FarmerJawn’s Christa Barfield takes over the Westtown School Farm and adds a new mission

The Westtown School has a new farmer to oversee the fields that span a fifth of its 600-acre campus south of West Chester, one with a new mission.

Christa Barfield of Philadelphia, who serves marginalized communities through her FarmerJawn Agriculture, said the partnership would allow him to “close the loop” – connecting this rural setting to his current suburban farm in Elkins Park. She said FarmerJawn will operate as “a comprehensive food system for the Philadelphia area.”

With regenerative agriculture At the heart of her mission, Westtown School’s 123 acres will become 100% organic, she said, although certification is three years away because fields have been sprayed with non-organic pesticides.

FarmerJawn will farm half of Westtown School’s acreage and manage the existing, growing Route 926 market for local businesses, co-ops and chefs. The market, which will hire at least five staff and draw from FarmerJawn’s network of volunteers, will eventually include a community-supported agricultural enterprise (CSA), prepared foods and other locally grown and purchased produce.

The FarmerJawn & Friends Foundation Fund, as the 501(c)3 nonprofit arm is called, will use the rest of the land as an “agricultural incubator” — five- to 10-acre cooperative farms operated by black farmers. This will provide opportunities for educational development and what she calls a “pathway to entrepreneurship” through sales.

This year, FarmerJawn launched a farmer incubator for black and brown people with the aim of creating a group of people who practice “agripreneurship” while learning to cultivate and create an impact on urban networks and systems. food. In its first year, ten people were selected from 50 applications and seven graduated.

Barfield and FarmerJawn succeed Pete Flynn, who retired this fall after more than two decades. (Flynn isn’t totally out of the game of farming: he’s the new president of the Pennsylvania Vegetable Growers Association.)

In addition to the usual vegetable crop, Barfield aims to create “seed-to-shelf products”, such as sunflower seeds, potato chips and a range of hot sauces.

Barfield wants to make the farm a community meeting place, not only for produce but also for take-out food, like soups, salads and sandwiches.

“I want to create a just food system that perpetuates regenerative, organic health for our customers and the planet,” she said.

Barfield, 34, a permanent resident of Germantown, quit his job in healthcare administration in 2018, just before he turned 30.

For her birthday, she flew alone for a vacation in Martinique. The first Airbnb she stayed in was owned by a Thai chef who made her tea with herbs from his garden, and the second was owned by a farming family who ran a CSA. She said she had never heard of a CSA before.

” LEARN MORE: Meet Christa Barfield from FarmerJawn

Impressed by the community spirit that surrounds these entrepreneurs, she returned from her trip and wrote a business plan to become an urban farmer.

In the summer of 2018, she started Viva Leaf Tea Co., setting up a greenhouse in her garden to grow herbs and renting plots in a community garden in Roxborough. During this time, she founded FarmerJawn as a CSA. She accepted a developer’s offer to lease her greenhouses to Elkins Park.

His organization now includes a retail and garden learning center in Germantown, a CSA and five acres of land in Elkins Park.

With Flynn’s retirement, Westtown was looking to try organic farming, “someone who was regenerative and focused on sustainability,” Barfield said.

Former Westtown teacher Kevin Eppler, who is affiliated with the Land-Equity group Justice Jubilee, suggested that the school partner with a farmer of African descent. Barfield said she participated in a recruiting call hosted by Eppler last year. “At the end of the call, I knew I was going to make an offer,” Barfield said. Jubilee Justice included her proposal among her recommendations to Westtown.

We are across from Cheyney University. Barfield said she was in talks with the nation’s first historically black university to launch an agriculture-based certificate program.

Given America’s farming history of slave farming and sharecropping, “that’s one of the reasons these partnerships are so historic and thought-provoking, because we’re creating some serious change “, Barfield said. “We seek to change the history of black farmers in America. We are determined to be definitive agents of change.