Baltimore Community Fellowships
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Photo: Bruce Weller for the Open Society Foundations
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Baltimore, Maryland
2010
Growing up in Wisconsin with a small farm in his backyard, Gary Ashbeck learned to live off the vegetables, fruits, chickens, rabbits and whatever he and his family could produce.
So when he came to Baltimore in 2002 and saw the sea of cement in front of and behind many residents’ rowhouses, he knew he had found a calling: urban farming.
“Because I live in an area where good, fresh food is hard to come by, I want to cultivate small gardens on people’s properties, or even just some small containers on their front doorsteps with some tomatoes or something they can eat,” Ashbeck says. “I want them to understand that gardening is something that is really tangible for all of us.”
Ashbeck founded the Baltimore City Sprouts Project which works to create a culture of food sustainability in southwest Baltimore with an emphasis on working with kids, church institutions, and people in transition from jail or drug addiction. His goals are to empower residents, provide resources and education to create gardens, foster entrepreneurship, and establish produce markets in an area that might otherwise be a food desert.
Working with My Brother’s Keeper in Irvington, Ashbeck will work to establish farms and gardens in the Irvington, Yale Heights and Beechfield communities in West Baltimore. During his fellowship, he will train and support neighbors to grow food on these urban farms and sell the produce to area restaurants, stores and individuals. He also will encourage smaller-scale personal food gardens—even if it’s just tomatoes or herbs in a pot on the porch.
“We will grow anywhere in the neighborhood we can find, share stories of our families and food, and raise a consciousness,” Ashbeck says, “and give residents the tools to grow food themselves.”
Eventually, Ashbeck says he’d like to see community gardens on the property of each of the churches in the three neighborhoods, of which he counts at least a dozen as well as rehabilitation centers and private unused land. He envisions members of his programs being so well-trained in all things food-related that they will be able to find good jobs working with food. And he dreams of a day when West Baltimore residents understand the importance of locally grown food and come to expect nothing less.
“There is a mindset that changes when somebody for the first time plants a seed and something grows from it,” Ashbeck says. “When they taste that tomato, and they compare it to the one they got at a grocery store, they’ll notice the difference. From there everything else will come.”
