(folk music) - People like to have fresh food 'cause it tastes better, period.

You get a fresh tomato out the garden, it tastes a whole lot better than the tomato you get out of the grocery store.

- We have, on one hand, great productivity.

On the other hand, we have great amounts of insecurity and inequities.

How is this happening?

What can we do to change it?

- Our legislators are up at the General Assembly.

They think "The Commonwealth."

But a lot of times, rural Virginia, we're left with the breadcrumbs.

We have to learn how to be self-sustainable in everything that we do.

- It's hard for many to imagine a food system without it being a commodity.

Where we need to start is to question what kind of food system do we want?

- It's all in what you put into it, it's what you're gonna get out of it.

- [Naomi] When you're doing it on the community garden scale, it's "urban farming."

- Are we really in an urban area is the question.

- [Naomi] Yeah!

- [Sarah] We really wanted to do something completely different than what a typical community garden is.

There's so much land and so many different types of zones that could be used for growing food.

- [Kim] Food movements are burgeoning.

- [Lisa] If we can help one person or two people, then it was all worth it.

♪ In the heart land ♪ ♪ We rely on ourselves ♪ ♪ And one another ♪ ♪ Hand in hand ♪ ♪ We must stand in the heart land ♪ - [Announcer] Production funding for this program is made possible by.

- [Lisa] Every year, 30 million acres of crop land and 4.2 trillion gallons of water are used to grow food that is never eaten.

(gentle music) - [Kim] The food system is an economic system, a cultural system.

It's a physical system.

Whose knowledge gets to inform how we eat, whose knowledge gets to inform how we produce food?

We can't use the same tools that we're using now to change the system.

We actually need a different imagination.

- [Sarah] What can you grow here?

Lettuce?

- [Naomi] I was gonna do my ginger back there 'cause it's so shady.

Well that's like that nice little space.

- [Sarah] Mm-hmm.

- [Naomi] to flowers.

- [Sarah] To border the, yeah, cotton.

So the cotton, you don't want a big cluster of cotton.

You want it to be sporadically placed like the flowers are.

So not a nice thick patch of cotton.

- You can have maybe.

No, yeah.

- Okay.

I really think it would be a nice statement if you did.

All right, was that it for now?

(folk music) - I grew up gardening with my family so I always enjoyed gardening.

You should have just like filled it up with like hostas and stuff that liked the shade.

My dad always told us stories when he was growing up.

He used to be able to just like walk down the street and pick, you know, a plum off of a tree and eat it.

Just seeing the beauty of vegetable plants.

I thought it would be really cool to do a garden that really showcases that.

My mom always wanted to make sure we had good, nutritious food to eat but like buying organic stuff was just out of the question because it wasn't within our price range.

- I remember telling her, I said, "If you do that, I'm moving down here and I'm gonna help you out.

I'll do it."

- When I originally thought of Jones Garden, I thought okay, maybe this could just be like a place that neighbors can come and get some of like their basic needs.

Get some bread, eggs, whatever.

The little tiny market right down the street from their homes.

We did a survey and asked neighbors, what do you like to eat?

What would you like seeing grown in the garden.

First impression was like, "Huh?"

And then you know, once, once I told them, you know, why I'm here, what I'm doing, then they were more receptive.

- And some were like, well I won't be digging in the dirt with you but I'll bring you some sodas or something.

(laughter) - Used to live over off of Web, a couple streets down.

I was like, I kind of just wanted to see if there's anything new going on in that area.

- You really can't do anything else with that plot of land.

The amount of sun that hits that piece of land all day long was just perfect.

I am a foodie.

I have a culinary background, so fresh, homegrown, natural food is really important to me.

- Don't get your clothes dirty.

Like I got mine.

I'm filthy.

- I got it without getting filthy.

- Get it, girl.

(girl laughs) - Are the most common vegetables we tried to include in the garden.

Things that people are aware of and like.

We wanna just draw people in for that first year.

- We had people that was totally new like "I don't know how to water a plant."

"I don't know what a weed looks like."

"I don't know none of that."

It's sad that all of that knowledge was lost.

The Africans that were brought over here they were like experts in, you know Rice farming and different things.

That's how the South grew all their wealth is from that knowledge.

That's another goal is to kind of regain that get people interested in it again.

- We were asked why we don't sell at the farmer's market.

- A lot of people around here, they work they work on weekends when most farmer markets are open.

So we wanted to have an evening market for them.

Makes no sense for neighbors to help grow this stuff in it and take the produce somewhere else.

- Right?

- It makes no sense.

- Those people up at the top, they have no idea no connection to those, you know, at the bottom - [Kim] Should food be a commodity?

Currently that is how we predominantly organize in the political economy.

But food is more than just a commodity.

It's tied to the way in which we live.

Those most vulnerable by the food system currently need to be at the decision making table.

- I have experience being homeless.

People look down on you.

People judge you.

And I spent 24 years in the army and here I was, you know, living in a storage shed with six kids.

I can relate to the people that are in need cause I've been there.

Like life smacks you down sometimes.

- Right.

- Some people argue that the food system is broken.

Others like myself argue actually the food system's doing exactly what it was designed to do.

It was designed not to necessarily address everyone's needs.

We have to think about those inequities baked into the system.

In 2014, Virginia Tech and Virginia State University produced a Virginia food desert report.

Food deserts are I always wanna make sure we understand that's that's a language that's being used.

That's also a language that's there's pushback on.

But to say someone lives in a desert assumes that there's a void of life.

And so when you say in your community, I don't have, you live in somewhere that's depleted.

(slow music) - [Michelle] Charles City County's population is about 6,900 people.

We sit between Williamsburg and the city of Richmond and we are classified as a food desert, right?

We don't have a grocery store and everybody says, "But I drive through Charles City and it's so beautiful."

It is beautiful with no food.

(laughs) We're agricultural, but it's commercial.

Soybeans and wheat.

And so therefore it's not for, you know human consumption directly.

And so there are no options for people to get fresh fruits and fresh vegetables and quality meat.

Years ago I went to the Board of Supervisors and said, "Can we create a food pantry because people are in need."

And my Board at that time said no.

And so I just kind of, you know tucked my head and went on and and fulfilled, you know, their priorities.

Well good morning everybody.

I am Michelle Johnson the county administrator here in Charles City County and I am so excited to be here this morning.

I'm gonna welcome you on behalf of our Board of Supervisors, our Chairman, Mr. William Coada.

I don't know if he's Boss Hogg or J.R. Ewing today, but he has his cowboy hat.

(laughs) - You're gonna regret those comments.

- I probably will.

(laughs) - I wore this cowboy hat cause of Mrs. Johnson because when it come to this food pantry she has been like a cowboy on a raging bull and she made all eight seconds plus another eight seconds past that.

- A majority of our citizens go to neighboring communities to purchase their food.

26% of our citizens work outside of the county.

So most of the time you pick up food on your way home from work.

We don't have an interstate running through our community.

We have the Route 5 corridor and Route 106.

And the grocery stores, their model is 20,000 cars or more has to pass the store.

That's part of a lot of their business models and we don't have that.

We're averaging about 6,000, you know, on a good day.

(laughs) I was told no.

I don't like no.

And so let's fast forward to 2020.

COVID-19 hits, the pandemic that nobody knew what was going on and it struck our community just like the rest of the nation, right?

And I believe that out of every bad thing, a good thing happens, right?

My chairman was one of the individuals who got in line to get the food to take it to one of his constituents who was blind.

And he called me and he said, "Ms. Johnson, we have to do something."

Oh, I've been saying that for nine years now.

So we're gonna shovel some dirt.

We'll just toss it, how about that?

(laughs) - On count of 3.

1, 2 and 3.

(dumps dirt) There you go.

- Hey let's get some pictures really quick of everybody here.

(gasping) - Really?

He's teething already.

- I grew up in Chester, Virginia, so fairly close.

We basically partner with over 270 partners including nonprofits and churches that host feeding distributions to those in need.

They go and pick up the donations from the grocery stores that would otherwise go in the trash.

- See I've been going all around, visiting all the people.

Been here 57 years.

Love it.

I actually visited a food pantry last week in RC, in Richmond.

They had a garden, they had where the people could come in and pick natural herbs.

They had strawberries, they had blueberries they had apple trees.

She told me they served last year over 300 pounds of sweet potato.

Just to get this garden going...

It's gonna happen.

- This facility will be sitting on 15 acres.

We can create a garden where people can come and raise their food.

That may encourage people to, you know what, if I can go to the community garden and learn how to raise my own food then I can do it in my backyard.

I envision this food pantry to be the catalyst for our community, to be a model for rural Virginia.

(calm music) - [Kim] The Mid-Atlantic and the central Appalachian region is one of those really interesting places where lots of different types of food, diversified food can be grown here.

There's lots of research that has come out in the last 25 years or longer.

Why it's important for us to think about and design regional food systems.

We have these rural-urban, you know, nodes.

It's not an easy thing to do because of the way we're currently structured, but people are reformulating, redesigning different types of value chains at a regional level.

How do we rethink what a region can be?

- In just one neighborhood like there's so many different resources and sometimes it's harder to use all the different resources that you have just like right down the street from you.

- Getting an ordinance together.

There's just the question mark of are we gonna be able to get everything that we want?

Be able to operate in all the ways that we want to?

They don't like that we sell and they don't like that we have events.

- The city of Staunton doesn't have any ordinance.

- So now that we came now they have to.

What's a community garden?

What can we allow community gardens to do?

What can we not allow them to do?

I had come over here 'cause I asked the landowner if we could get a soil test.

I was getting my soil test and then this guy came out like with a gun on his hip saying "this is private property."

Like "what are you doing?"

He lived right next door, him and his wife.

- He thought that piece of land was his.

So when we came, of course I guess, you know if I put myself in his shoes I would be like, "oh what?"

- The rocks.

We didn't put that down.

He put that down.

He's just complained multiple times throughout the year.

And so now the city feels like, "Okay we have to do something."

Their kind of go-to thing was like, "Well we received a complaint so that, so you know now we have to set some regulations so that we won't receive any future complaints."

- I didn't expect this, you know.

(calm music) - I'm kind of nervous as to what they're gonna say cause we've pretty much up to this point been planning like we're gonna operate the way we've operated all last year.

I'm nervous that they're gonna say, "Well you can't do this, you can't do that."

So now we're gonna have to backtrack and I mean we've been coming up with Plan B's along the way so that if they do say, you know give us some bad news then, then we'll be prepared.

There's certain areas of city, like in any city that you go into that the city just kind of pushes to the side and doesn't care about so much.

I think when you're looking for those kind of spots and they stick out.

- [Lisa] I bought this piece of ground here off the city for $2,500 at an auction.

Only one that bid on it.

Nobody wanted to buy a piece of land that you had to pay taxes on just to mow the grass.

You plant a half a dozen tomatoes and you're, you're one person and your kids have moved away and your husband doesn't like tomatoes.

So what do you do with six tomato plants producing tomatoes?

So I had this little folding table and I took some of these buckets like this and I just bop them on the table and shot a screw through and I'd fill 'em up and that that would make the shade so they wouldn't get sunburned and it'd be tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers.

And that's how it started.

I grew up in the old country saying dirt floor poor.

I know what it is to fry a piece of bread in Crisco to have something to eat.

And it just stuck with me.

No one ever should have to go hungry.

This is America.

This was the original pantry box.

I had put a few cans on that, cleaned out my pantry and I come up next day, they're all gone.

I ride by coming home that evening.

There's 12 more cans.

This was the first step up from our plastic folding table.

Lady over on Spring Hill Road donated it.

I fund it.

It's my land.

There's no charge for anything though.

Everything that grows here is given away free and it's open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

You know, God bless the work that the churches do and the food banks do, but they have very limited hours.

Two or three hours, one or two days a week.

People try to interject politics into it.

It's about feeding people, it's about doing the right thing.

- [Kim] If you just think about it really simply our communities are designed, they're not these are not naturally occurring phenomena.

It wasn't natural the way we politically and economically organized food in this country.

And we have fewer and fewer companies, transnational companies, owning not only the supply chain apparatus but also owning like literally the commodity as well as the inputs.

- From October to now like we've collected I think I would say like like at least 700 pounds of compost waste.

Sarah was supposed to be here helping me today.

She didn't wanna be in the snow I guess.

Where our new garden space is gonna be.

The guy that owns it he's like finishing the buying process.

So hopefully soon he'll get back with us 'cause time is ticking.

I was like reaching out to local parks and I asked if I could just put, you know, like raised beds right on top of those tennis courts cause they don't keep 'em up.

We're like why would you just let that eyesore just sit there.

There's grass growing in them.

Like we used to play tennis on them all the time, but we can't now.

(plucky music) - Do you know anything about greenhouses?

There's a nice little nifty temperature nozzle that I didn't know about.

If something doesn't quite work out like in your backyard garden, then like, okay, it's okay.

You can just try again next year.

But like when you're doing something that is so visible to people, like if something doesn't work out, it's a big deal.

- So you're gonna share with Eli now right?

Yeah?

Atta boy.

Huh?

Yeah yeah use the train.

Joel's here.

- Perfect.

- Joel, you gotta convince him that he he needs to share with Eli cause he doesn't wanna share.

But I was trying to explain that Joel shares with you so you need to share with Eli - The way that we grew up, we couldn't just say "this is mine."

There was 13 people in the house we had to share everything.

As you get to be an adult it's like okay why is everybody so territorial?

When you're in a small town sometimes everybody's just kind of in their own space.

You tell them, okay it's open gate come and go as you please.

And people still like "I am not coming there when you're not there."

Like "I don't do that."

- That whole Stuart Street strip there was a little convenience store there.

The neighborhood there was really friendly.

Whereas now it's not like that at all.

And I think that's, I don't know if it just has something to do with the time cause really I don't see a lot of that anywhere.

- It's a community space.

It's a community hub.

It's more than just a garden in somebody's backyard.

It's a place for community gathering.

We're gonna have a art show for local students that help to create this mural that we put up at our garden.

Gonna have a little nice evening of them coming and eating food and woo, there's Sarah.

Thank the Lord.

- Hi, how are you doing?

How's your garden?

- We harvested everything this morning for market day and I think the volunteers kind of picked too much off of my plants so I'm trying to make it look a little bit more presentable.

At least 90 students participated in this but if even like half of those children and their family show up, it'll be like kind of the biggest little thing that we've had so far.

(bags ruffle) - How are you?

- Oh yeah - It's turned out way better than I thought it would.

So I'm like, I'm just so stoked yeah.

Gotta stand back and look at it from back here.

- I wanna take some pictures.

- Yeah, definitely.

Just for fun.

Do whatever you want.

Oh yes!

Perfect.

Yeah.

- [Woman] I think they got really into it.

It was, it's so fun cause it was so abstract.

- Well maybe we should have posted about it.

We didn't post about it cause we thought like so many children participated that we didn't want too many people here.

- Maybe they told them 6:30?

What's that?

- I don't know.

- Were you expecting all of 'em to come?

- Not all of 'em.

Of course all of 'em wouldn't show up but I mean I was hoping maybe at least half would show up.

- What do you think mom?

- The students did the birds?

- Yeah.

- Wow.

- Birds and the elephants.

Can you tell they're elephants?

- Yeah.

Nice.

- She can tell they're elephants.

We didn't have many show up but it was pushed back to our rain date.

So that's probably why.

It's disappointing but it's understandable and hopefully, like we said they'll end up here eventually, which is the goal.

- Yeah.

- An expanded space that we had intended to do diagonally across from the garden.

It probably won't happen till next year.

- [Kim] The issues are hard.

If we could wave the wand.

We would've done it by now.

That's why I think it's really important that we acknowledge it's not just doing new things it's how we actually re-envision.

So there is dignity and humanity in our everyday food experiences.

Focusing on hope and resiliency every day.

These are the long-term, you know, strategies but we have to build the seeds to do that.

At any moment of the day I can't think of anything so important than making sure people have their needs met.

- [Lisa] Everybody got a piece of dirt.

And if you don't get a five gallon bucket in a bag of topsoil and you can grow a tomato plant or a pepper plant and be, and and start to become self-sufficient, maybe have something to give to your neighbor.

I mean, I love it.

That's my excuse, but everybody can do it.

Oh lookit there, a crocus.

Planted a bunch of them one year.

Some of 'em lived, some didn't.

- Well that went well.

- We just met with our lawyer.

- My hopes were pretty low, but I'm surprised.

I'm very pleasantly surprised.

Most of what we want, we are gonna probably be able to get within the ordinance and probably it's gonna pass, he said.

- Take your seed and set it down right there.

Perfect.

You're so good.

And now, now do you know what you need to do?

Push it in.

Push it in the ground.

Push it in and cover it up.

Oh my goodness.

You're a expert.

Can I give you a high five?

Dirty hand, high five.

Boom.

Good job.

I'm stuck on having just like an alternative way.

So you have your CSAs, you can go to the farm you can go to the grocery store and then you can come to a community garden.

(calm, happy music) - [Announcer] Production Funding for this program is made possible by: (melancholic music) ♪ Is there room enough for all?

Who belongs?

♪ ♪ Do we stand or do we fall?

♪ ♪ And is there room ♪ ♪ In our hearts for this whole land ♪ ♪ Is there room ♪ ♪ For us in the heart of the land ♪