A group of teenagers cultivating crops and feeding animals might not be what you expect to see in a residential neighbourhood – but if you’re in the right part of Cambridge at the right time, you will.
Sarah Martin-Mills runs Growing Hope, a five-acre farm on Sherring Street in Preston.
She grows produce like berries and garlic, and raises chickens, turkeys and goats. Asked why she does it, she says – not entirely jokingly – that it’s her “gym membership and therapy bill and volunteer hours all rolled into one.”
What’s unique about her farm, though, is that she gets a lot of help from high school students – in particular, at-risk students, like expelled students who are now in the Waterloo Region District School Board’s Choices for Youth program.
The idea for the farm came to Martin-Mills while she was working in a youth detention centre.
“I loved working with the youth that were there, but found that it’s hard to have opportunities for at-risk youth to have a chance to give back,” she says.
The end result was a farm that focuses on sustainability and community. In addition to selling its products and offerings from other local farmers, it has started to host berry-picking and goat yoga activities.
At the end of the year, any money that isn’t put back into the farm is donated to a Mennonite Central Committee fund targeting overseas sustainable farming initiatives. Martin-Mills says the donations provide a particularly teachable moment for the students.
“They can look and say ‘Hey, look, this is what we did,’ and I can tell them at the end of the year ‘Look, this is how much money we were able to donate to MCC,’ and they can know that they were a part of that,” she says.
Amanda Storkey, a teacher with Choices for Youth, says much of the farm provides students with many benefits. In addition to filling required community service hours and learning about social responsibility, it gives them a chance to learn outside of a classroom setting.
“They’re able to work with their hands; they’re able to be up and out of their seats,” Storkey says.
With reporting by Tyler Calver
