MANSFIELD — Kip Curtis surveyed the scene at Fourth Street and Rowland Avenue with the pride of a parent on Tuesday afternoon.
A professor of environmental history at The Ohio State University-Mansfield, Curtis has become the Pied Piper of urban microfarms, a concept he brought to the regional campus in 2017.
As he watched Amanda and Matthew Stanfield prepare to cut the ribbon on the GrowFourth Urban Farm, Curtis beamed.
“This is exactly what I had in mind. This was Landbank property, purchased by homeowners who had an interest in becoming urban farmers. I look in one direction and I see a farm. I turn around and I am looking at their house,” Curtis said.
“This is exactly the design. This is what I call the urban homestead design. It’s good to have them nestled into the neighborhoods everywhere.
“We have another site down in a brownfield where we have multiple farms. It’s also a good site and a part of the vision, as well. But this makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I am so excited. This is just a beautiful thing,” Curtis said.
The beauty was born from two-plus years of literal blood, sweat and tears of the Stanfield family, which now includes seven children.
Amanda Stanfield told the large contingent gathered for the celebration Tuesday that becoming urban farmers was not always the goal.
“We have lived here (133 Rowland Ave.) for almost 20 years. When we moved in, it was winter and we needed a cheap house. We are not good, responsible home buyers. We honest to God had no idea what this neighborhood was like.
“When summer rolled around, we were in for a rude awakening of what an urban high-crime area can be,” she said.
“We bought a house on the most dangerous corner in Mansfield and we planted a garden. That’s what we did,” she said with a laugh.
She said Mansfield police visited their house and asked to do drug surveillance from the windows of a suspected drug house across the street. Amanda Stanfield asked why the police could trust them and how could the officers be sure they were not part of the drug problem.
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“He said because you mow your grass and you have flower beds,” she said. “That small, probably insignificant comment to him, has led to this … it’s where all of this started.”
The idea for the GrowFourth urban farm was born when Curtis was introduced to the Stanfields by North End Community Improvement Collaborative Executive Director Deanna West-Torrence two and a half years ago.
West-Torrence and NECIC had already identified food shortages as a community issue and were working with Curtis, the Stanfields and others in the community.
A few months ago, the NECIC launched an urban on 12 acres leased from the former Gorman-Rupp site in Mansfield.
The intent is to reuse the Bowman Street property to create a social enterprise that offers training, education and address the community food insecurity concern. Located on West Sixth and Bowman streets, it lies within a target area emphasized in the organization’s Community Economic Development Plan.
Also earlier this year, the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research awarded a matching grant to OSU-Mansfield to launch a $2 million dollar urban sustainable food system project. FFAR contributed $1 million to the project with the other half coming from OSU-Mansfield and the Mansfield community at large. Â
The Stanfields, who created their “Stanfields of Dreams” by acquiring four adjoining parcels of land through the Landbank, recently planted about 60,000 carrot seeds at their urban farm, which will be ready for harvest in stages, starting around Thanksgiving.
Those vegetables are destined for delivery to the Yellow Bird Food Shed with distribution in the Columbus area, Curtis said.
Curtis said the Stanfields have been going through an “agricultural boot camp” since the spring. “These guys have come through with flying colors,” he said.
“Next year, they will be producers themselves and that’s when the marketing goes into high gear. This fall, we have a group of (OSU) students doing a full research profile of the fresh produce markets in Richland County so that we can be very strategic about targeting and having everything we grow next year already sold. We are looking at institutions and restaurants and retail outlets,” he said.
“We want to produce healthy, organic food for the community and the market, but also for dollars in the farmers’ pockets. (The Stanfields) are our first pioneers. This is the beginning of the future,” Curtis said.
Amanda Stanfield told those gathered for the ribbon-cutting and celebration that her family was honored to share the moment with them.
“Thank you for sharing this with us. This is for the community, for the economy and for our neigbors,” she said.
