Mill Creek Farm by Mary Castellucci

On Saturday, April 4th, about a dozen members of the Students for Environmental Action went to Mill Creek Farm in West Philly, at 49th and Brown Streets. It is an urban farm, supported entirely within the city yet still flourishing with vegetation. The farm was originally an empty lot that took up about two city blocks. With the help of the city, two auspicious young women single-handedly turned the empty lot into a working farm. They leveled out the land so that it sloped downwards towards the street, promoting runoff and self-watering. And then they started to plant.

These days, their project has expanded to include volunteers, community organizations (like the Mariposa Co-op, City Harvest, Neighborhood Bike Works, Broad Street Ministry, A Little Taste of Everything and others), and local neighbors. Volunteers can come in on a schedule of days to support a good cause and get their hands dirty. Community organizations benefit from the fresh produce. Local neighbors can shop at the farmer’s markets that Mill Creek holds, ensuring fresh food and convenience.

The farm is split into several parts. On the left-hand side, local neighbors can maintain their own private garden so they don’t have to shop at the supermarket. In the middle, there is a homemade building, complete with a toilet. Some of it is made of cement with beautifully decorated mosaics, while the rest is made of cob, a mixture of mud, sand, and straw. The toilet holds compost underneath, and is surprisingly not smelly, due to the mixture of potting soil and sawdust that you sprinkle in instead of flushing. There is a battery system set up to run solar panels that provide energy to power a water pump for filtering graywater. Two old-fashioned tubs serve as the filter basins to take dirty water and filter it out so that it is clean, but not drinkable, otherwise known as graywater. The building also has a live roof, with plants amist stones and pebbles. Also in the middle, there are several working beehives used to harvest honey and pollinate the plants and flowers. In the very front, there is a compost pile and a banana tree. On the right hand side of the farm, all of the produce is grown. They have everything from potatoes, lettuce, okra, and carrots to strawberries, broccoli, asparagus, and herbs. Each particular fruit or vegetable has its own row or patch. Along the fences there are fruit trees.

From Mill Creek Farm

From Mill Creek Farm

So it was a beautiful sunny day, and the staff wanted us to work on several projects. I worked on tilling a new row, along with several other people. First we had to go in with a big pitch fork and break up the ground. Then another person turns over the soil with a smaller pitch fork to break up the soil even more. Other people weed out the soil, creating piles as they go. Then a person with an edge tool creates a line for the row to be nice and straight. The last person uses a shovel to pull the excess soil away from the row. The rows must be weeded out several times.

Other groups were working on different projects. The strawberry patched needed to be weeded out. You have to be very careful not to step on the tiny plants, or pull them out by accident. Others were helping to align the hoses, which have holes in them for drip irrigation, saving water wasted by sprinklers. More people were digging a hole for a tree to be planted.

All in all, the day was fantastic, and very educational. It was also a lot of hard work, but it was worth it. If you have the time, I highly recommend volunteering for Mill Creek Farm. You can go to their website at www.millcreekurbanfarm.org to see their volunteer work schedule. They also have more photos up on their site.