We are thrilled to announce a new, second farm site to be managed by Wasatch Community Gardens (WCG)! This news comes on the heels of our February announcement of our new permanent Glendale Farm Hub in Salt Lake City’s Glendale neighborhood. With TWO new farm sites coming under WCG management this year, we are twice as excited (and then some!) to get to the important work of pursuing healthy food access for all through farm-based programming and local food production as we work to preserve productive green space in our community.
About the New Site
WCG has secured an up-to-25-year agreement with Salt Lake City to manage a tract of land that incorporates a former community garden, Cannon Greens — plus additional space — totaling one acre. Our Cannon Greens Community Garden was closed in 2019 due to urban contamination, and we have worked with the City to remediate and bring the site back to life by transferring the soil we so carefully built (which we lovingly refer to as our "gold") from our current Green Phoenix Farm to this new site. This second farm, also in Salt Lake City's Glendale neighborhood, is located at 743 West 1300 South, just east of the Sorenson Unity Center.
We are eager to utilize this new site as the interim location for our farm-based Job Training Program for women facing homelessness — the Green Team — as these extraordinary women continue to grow produce for distribution through social service partners to those with limited or no access to fresh, healthy, organic, local food. After one to two years at this site, we will expand our Job Training Program to our recently secured Glendale Permanent Farm Hub, which will be under construction during the interim.
A Farm Built to Move
Our current Green Phoenix Farm was built on a lease-based site, meaning it was constructed from the very beginning as a mobile farm. While it might appear that we are in a game of farm musical chairs, this mobile approach to establishing the Green Phoenix Farm in 2016 prepared us for the future of WCG’s urban farm-based programming. While we do not have the same need for mobile farm infrastructure at our permanent Glendale Farm Hub, our existing mobile infrastructure at the Green Phoenix Farm still has a role to play in our plan and community! The mobile infrastructure and equipment we already own will be used to construct the farm at today’s newly announced site. This is exciting for many reasons, including the reality that mobile farm infrastructure is a necessary consideration for many new farmers, given the low availability of affordable farm land to own.
One of our guiding organizational pillars is creating sharable models, and a nonpermanent city farm site is an opportunity to continue demonstrating a mobile farm by relocating our Green Phoenix Farm infrastructure to our new site. We'll be doing the heavy lifting of moving our current farm infrastructure to the new site – with plenty of volunteer and City help – from June through October! Stay tuned to our FRESH newsletter and social media channels (Instagram and Facebook) for updates about the move and opportunities to volunteer and visit the new farm.
