Growing new farmers since 1998

In October 1998, the idea for the Learning Center was born of the marriage of rural and urban. The proud parents were farmers and shareholders of the community supported agriculture initiative at Angelic Organics farm. For a week, a small group gathered in the living room of the Peterson farmhouse. We saw the possibility of the farm—as a community resource, a rich cultural connecting place, and a source of inspiration and practical learning—serving as a partnership of farmers and urban residents seeking to rebuild a healthy local food system and a better quality of life.

By spring 1999, a founding board was in place: Farmer John Peterson, shareholders Alison Brown and myself, farm staff Meagan Cocke and Bob Bower, and Neris Gonzalez an organizer from the Chicago neighborhood of Pilsen. Shareholders and others pledged $20,000 in start-up funds, which were matched by founding partners at The Chicago Community Trust, Heifer International, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Presbytery of Chicago. On April Fool’s Day, after leaving a great job at the YMCA in Chicago, Neddy Astudillo and I moved our three boys to the farm to become the Learning Center’s first staff members. I told people that I left the nation’s largest nonprofit to form the nation’s smallest!

In those first years, the Learning Center was run out of a bedroom in a nearby farmhouse, then it moved to an old chicken coop. In the woods, we chopped down ten-foot high burdock and ragweed and on the foundation of Farmer John’s old cabin built a platform as our outdoor classroom. We launched our first public education programs, hosted groups like the Kovler Center for Treatment of Survivors of Torture, and began coordinating a farmer training program led by the Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training (CRAFT).

Like our young boys or the garlic seeded at the farm, the Learning Center didn’t stay small for long! Each year, we marvel at how many individuals and organizations find us, become inspired partners, and help to build the programs and the organization. Consider what the Learning Center has achieved so far:

• We helped beginning and transitioning farmers to launch 30 new sustainable farms through our CRAFT and Stateline Farm Beginnings? programs.
• Through our Urban Initiative, we created nine urban gardens in Chicago and Rockford neighborhoods that have limited access to supermarkets and other sources of healthy food—where residents learn life and leadership skills, and grow fresh vegetables for their families and for market.
• We turned Angelic Organics farm into a living classroom for kids, adults, and families, providing more than 10,000 people with a direct experience of food and farming, and a vision for a healthy food system.
• We helped spark the “good food movement” by providing leadership for community forums and coalitions, the Illinois Food Summits, and the new state of Illinois Task Force on Local and Organic Food and Farms.

The progress we’ve made over the last 10years would not be possible without the help of individuals who make remarkable commitments to building the local food system. Let me introduce you to a few of these new leaders.

• Andrea Hazzard grew up on a corn and soybean farm in Pecatonica, Illinois, near Rockford. With help from our Stateline Farm Beginnings? business planning and mentoring program, she’s working with her family to transition 50 acres of the farm to sustainable practices. She will also be growing vegetables and fruits for local residents this season through Hazzard Free Farms’ “u-pick” CSA.
• John Henderson was one of the first kids to get involved in our Roots & Wings youth leadership and gardening program in Rockford. The confidence that he has gained in the garden has improved his self-esteem and helped him perform better in school. Now he’s part of a youth team launching an obesity prevention project in his neighborhood.
• Although he'd been a beekeeper since he was a young man, Mirsad Spahovic never thought of keeping bees in the city until he saw us doing it at the Kovler Center in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood. Many years after leaving his own hives in Bosnia, he’s teaching residents and students about beekeeping at the rooftop apiary started by the Learning Center. Mirsad has added more hives to the apiary and begun marketing his own urban honey.

A decade of nurturing and networking people like Mirsad, John, and Andrea has paid off. We are no longer a few farmers and citizen activists, but thousands who are laying the foundation for a healthy local food system. Who would have thought ten years ago— when “organic” was still a dirty word at many mainstream institutions—that in 2008 Illinois legislators would ask citizens to help the state plan for creating a local and organic food system?

We are poised to make huge gains in the next decade. We can see hundreds of beginning and transitioning farmers starting sustainable farms that grow healthy food for local residents. We see tens of thousands of urban residents, from low and upper-income communities, able to access and advocate for good food from the local food system. Together with Angelic Organics, we see securing additional farmland to support new farm and educational enterprises, including a pasture-based dairy and an overnight residential facility for visiting schools and community organizations.

Rebuilding the food system and improving our quality of life can only happen through the contributions of time, talent, and treasure—of you and thousands of others.

I look forward to working with you.

Tom Spaulding
Executive Director