CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) - Christoff Lindsey is “authentically Camden,” describing himself as “Camden born, raised, scarred, influenced.”
So it might seem surprising that the Bergen Square resident (“We called it Crosstown when I was a kid,” he said) has a passion for … farming.
That’s right. Farming.
“I grow everything I can,” said Lindsey, who is semi-retired after working for a company his mother, an engineer, founded.
“I’m in New Jersey, the Garden State,” he added with a laugh. “And we have a pretty decent growing season.”
He’s grown peppers - he favors hot ones, like ghost peppers - and kholrabi (a kind of turnip), beets, tomatoes, and greens including collards, kale and a variety of lettuces.
He’s even grown figs, which he said “grow marvelously in Camden.”
But he believes too few young people in Camden are connected to their literal roots, the ones that provide fresh fruits and vegetables that they need to eat to be healthy. He’s among those hoping a new initiative called Roots to Prevention will bring more fresh produce to Camden, and more than that, an education about the food they eat and how to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
“A lot of kids don’t know fruits and vegetables come from the ground,” he said. “It’s all about reconnection. This is generational - my grandmother was a sharecropper, and we in Camden need to rediscover our roots, and how they come from basic agriculture.”
Roots to Prevention is a collaboration among health care providers, educational institutions and community groups; locally, it includes Virtua Health, Parkside Business and Community in Partnership (PBCIP), Rowan University, Rutgers University and Camden County.
The partnership received a $250,000 grant - matched dollar-for-dollar by Virtua - to implement a host of programs aimed at bringing better, fresher and more nutritious food to Camden.
Among the plans: A Food Bucks Rx program at Virtua’s Camden campus (and six additional sites) offering vouchers people can redeem for fresh fruits and vegetables; offering ways for local growers like Lindsey to generate income through an extended Community Supported Agriculture (CSA); and gathering and analyzing data over the two-year program to find ways to increase access to better foods and generate economic investment.
For Virtua, said April Schetler, the question was, “How could we as a health care provider also be an advocate for access? And how can we help ensure some of the earnings go back to the growers in the community?”
“It was about taking our mission outside our walls,” continued Schetler, a registered dietician and Virtua’s assistant vice president of community health engagement. “It’s been a big shift, but one that can have tangible results.
“If we can help people manage chronic conditions in their community, where they are, we’ll save everyone a lot of money and trouble.”
At Virtua’s Mobile Farmers Market, customers can get fresh fruits and vegetables year-round using cash, credit, or SNAP. The market operates out of a truck that parks in at the Osborn Family Health Center on Haddon Avenue in Parkside on Monday afternoons, in front of City Hall on Tuesday afternoons (it also has stops in Sicklerville, Westampton and Willingboro) and at its main Camden campus on Wednesdays.
Schetler and Jillian Ceasrine explained the truck gets most of its produce from Whole Foods, which sells to them at cost. Customers can choose from a small reusable bag that holds 6 items for $3, or a larger bag that holds 20 items for $9; customers who pay with SNAP get a 50 percent discount.
“We try to stock items that are in season and affordable,” said Ceasrine, a dietician. On a mild February afternoon, the truck stocked root vegetables like carrots and sweet potatoes, as well as butternut squash, spinach, navel oranges, garlic, avocado, green bell peppers, kale, grapes, pears and apples. Ceasrine offers recipes and tips on healthy food prep, too.
Roots to Prevention and its potential to tap local growers, said Jonathan Wetstein, PBCIP’s Roots to Market coordinator, can be an important way to help residents struggling with chronic health problems - and help prevent those problems - “especially in a city with such a high concentration of urban farmers, and health providers,” but few places for people to access fresh fruits and vegetables.
Virtua, Schetler said, offers “food pharmacies” which partner with the Food Bank of South Jersey in addition to its mobile farmers market, and Roots to Prevention adds “an opportunity to change how people view relationships between the community and health care providers.”
“We heard very clearly from residents that they wanted a place to get fresh produce,” said Bridget Phifer, executive director of PBCIP. “And they also wanted to learn about ways to prepare it, because otherwise, what’s the point?”
In Parkside, a new Roots Garden sprouted last year along Euclid Avenue, with seven raised beds for community gardeners and a small group of fruit trees on a parcel of land that used to be an orchard.
Residents keep an eye on the garden, which sits outside the Camden County Historical Society and alongside the baseball and softball fields for Camden High. A few blocks away on Haddon Avenue, a Learning Garden waits for spring next to Donkey’s, another place where inner city residents can see the literal fruits of gardeners’ labor.
A local USDA-certified farm, Free Haven Farms in Lawnside, will offer support and mentoring and logistics like packaging, storage and transport, said Wetstein.
“You can see our shabby little trees,” said Phifer, standing beside the leafless saplings, “but we’re hoping to see produce this summer,” including peaches, cherries and plums.
Lindsey remembers a time when gardens were the norm in Camden, and he hopes to see that become the case again.
“In Camden when I was growing up, in the ’50s and ’60s, every neighborhood had its own ethnic flavor, but everyone had a garden, too,” he recalled. “That was passed on, but then it stopped and I don’t know what happened. But I know it starts at home.”
Online: https://bit.ly/2ViwpGa
___
Please read our comment policy before commenting.