Sudbury’s first urban farm, the Flour Mill Community Farm, held its annual open house on Aug. 17, the sixth year for the event.
It’s a chance to celebrate the beginning of the harvest and the hard work that has gone into the garden.
“It is also the first urban farm in Northeastern Ontario to focus on equity-seeking and equity-deserving youth,” Fionna Tough, farm co-ordinator, told Sudbury.com. It’s a chance to gain experience growing not just a garden but a market garden, one that offers employment training, work experience, and for students in highschool, their volunteer hours.
It also builds a sense of pride, Tough said.
“Their confidence in what they're doing grows over the season,” she said. “It’s a bit of a hustle when we have to harvest everything, weigh everything, package everything into bags, and now they know how to run a market garden.”
Tough said the hope is that if that youth are interested in farming, they would now have the skills and ability to work on other farms. “Then they could have a long term employment season on a farm, too.”
Located near the Ryan Heights playground on Bruce Avenue in Sudbury, the 7,000-square-foot farm aims to break the cycle of poverty for the youth, as well as those in the area. Everything grown in the garden is sold at their neighbourhood market on Wednesday, and is pay what you can afford.
The open house was full of area children exploring the garden itself, and community members grateful for fresh-grown produce.
It was also filled with the music of Lisa-Marie Naponse, who entertained the crowd at the open house.
After a successful fundraising campaign this past winter, the Flour Mill Community Farm has employed 14 youth this season through the YMCA’s Youth Job Connection
Summer program and Canada Summer Jobs. To date the farm has offered employment opportunities to over 50 youth since the project broke ground in 2017.
One such youth is Matthew Chrusch, 17, who spent the last six weeks working the farm after he visited it on a school trip.
Chrusch enjoyed the experience so much that he now has an indoor garden of his own at home.
Though his favourite vegetable, carrots, didn’t grow so well, Chrusch said the squash was doing very well, as was kale, and that the tomatoes are “growing like crazy.”
The idea for an urban farm in Sudbury is a project that Tough refers to as community-driven and grassroots, led in 2016 by David Dubois. With the backing of the Social Planning Council of Sudbury, the farm began its season in 2017. Sadly, Dubois never saw the harvest of his idea, as he passed in 2016. Dubois identified as 2SLGBTQ+, and so there is a rainbow in the farm’s logo, in his honour.
Tough said that the farm is growing, and growing bigger, thanks to community supporters and companies like Ormuir Organics, who have built a compost on site.
If you would like to find more information about the Flour Mill Farm, you can visit their Facebook page, found here. If you would like to donate to the endeavour, you can visit the Social Planning Council of Sudbury website, found here.
Jenny Lamothe is a reporter with Sudbury.com. She covers the diverse communities of Sudbury, especially the vulnerable or marginalized, including the Black, Indigenous, newcomer and Francophone communities, as well as 2SLGBTQ+ and issues of the downtown core.
