Image via camdenwaterfront.com
Greensgrow Farm has embarked on an across-the-bridge venture in Camden, NJ in an effort to bring fresh produce to neighborhood residents lacking a well-stocked grocery, and the funds to travel to and purchase from higher end markets.
The farm’s mobile farmstand launched last week and the truck, dubbed “Little Yellow” will park in various neighborhoods throughout the city on Thursdays and Fridays. Offerings include, a variety of seasonal produce, as well as staple items for the community’s predominantly Spanish-speaking population – lime, yucca, plantains, and quenepa (a.k.a. mamoncillo, a gelatinous, pulpy fruit that tastes like a lime crossed with a banana).
The farmstand is collaboration amongst Greensgrow, the Camden Area Health Education Center (AHEC), and the Camden Farmers Markets, and is an expansion of Greensgrow’s efforts to bring freshly grown food to community’s lacking it, as it did in the farm’s Kensington home. It also has a lot to do with the concept of creating stronger communities around food – strengthening the stability of a location via feeding its residents foods that sustains and nourishes, rather than compromises their health.
A recent entry in Greensgrow’s blog by farm leader Mary Seton Corboy discusses the differences between seasonal, pop-up farmers markets, and farms or farmstands that plant their roots into a community and stay year round. Perhaps this post is simply Corboy’s musings about what should be, or maybe it’s a hint at what could actually happen in Camden and neighborhoods like it in the future years to come.
She ends her post with, “Greensgrow is often referred to as my farm, my vision but I can assure you it has survived because we have listened to the collective and it will continue to survive because we are you-just with dirtier fingernails.”
More on where and when to find “Little Yellow” here, and read a write-up on Greensgrow’s Camden venture in today’s Inquirer.
