Take a walk through the Fountain Heights neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama, and you’ll find gardens bursting with edible color: bright rainbow chard, fuschia beets, magenta sokoyokoto (more on that later), amethyst basil, greens galore, a hot palette of peppers. The greening of this space has taken the work of dozens of volunteers. Behind that effort is a couple motivated to create a healthy, nourishing village within a city. M. Dominique Villanueva runs Fountain Heights Farm with her husband Christopher Gooden, and the farm has blossomed from their front yard garden to five city lots, producing thousands of pounds of food annually. Villanueva also works to help enroll local farmers in USDA farm programs, and currently serves on RAFI’s Board of Directors.
Villanueva and her husband began growing food in Birmingham out of financial necessity when they decided to buy a home. Already working full-time jobs, they gardened in order to purchase their house. Then they began, almost accidentally, to transform their community. She says, “Before we fixed up the house, we made the garden.” Elders would walk by, admire the vegetables, and stop to talk. They usually walked away with a zucchini or cucumber.
Sharing the abundance came naturally, and so did the growth of their operation. Within a few weeks Villaneuva set up a table in front of their house. Before long, she thought, “What if I’m not out here?” She set up a donation table by the sidewalk, and the next year Gooden built a community pantry. Then they started farming the lot next door. “We went from eight rows in 2017 to 21.”
Now in 2023 the farm spans five lots and expansion is an ongoing process. Arson had damaged the neighboring property in 2009 and the owner was unable to rebuild. Villanueva learned through the city how to acquire the lot and started talking with neighbors. The elder who owned it told her, “You don’t need to own my property to grow on it,” so they went ahead and planted crops. After a year, the owner sold it to them. Villaneuva was thrilled: “This is a vision of what it looks like to feed an entire community, touch the earth, and connect with nature. Our vision is to have enough space and grow the next generation to sustain our community’s needs for fresh produce. Now we are working on infrastructure. It’s a need for farmers everywhere: access to water, wash and pack, refrigeration, economical distribution. Once those things are built, they can be shared.”
The farm has also grown in crop and production system diversity. The aquaponics learning center teaches people soilless farming. It’s not just a novelty: Birmingham has a history of industrial pollution that has poisoned the soil in some parts of the city. Villanueva and Gooden have a SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) grant to test growing mushrooms on the wood of the weedy, fast-growing Mimosa tree. This summer they’ll plant their first urban pumpkin patch and their urban orchard will go in the ground this fall.
Villanueva developed her taste for agriculture as a child growing up in rural Washington state. She fondly remembers her great uncle’s petting farm: a menagerie of donkeys, mini-horses, and pheasants. Now living in the South, she calls the “endless growing season,” first and second summer.
Villanueva’s favorite crop is called sokoyokoto: Nigerian spinach. It’s a bright magenta celosia (C. argentea) with vibrant flowers and delicious greens, and it’s drought and heat tolerant. She first encountered the plant while working at an urban farm, where it was used only in bouquets. Villanueva’s seed stock was given to her by seed-saving and Southeast gardening legend Ira Wallace, who told Villanueva about its food and cultural value. “It makes beautiful greens and flowers, it reconnects us with West African heritage. It’s now my favorite thing to grow and cook. We include it in bouquets. I love to share the seed,” says Villanueva. She continues to spread the sokoyokoto love, and these days, you’ll see the plant brightening up vegetable beds and community gardens throughout Fountain Heights.
Along with farming, Villanueva works to connect eligible growers to USDA programs. She explains, “Helping farmers and connecting them with resources is a natural extension of being a good farmer. Farmers are at their best when they work together.”
Villanueva wants people to understand how hard the physical labor of farming is. “A lot of people can conceptualize: it’s hot, it’s outside, and physical. But when you are in it, as a mother, living the experience of poverty, carrying your kid on your back, and harvesting beans … the picture is sweet, and it is sweet. And the other side is the lack of access to childcare.”
She says, “It’s courageous to farm. Especially in relation to the new climate. Especially for urban farmers, with changes in microclimates. Also it’s courageous because, if you have a background that is traumatized by what it means to be in agriculture, you don’t usually have the support of your family to be a farmer. It’s courageous to work in an industry that is underpaid. Society considers us unsuccessful people, even though farming literally sustains us all.”
As her inspiration for this work, Villanueva credits an “ancestral pull,” and also points to the youth. “I’m not old, but I’m not young. And I see young folks making the decision to farm, and it’s inspiring. Volunteers, people in their early 20s and 30s. They bring such joy, and I want to keep these spaces for them, so they can have a place,” she adds.
After nearly a decade of farming, Villanueva is proud of the balance she has achieved. She works hard, does her best, and yet understands that one can’t control the plants or the harvest. She is happy to have found the “deep respect that comes with not being in control, and being okay with it.”
“You get to define what farming is. I define it as growing enough to feed others. You can start small and grow. Farming literally teaches you that everything starts small and it grows.
Mary Saunders Bulan served as RAFI’s Farmer Services Director. She and her partner run a small herb, flower, and vegetable farm in Western NC. Prior to joining RAFI, Mary was a college professor teaching agriculture courses, mentoring research, and managing campus farming programs.