by Tito Caba, Green Space Director
This summer marked more than just a season of growth—it marked a step toward unity. Together with Urban Creators and The Village of Arts and Humanities, we began a new journey through our collective farmers market, not only to share food, but to share presence, purpose, and connection.
Month by month, the market has become a place where neighbors cross paths, where barriers fall away, and where generosity meets reciprocity. For years, we have given from our gardens —tomatoes, greens, fruits from the orchard— acts of quiet care to nourish the community. But now, together, those individual efforts weave into something larger: a living network of trust, rooted in the soil of 19133.
Planting More Than Seeds
Looking ahead, we are working on the 19133 Farmers Initiative, which will grow to include a seed library in partnership with the Lillian Marrero Library. This effort is still in its early steps, but the vision is clear: a place where neighbors can exchange and preserve seeds, and in doing so, preserve the knowledge, culture, and resilience of our community. Seed saving is not only about food—it is about sovereignty, continuity, and the quiet strength of passing something living into the hands of another.
Green Space as Healing Space
Our greenspaces are more than gardens—they are sanctuaries. They provide room to work through trauma, to slow down, and to breathe with the earth. In caring for the land, we also care for ourselves, finding restoration in the rhythm of planting, tending, and harvesting.
In these markets, we continue to invite neighbors and volunteers to take part in this effort. And inwhile doing so, they in turn discover their own grounding:—bonding with nature, reconnecting with one another, and understanding the quiet cycles of plants. These cycles teach us patience, resilience, and renewal: the patience of a seed, the persistence of a sprout, the quiet surrender of autumn leaves returning to soil.
By working the land together, we not only grow food—we grow trust, resilience, and connection. Our greenspaces become places where healing is possible, where neighbors find strength in community, and where the bond between people and land is restored.
Recipes for Renewal
In time, the market will grow beyond produce. Cooking workshops and shared recipes will give voice to new ways of eating, new flavors to be discovered, new traditions to be born. In each recipe lies an invitation: to gather, to learn, to taste the fullness of life in simple, nourishing food.
Food Justice as Legacy
Food justice is not charity. It is an act of equity, memory, and resilience. At Historic Fair Hill, where those who fought for freedom and equality rest, we continue their legacy by planting in the very soil they walked upon. In a community marked as a food desert, every basket of produce, every shared seed, every conversation across a market table is a quiet act of justice.
We do this not only to feed the body, but to strengthen the spirit of a people. To stand in solidarity. To root ourselves deeply in the ground we share. And to remind one another that, like the seeds we plant, we too are meant to rise—to rise like the harvest after rain, like roots breaking through stone, toward a life that is whole, abundant, and free.
