Rows of arugula, lettuce, and other fresh greens are the bedrock of the farm, home to spiders and lizards scuttling along the wooden fencing. Lelia Parker, a farmer, bemoans being next to a \u201cbad neighbor\u201d\u2014in this case, groundhogs\u2014 who\u2019ve been eating at the lettuce for the past season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t like peppers very much,\u201d Parker says after pointing out the chewed remains of some lettuce, \u201cthat\u2019s why we plant back here where they can\u2019t reach.\u201d Just like the rows of vegetables spewing from the ground in the main garden, tall green pepper plants grow in numbered rows alongside onions and chives.<\/p>\n
In the Ward 7 \u2018food desert\u2019 of D.C., the group that owns this farm\u2014of which Parker is a member\u2014DC Urban Greens, paved the way for growth and recovery.<\/p>\n
DC Urban Greens is a nonprofit group centered in Fort Dupont, specializing in the growth of fresh produce for residents in Wards 7 and 8. The group organized a \u2018grocery walk\u2019 last October with other nonprofits, calling attention to the lack of fresh produce in supermarkets and the lack of supermarkets themselves. Since then, the group has gone about their business as supermarkets have improved their stock.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis store was in need of some work and we devoted ourselves to that,\u201d Victor Harden, the manager at the Benning Ridge Safeway, said. \u201cI think from a lot of the input that we\u2019ve gotten, I think we\u2019ve done a fairly good job at bringing it up to standard.\u201d Though he has worked for the company for almost five years, Harden has only been manager since October, transferred from Ward 3.<\/p>\n
Wards 7 and 8 have been notoriously dubbed as \u2018food deserts\u2019 by locals; only three supermarkets were reported<\/a> to provide for the roughly 150,000 residents of both wards. The supermarkets were long distances away from locals and the produce sold was not fresh, showing signs of rot.<\/p>\n \u201cIn terms of fresh fruit and vegetables, it\u2019s like scraping at the bottom of the barrel.\u201d Paris, a Ward 7 resident who opted to not give her last name, said. She referred to the Safeway close to her house\u2014the same one Harden works at\u2014though she admitted she hadn\u2019t been there in awhile. \u201cThey don\u2019t give a lot\u2014they give us the leftovers.\u201d<\/p>\n Organizing the \u2018grocery walk\u2019 with other groups, such as DC Hunger Solutions, DC Urban Greens caused enough of a stir people came into the grocery stores to see the damages themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cNews came down there one day asking questions about the service, the food, and the people in the neighborhood just [to] let them know their food isn\u2019t fresh all the time,\u201d Parker said. She believes confidently the demonstration affected change, based on the reaction from the mayor<\/a> and the fresher produce.<\/p>\n DC Urban Greens, going about their business modestly, encourages volunteers to participate; they sell their produce from their farm every Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ward 7 of Washington D.C. is known to be a ‘food desert,’ but this organization has made strides changing that this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[70,28,68,69,73],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianmahon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianmahon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianmahon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianmahon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianmahon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=219"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/ianmahon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":604,"href":"https:\/\/ianmahon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219\/revisions\/604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianmahon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianmahon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianmahon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}