Garfield Community Farm

02/13/2025

Maple Sugaring today with Ranger Joe . So much fun! The fab youth of have a Norway maple in their front yard. And even though they don’t produce as much sap as Sugar maples, they still produce some. Did you know that Maple trees are only one of four tree species native to Pennsylvania with opposite buds? Ranger Joe taught us the acronym MADBuck today to help us remember those four trees—Maple, Ash, Dogwood, and Buckeyes—so that we can more easily identify Maple trees.

What does this have to do with Environmental Justice? Maple Syrup is a natural resource of Pittsburgh. The right to access the natural resources in one’s community— and the knowledge of HOW to access them— is an environmental right.

02/11/2025

The production team is BACK!

Mahogany and Bre took the month of January off to rest our brains and bodies a bit before the start of the 2025 growing season. This winter has been COLD, giving the trees time in dormancy, setting us up for moist soils in the spring, and hopefully a season with fewer ticks! In any case, the work has already begun, slow but steady. We’re working on fencing repair projects, building and planning, repairing the tunnel a bit, cleaning and organizing, and starting some cool weather crop seeds. It’s not glamorous, but it’s the strong foundation needed for a smooth successful growing season ahead.

Hope you’re all finding some respite in the quiet and beauty of nature. We’re excited for another year of growing for and with our neighbors 🦋

02/06/2025

What an incredible lesson! Today, the fab youth of were the clients, designing their own nature-inspired play space that will be installed this Spring at GCF. Anders and Thomas from — our incredible partner in this initiative — brought models of play equipment and the youth were invited to design their own equipment as well. We walked through each piece, one by one, and the youth voted on the ones they’d like to see the most at the space. King assisted by hilariously demonstrating how each piece of equipment could be used.

It was such an empowering collaboration and example of a just approach to design. We can’t wait to see the results!

How does this relate to Environmental Justice? There is a lack of equitable play spaces and green spaces in the Garfield neighborhood, particularly in upper Garfield. This play space would help fill that gap.

02/06/2025

Larkspur Design is the permaculture business of John (GCF executive director) and Alyssa Creasy. We're doing an organic flower CSA this year. check it out. Everything is grown at our home in Stanton Heights, with a few foraged and Garfield Farm additions too.

Each week starting mid-June we’ll prepare a bouquet from our garden for your home or office. Pickup of your bouquet will happen on Monday after 12pm at Garfield Community Farm. Purchase your share now and you’ll get 20 weeks of flowers through the summer and fall. The total cost of the subscript...

02/01/2025

Always encouraging to get messages from our community allotment garden members. This morning Renae, a second-year grower, sent a picture of the Lavender and Rosemary that she dried from her garden along with the message: “Still enjoying the bounties of the summer gardening at Garfield Community Farm.” 💙🌱

01/31/2025

Week 2 of our Environmental Justice curriculum. Guest expert Masoud Sayles led the fab youth of in an awesome activity that displayed how city planning and environmental justice are intimately connected. And how environmental risks—like pollution or a tornado—can disproportionally impact parts of communities. After each of these events, the youth were invited to again choose a resource (house, factory, recreational space, lawn, or trees) to place inside the city. By the end, youth were choosing resources and placing them strategically in areas where they would mitigate or alleviate environmental risk (such as placing trees in an area with high pollution).

01/28/2025

Hold on to those seed catalogs! If you’re like us, you eagerly anticipate getting your seed catalogs in the mail every year 🌱 We would LOVE to take your seed catalogs off of you when you’re done with them. We use them in our youth programming to make garden vision boards 🍅🥦🍆🥬🌶️🥒

once you’re done with your catalog, feel free to drop it at our space or reach out and we can swing by and pick it up if you’re close 😊 Happy Garden Planning!

01/25/2025

Work and play at our volunteer session today! Love the new herb signs designed by 🌱

01/21/2025

Here's all the info you need to get signed up for the 2025 permaculture design course with Larkspur Design, Three Sisiter's Permaculture and Garfield Community Farm. Questions? Send us a DM, we'd love to chat.

Permaculture Design Certification at Garfield Community Farm.

01/18/2025

Last evening, we kicked off our Environmental Justice Curriculum 🌎 This is our second go-around after collaboratively developing the curriculum last year with Black Environmental Collective and the fab youth of . Modifications were made based on all the feedback we received and we’re excited to roll out the revised curriculum this year over the next several weeks ✨

Lesson 1: Recall and review what we remember. Then decorate our reflection journals! The youth use these journals each lesson to reflect/respond through drawing, taking notes, writing a poem, etc.

01/16/2025

Have you visited our site this past year? Then we need you! We are trying to improve the accessibility of our site. We need your honest feedback to let us know where we can do better. We developed an Accessibility Evaluation Form (it’s anonymous) and would greatly appreciate it if you took a few minutes to fill it out. The link is below.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfnshCVKYzZ6UjMYg6E5hARhcZA4Izl8UBMPPH9-oUhozcy3A/viewform?usp=sf_link

01/14/2025

Any writers out there? We need an “Ode to Volunteers” because once again we were blown away with the positive attitudes, fortitude, and commitment from our volunteers in 2024. We just totaled our numbers from 2024: we had over 350 unique volunteers who donated over 2,400 hrs of their precious labor! That averages to 46hrs/wk of donated labor 😄

As a small nonprofit, with no full-time staff, our volunteers are the biggest reason why we’re able to carry out our mission and make magic happen ✨

Did you volunteer your time anywhere in 2024? To a neighbor? A family member? A friend? An organization? Give yourself some snaps!! You are helping the world become a better place for us all to live in 😊

01/04/2025

Did you know that snow is a gardener’s friend? Snow delivers nitrogen to our soils, acts as an insulator and temperature regulator, and is a “natural” mulch for any new perennials you planted earlier in the year. Over the course of the past year, we planted over 30 fruit-bearing trees, and over 50 native perennials. So we are extra thankful for our snow cover this year!!

Three cheers for snow 🥳🥳🥳

12/28/2024

*Local Author Alert*

Every so often, a book by a local author lands in our Little Free Library. We try to highlight those authors when that happens. Dr. Vernon Franklin’s book is currently in our Little Free Library. Dr. Franklin is a longtime resident of Garfield neighborhood, living only a block away from GCF. His book is full of helpful tools, learned wisdom, and encouragement.

Here is the description:

Studies show that most programs and initiatives to improve diversity and inclusion fail to produce the desired results. Do you know why?

In his first book, Blueprint for Diversity, Dr. Vernon Franklin draws on decades of experience as an instructor and administrator in higher education to explain why most of these well-intentioned programs fail. Dr. Franklin then goes on to outline his own plan that takes into account the need for leadership not just to pay lip service to diversity but to establish it as a non-negotiable value for them and their organization.

Using a systematic, step-by-step process, Dr. Franklin lays the foundation for diversity with he calls the Five Building Blocks for Diversity that include:
- Organizational Awareness
- Transformational Leadership
- Staff Preparation
- Empathetic Planning
- Sustainability

If you are interested in developing a program for inclusion that has the power to achieve the desired results, then Blueprint for Diversity is a book you will want to read and refer to as you construct a program that imparts a sense of belonging to everyone involved.

12/22/2024

In the quite of the snow we are grateful for another amazing year of farming, gardening and teaching in Garfield.

12/20/2024

Happy to see that the FDA finally caught up to the science and made a move in the right direction when it comes to labeling food as “healthy.” This of course doesn’t diminish the sovereignty consumers have in making choices about their food (we believe strongly that nothing should ever diminish that sovereignty) but this move is beneficial for multiple reasons. One being that — now that this is the FDA definition, there can now be more progress in making food options at public schools healthier 🤞🏼🤞🏼 Read more about the changes here https://www.sciencealert.com/fda-rewrites-rules-of-healthy-foods-for-first-time-in-30-years

12/19/2024

As many know, Garfield Community Farm was started by The Open Door Presbyterian Church and one of their pastors, John Creasy (me). As the farm has developed into it's own 501c3 the church and I have also developed a new ministry to help more faith communities engage with ecological restoration, food production and spirituality in nature. This winter Wild Indigo Guild is hosting our first fully online guild. Check it out and join us!

Send a message to learn more

12/16/2024

Every December, we pass out our “Community Report” along with a small gift. This is a critical piece of our approach to engagement and serves two primary goals:

1) To let our neighbors know what happened at GCF this year, as well as raise awareness about our services.

2) To act as an accountability measure, letting our neighbors know that we want them to hold us accountable in meeting the needs and desires of our neighbors as it relates to our mission.

Dear Garfield, thank you for letting us be your neighbor again this year!