This past Saturday, April 20th, Black Seeds Urban Farms welcomed the Big Green Bus Tour to their community farmers market — the goal of the day: to bring the community together over the power of growing food.
The Big Green Bus Tour, an initiative of the Denver-based nonprofit Big Green, traveled to Burnet, Texas, and San Antonio before making its way to Memphis, with plans to stop in Atlanta, Savannah, and Minneapolis in the coming weeks. The bus serves a mobile education center with a working kitchen, seed library, podcast recording area, and more.
“We’ve never gone on tour,” says Parker Rechsteiner, assistant director of events for Big Green. “And the conversation on our team was, there’s all these incredible stories and incredible partners we’re working with, wouldn’t it be cool to go visit them and be able to share some of those stories and have celebrations like this and get more gardens out in the world?”
Black Seeds Urban Farm is one such partner, a part of the Big Green DAO, which offers grants to organizations like Black Seeds. “They saw our passions,” says Bobby Rich, owner of Black Seeds. “They saw what we were already doing in the community, and they just wanted to help fund and push that. So it could be bigger.”
For both Big Green and Black Seeds, the mantra, “Growing food changes lives,” is at the core of their missions, says Derravia Rich, co-owner of Black Seeds. “We [Big Green and organizations like Black Seeds] have a passion to grow food in areas that sometimes are intentionally disinvested because grocery stores get to choose where they set their shop up at,” Bobby adds. “They usually pick the average, medium income [area] that kind of helps them out.”
Because of this, Rechsteiner says, “We know that a lot of communities in the United States don’t have fresh food readily available. Organizations like Black Seeds Urban Farms are closing that gap and saying we’re not going to wait for something to change. We’re going to be the change and start a garden and get people in the garden and get people growing healthier, more sustainable food.
“We believe growing food changes lives and we say that for a lot of different reasons. It gets people outside; it gets them closer to nature; it gets them closer to their food supply,” Rechsteiner continues. “It gives them a healthier, more sustainable source of food that they have ownership over and that they can control. It gets you closer to the impacts of climate change in your community, and it also brings people together in the garden. So all of those factors, when someone takes the step to plant their first seed and start their garden, it’s kind of opening up a world that the possibilities are kind of limitless.”
Events like Saturday’s community farmers market and the Big Green Bus Tour can spark that first step. For the day, several local farmers, groups, and makers set up tables around the community garden, hoping to share sparks of their own — Green Leaf Learning Farm, Ounce of Hope, Black MajesTEA, Groovy Gratitude, and Halls of Ivy Academy to name a few. There were also culinary lessons, a live nutrition podcast, and free grow bags with soil and seeds for basil, radishes, and bunching onions.
Already, though, Black Seeds, Derravia says, is “expanding because we truly need the space. It is not just Greenlaw Community members who come here for fresh food or to use this as an enjoyable space, but local Memphians. And so because of that, the need has increased tremendously. The secret’s out.”
Their original lot that Black Seeds stands on now — the lot that was host to a bustling farmers market on Saturday with families, chickens, music, bubbles, and so much greenery — Bobby describes as once being three acres of blight. “It was just weeds everywhere, car parts,” he says. “This was a shortcut to get back and forth from the store. And it just kind of fell into disrepair. Once we got a hold of it and just long story short, we just knew it was right. We knew this is where we wanted to be. … It was just calling out to us. And so we can feel like it was life here before.”
And, clearly, life has been resuscitated back into the space. “We are very close to all of our neighbors,” Derravia says. “We have older neighbors who come and use our space to exercise. They come to read books, lay out in our hammocks. And not to mention that our garden space is also used for events. We’ve had pretty much any event you can think of from birthday parties to weddings. … This is ‘God’s purpose’ work.”
Black Seeds Urban Farms is at 580 North 4th Street. Follow them on Instagram (@blackseedsurbanfarms). Visit their website here.
Learn more about Big Green here.
