If you’ve never ventured out to our farm in Marseilles, IL – the Les Brown Memorial Farm – now is a great time to come and check it out. There will be lots to eat and see. Email us at info@growinghomeinc.org or call 773.549.1336 if you have any questions.

We were honored to welcome Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to our Wood Street Urban Farm! He came out to see the great work we’re doing in Englewood, meet our staff and interns, and to check out the site for our new hoophouse, which will be bringing even more local produce and job training opportunities to the community if we’re able to raise enough funds through our Kickstarter campaign.

You can help support our project by visiting our Harvesting Hope project on Kickstarter and pledging any amount from $1 to $100 or more. We’re offering some exciting rewards too, like heirloom seedlings, local honey, and an invite to our open house party!

The project is part of Seed Chicago, a collaboration between World Business Chicago and crowdfunding website, Kickstarter, to highlight projects that create jobs and economic growth in Chicago’s neighborhoods.

Thanks to Andrew Collings Photography for capturing this great event!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Great news! Growing Home’s Kickstarter project – Harvesting Hope – has been selected to Seed Chicago, the city’s new curated Kickstarter page for projects specifically focusing on job creation and growth in Chicago’s neighborhoods. A major benefit to being selected to Seed Chicago is our project will receive increased exposure, increasing our ability to meet our funding goal and build a new hoophouse in Englewood. Seed Chicago is a direct result of Chicago’s Plan for Economic Growth and Jobs strategy to nurture neighborhoods and foster continuous development of talent, business and real-estate assets. The Plan was developed by World Business Chicago at the request of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel last year in order to accelerate Chicago’s economic growth. We are excited to be one of eleven projects featured on Seed Chicago.

The initiative was featured on the front page of the Chicago Tribune business section as well as in Crain’s Chicago Business online. If you don’t have access to the Tribune online, check out the article here.

Growing Home’s Wood Street Urban Farm presents its:

Season Kick-off Open House Celebration
Wednesday, April 24th from 1pm – 4pm
Soul Food Junkies starts at 4pm

Including:
An Organic Farm Stand
Farm Tours
Healthy Cooking Demonstrations
Garden Workshops for Children and Adults
Information and Resources
Refreshments
Plus More!

This family-friendly event is free and open to all!

For more information or to reserve your spot at the Soul Food Junkies film screening email: outreach@growinghomeinc.org or call (773) 434-7144.

Urban Farms Assistant 2013 Job Description – seasonal

Farmer’s Market Assistant 2013 Job Description – seasonal

An applicant may apply for both the Farmer’s Market Assistant position as well as the Urban Farms Assistant position. We are open to filling both positions with the same person given the right candidate. Please note in your application if you would like to be considered for both positions.

This bill expands sealing to include Class 2, 3, and 4 nonviolent felonies.  Currently, Illinois law only permits the sealing of nonviolent misdemeanor offenses and three Class 4 felonies (possession of marijuana and controlled substances, and prostitution).

Every year, Growing Home works with Cabrini Green Legal Aid to inform our interns of Illinois law on criminal records and repair eligible backgrounds.  As a way to improve access to decent jobs and reduce recidivism in our state’s overcrowded and costly prison system, this work matters a great deal.

Please review the attached fact sheet and consider your position on this crucial issue.  You can file an online witness slip here.

It is with great pleasure that we would like to announce that we have been named the winner of the 2013 Chicago Community Trust Outstanding Community Strategy of the Year Award! This respected honor, part of the 19th Annual Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards, recognizes the past success and future potential of Growing Home’s innovative job training and community development through urban agriculture. Growing Home’s staff and board received the award at a ceremony Wednesday, in front of a crowd of 1500 Chicago neighborhood development professionals. Mayor Rahm Emanuel spoke at the event, calling attention to the disparities across Chicago’s neighborhoods and praising the efforts of innovators like Growing Home who are building opportunity in places like Englewood. We would like to extend our thanks to the Chicago Community Trust, LISC, and all the supporters of the Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards for sponsoring this award. We would also like to thank our own many generous community supporters for helping Growing Home make an impact on Chicago’s neighborhoods. Please view the great short video below about the Englewood farms made especially for the event, and read these thoughts from our Executive Director, Harry Rhodes, on the importance of our work at this critical time.

GH Director Harry Rhodes with former intern Gloria

Growing Home is honored to be selected as the winner of the 2013 Chicago Community Trust Outstanding Community Strategy of the Year Award. We would like to thank the Chicago Community Trust, LISC, and all the supporters of the Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards for this tremendous recognition of our work.

Our community strategy focuses on rebuilding the community by believing in and empowering individuals. In our community today, the harsh truth is that many among us do not give a second chance to the homeless or incarcerated, people who have been marginalized and shut out of our society. Growing Home does.

We’ve all heard about the horrible violence in Englewood, happening almost daily. Many regard the situation in Englewood as bleak and hopeless and would simply tear down the entire community. We, however, know that there is still a vibrant community in Englewood with many community activists who care, a community that needs strengthening and support, not abandonment.

I’d like to share two stories with you that exemplify our work, and the hope for a better future.

Gloria Carter had been homeless and in prison when she came to Growing Home. She was estranged from her children and felt lost. After getting to know Gloria I learned that she loves food and I know that she is a great cook. With our on-going support Gloria succeeded in turning her life around. Today, Gloria works for Mercy Housing and has started her own non-profit organization to help women leaving prison. She is one of the over 250 great individuals that Growing Home has helped over the last ten years.

Expanding out from the individual, we believe that urban agriculture can also make an impact on the entire community. Englewood, home to our Wood Street and Honore Street Urban Farms, has been called a food desert, yet we know that it is possible to take this so-called desert and turn it into an oasis. This work has already begun. Our farms are the start of an urban agriculture district in Englewood, one that will include cafes (two of which will open within the next 6 months), restaurants and many other food enterprises. This district is the genesis of economic and community development in Englewood.

All of this can only be accomplished with your help. I am so pleased that LISC has already recognized the potential of Englewood and has supported this work. I call on all of you today to join in and work together to support the continued rebirth of this once very vital community.

Come out and visit our Englewood farms and see for yourselves all of the great work that is happening. Come for a personal tour; come to our weekly Wednesdays at Wood St. beginning April 24, or to one of our Saturday open houses, the first of which will be on June 8^th. I look forward to seeing you at our unique urban farms in Englewood.

Thank you,

Harry Rhodes

Executive Director, Growing Home

In addition to great USDA Certified Organic produce, Growing Home also sells egg shares in our Community Supported Agriculture program.  They are selling out fast though, so register today if you want to receive farm fresh eggs from happy chickens this year!  Here’s a bit about our chickens from Production Manager Tracy Noel:

Our laying hens are pastured on grass, clover, and buckwheat ground cover. Their grain feed is certified organic only when I can find a source locally which didn’t happen last year, so we do not certify our eggs – only our veggies. However, we do feed them the highest quality feed we can get here (never any animal proteins or chemical additions) and their diet is very much supplemented with all that is “waste” from the fields and processing area. They LOVE lettuce and tomatoes! And they love to eat grasshoppers.

They are mixed breeds of brown egg layers – mostly Rhode Island Reds – of mixed ages. Our hens have a very unique life. Since we don’t have appropriate space to keep them warm and dry in the winter, we have a partnership with our friends at Cedar Valley Farm to house them for the winter months where they have adequate shelter and lots and lots of hens to huddle up with. Every year I rescue a handful of young hens from an industrial organic egg production facility where they slaughter molting hens at one year old. These hens are hilarious to watch as they take their first careful steps on grass that they’ve never seen before. Sad but very wonderful.