Newark Urban Farm Officially Opens

The Hawthorne Hawks Healthy Harvest Farm, a 2.5-acre parcel where Newarkers will soon be growing their own fruits and greens, offers a little bit of everything: urban renewal. Inexpensive, wholesome, food. A place where ex-offenders can get a new start. An outdoor classroom-cum-living history lesson. A model for tackling global warming.

“We are not just growing food here. We’re growing hope and change,” said Mayor Cory Booker.

“It really takes care of multiple problems all at once,” said South Ward Councilman Ras Baraka.

“A farm is very important for us to have. And then to have it across the street from a school takes it to another level,” added Baraka, who’s also the principal of Central High School.

Booker, Baraka and several others spoke at the ribbon-cutting Thursday for the farm, located at the corner of Hawthorne and Bragaw Avenue, a stone’s throw from the Hawthorne Avenue School.

A decade ago, the state Schools Development Authority bought out homeowners at the site, intending it as the new home of University High School. But when the project stalled, the area became an eyesore, another empty, forlorn patch in a city with too many such sites already.

Then last year, the city entered into a lease agreement with the SDA and a partnership with the Greater Newark Conservancy to create the farm, where up to 360 raised plots will be built and set aside for Newarkers to use as their own private gardens, parcels large enough to help feed a family of four year-round. Those growing their own food will get free seeds and technical assistance from the conservancy, said Robin Dougherty, the conservancy’s executive director.

In addition, Dougherty said, the conservancy will also grow food year-round, eventually producing 40,000 lbs. annually that will be sold at low cost. The goods can also be purchased with food-assistance accounts like WIC. 

“More than a thousand families can now have fresh, nutritious food without leaving their neighborhoods,” Dougherty said.

The farm is being funded by a mix of public and private sources, including the Brick City Development Corp, Bank of America and the Lower Passaic Cooperating Parties Group, which provided $330,000 for trees at the site.  

Much of the farm work will be performed by participants in the conservancy’s “Clean and Green”team, a transitional jobs program for men and women recently released from incarceration looking to make a fresh start.

Eventually, Dougherty said, the farm may also provide food for the Hawthorne Avenue School cafeteria. In the meantime, however, students there will use the farm as a place to learn about agriculture, healthy eating as well as a time when low-income families routinely ate only what they themselves raised.

“Our students have a chance to bypass the corner store and junk food and come here and get their hands dirty,” said Hawthorne’s principal, H. Grady James IV.