture animals on their small farm for 22 years, she helped restart and co-managed the Springfield Farmer’s Market, and she was farm manager for two USDA-funded Farm to School programs in the Springfield City Schools. 

Guiding the development of Melrose Acres, as its farm manager, was a natural fit for her. She and a few neighborhood women, who joined with her to form SOUP, had been raising vegetables on a small portion of the property—and contributing the produce to neighborhood farm stands—for four years before its purchase by Agraria. The project builds on their efforts to increase food security in the neighborhood along with resilience and self-reliance of neighborhood residents. 

The area has a higher-than-average poverty rate and a long history of food apartheid. The only full-service grocery store moved out in March 2020, exacerbating the already existing lack of food sovereignty and access to fresh, healthy food.

The purchase of the land and house allows SOUP to expand production to include fruit trees, bees, and chickens (eventually), and once the adjoining house is renovated, to offer food-related educational programming that will serve both school-age kids and adults. Work on the house is expected to begin in November.

Covid-19 has slowed the development of Melrose Acres, but not stopped it. In addition to establishing two orchards, they have continued to grow and secure food for farm stands, are reclaiming beds that have gotten out of control, and have installed a few beehives tended by a neighborhood volunteer from Sustainable Options for Springfield, a group affiliated with a local church. 

The cover crops they planted this fall are just one of the regenerative practices they use. “I’m so excited,” said Sherry during a recent tour of the Center’s garden. Every bed is deep mulched with straw or hay or covered with a weed barrier. “We use no-till on everything,” she said. And they’ve seen an increase in soil organic matter and water retention. She’s also planning to experiment with different methods of amending soil, including jeevamrut, a traditional Indian biopesticide and organic manure produced through a fermentation process.

This year they served as a training site for two beginning farmers with Agraria’s Regenerative Farmer Fellowship program; one grew cut flowers and the other raised plants in the greenhouse SOUP leases from a local organization. Melrose Acres also  hosted interns for the first time from Wittenberg University, sponsored two film series in partnership with the Springfield Library, and offered several courses in partnership with Central State University Extension (CSUE).

This fall CSUE is partnering on a diabetes awareness workshop at the Springfield City School District’s School of Innovation, a PBL center, and a second series of nutrition classes focused on soil health for middle and high school students. CSUE is also collaborating with the Center on a garlic workshop, using the bountiful harvest produced this year in the garden, and a season extension workshop using a recently donated cold frame. 

 “We want to show what people can do in their own backyards,” said Sherry.

She is acutely aware of her role and place in the South Springfield neighborhoods in which she works. She is white, and an outsider, in a predominantly black neighborhood, and she has learned a lot about white privilege through her food system work over the years.

The question for her is, “How do we bring white privilege to the table to be of use, but not take it too far.” So often, she said, the power in communities of color “is usurped by agencies, typically white-led agencies. My goal is to keep power and decision making within this part of the community, within the neighborhood.” 

She has involved neighborhood residents in the development of Melrose Acres from the outset. The Center’s name, in fact, grew from that involvement. Originally dubbed McCain Acres, after the street on which it is located, the Melrose Acres Food and Farm Advisory committee, which is composed of mostly current of former neighborhood residents, decided to rename it Melrose Acres, after the historic neighborhood in which it is located.  

A member of that advisory committee once gave Sherry a piece of advice that resonates with her: “Do things with us, not to us.” 

“That has guided our work,” she said. “Everything I do, I try to get people into leadership positions, and then I step back.”

Amy Harper is a project manager at Agraria and managing editor of Agraria Journal.