Grid Magazine March 2022 [#154]

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A stealthy frog is finally found

Absent funds, teachers build school library

Harnessing the heat beneath our feet

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p. 14

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MARCH 2022 / ISSUE 154 / GRIDPHILLY.COM

T O W A R D A S U S TA I N A B L E P H I L A D E L P H I A

LAND & OPPORTUNITY FarmerJawn reimagines urban agriculture from the ground up

Christa Barfield, founder of FarmerJawn

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WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO ASPIRING MAKERS? Iterate quickly, stay organized, and enjoy the design process. I think making small wins with iterative designs is the right way to go. Hardware or making can sometimes either be a very conceptual process until you start making. By making and learning small pieces of the overall project, that’s both the best and most fun way to get to the end result in the quickest.

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EDI TO R ’S NOTES

by

alex mulcahy

Against The Grain director of operations Nic Esposito managing editor Alexandra W. Jones associate editor & distribution Timothy Mulcahy tim@gridphilly.com art director Michael Wohlberg writers Bernard Brown Nic Esposito Constance Garcia-Barrio Sophia D. Merow Jessica Quiroli Jenny Roberts Lois Volta photographers Drew Dennis Rachael Warriner illustrator Lois Volta published by Red Flag Media 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 215.625.9850 G R I D P H I L LY. C O M

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Next month, we are launching The 2030 Series: The Past, Present and Future of Sustainability. Grid is now in it’s 14th year (OMG!), and much has changed since our inception, including a deadline threat issued by climate scientists: We have until 2030 to drastically change the way we live to avoid worst-case scenarios from climate change.

I recently had the pleasure of jointly interviewing the three people who have held the position of director at the City of Philadelphia’s Office of Sustainability: Mark Alan Hughes, Katherine Gajewski (who both served under Mayor Nutter) and Christine Knapp, who currently serves in the Kenney administration.

In the course of the interview, Gajewski mentioned a recent conversation she had about the Build Back Better Act, where the prospect of decoupling climate change initiatives and the child tax credit was discussed. She recognized the political logic of doing that, but expressed her reservations.

“If we’re gonna be the kind of society that is able to take ambitious action on climate, those are the same values that support children and families. It’s about creating a caretaking society.”

In a caretaking society, it won’t be economically harrowing to run a small farm.

For now, FarmerJawn is not only trying to piece together a sustainable enterprise, they are also aiming to train a new generation of farmers. It has been said that planting a seed is a sign of optimism. It could be added that training others to plant a seed is an act of heroism.

ALEX MULCAHY Editor-in-Chief alex@gridphilly.com COV E R P HOTO G RAP H BY D RE W DENNI S

I L LU S T R AT E D P O R T R A I T BY J A M E S B O Y L E

publisher Alex Mulcahy

hy should anyone consider farming as a livelihood these days?”

Brennan Washington, the owner of Phoenix Gardens in Lawrenceville, Georgia, paused at the question, posed by Hannah Smith-Brubaker, the executive director of PASA, at the 2022 Sustainable Agriculture Conference in Lancaster in February. Then he laughed a little, and the audience, largely composed of farmers, laughed as well.

He cited the important work that farmers do, maintaining crop biodiversity, serving a community, and singled out the Heirloom Collard Project as an example of farmers protecting history and keeping heritages alive.

But, he said, you have to be a little bit crazy to farm for your livelihood. By crazy, he means willing to endure an uphill struggle, and to enjoy a reward that is not financial.

“I think there are so many other things that small farmers are contributing to society over and above money. And I know that sounds counterintuitive. You have to be able to make money to be sustainable, but there [are] things that society needs to be a sustainable community.”

Our cover story is about FarmerJawn, founded by Christa Barfield, and how she is trying to make a small farm work locally.

Like many other farms, FarmerJawn is doing a variety of things to be financially sustainable: offering a CSA, creating value-added products, broadening their retail to include items other than food, forging an alliance with a real estate developer and launching an educational nonprofit. She’s hustling.

As is often the case when I read Grid stories, I’m equal parts inspired and, depending on the day, angry or disheartened. (For the record, most days I’m inspired.) Growing healthy food has to be among the most—if not the most—important job in the world. Why is it so difficult to make a living doing it?

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by

lois volta

DEAR LOIS,

Is housework really morally neutral?

C

o n s i d e r t h i s s c e na r i o : a person asks their partner to clean up the laundry in their shared bedroom.

In doing this, the bedroom would be tidy. The person who put the request in has done everything to keep the bedroom tidy for themselves, and even goes so far as to be the consistent caretaker and cleaner of the space.

You could understand if there might be some tension here.

This type of request is often greeted with resistance and judgment directed at the person who made the request. This is why many people choose to bite their tongues and just do the work themselves in fear of becoming “the nag.”

Looking at our homes through a lens of compassion, the dispute can be a starting 4

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ground for shared understanding and a place to neutralize these feelings.

I’ve heard people talking about how household chores are morally neutral. I would agree that we shouldn’t think of ourselves as bad people if our homes are messy or judge others for how their spaces look.

On the other hand, when we have feelings of guilt, frustration, defeat or have thoughts that make us question our domestic morality, it’s a reflection of something deeper that should be examined.

Most times these big feelings of moral failures can be traced to the patriarchal expectations that fall on women to be perfect homemakers. There are also pressures we all feel, regardless of gender, when we come up against our own domestic self-judgment.

Let’s imagine that the person placing the

aforementioned request does not believe that their partner is morally deficient for neglecting to fold and put away their clothing—but there is a problem. The requester wants to live in a way that doesn’t seem to matter to the other person and they feel disrespected. Sound familiar?

And it works vice versa: the person who throws their clothes on the floor doesn’t care if they make a pile. They are indifferent if the clothes are here or there because it doesn’t matter to them what the room is like.

If laundry and mess have no moral value, why is this issue often treated with such severity and held with such emotional weight?

When a person feels as though they are being disregarded or disrespected the concept of right and wrong does make its way into the conversation.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting the bedroom to be clean and asking your partner to participate in co-creating a respectful environment. There is also nothing wrong with not making your bed or leaving clothes on the floor.

There is something wrong when there is blatant disrespect and judgment toward IL LUSTRATIO N BY LO IS VOLTA

P O R T R A I T BY J A M E S B O Y L E

TH E VO LTA WAY

GROW LIKE A BOSS™ with

each other about the situation.

The goal should be to come to a shared agreement on the level of care you both aspire to when doing various chores. This will help both people involved to separate the scenario from the relationship. It will Born from working on also create a firm rubric for the future that organic farms, our soils you both can use to determine whether the are earth-friendly to the standard of care you both are taking falls core. From starting seeds in line with the way you both want your to container gardening to space to be. planting a raised bed, we In contrast to many new emerging voices have the perfect organic that talk about how chores are quick and soil for you. This spring, let’s easy and meaningless, I put more of an emGROW LIKE A BOSS together! phasis on the way they mark the quality of the relationships within the home. If the relationships are supportive and respectful, then there is harmony whether the dishes Our products are: are clean or not.

Peat-Free Locally made in Chester County, PA! 100% Organic We don’t necessarily need motivation to OrganicMechanicSoil.com clean up, but we do need the drive to cultivate a mutually respectful home. This might mean having to modify our domestic behaviors.

OM_ThirdPageAd-Updates.indd 1 2/14/17 It is also important to recognize the different tiers of relationships at play.

The first is the one that you have with yourself. Then those you have with others (people, pets and plants) in your home.

Then your relationship with reality.

Because our first relationship is to ourselves, it’s not surprising that we pass judgment on ourselves when we are not performing the way we think we ought to—it’s easy to judge, cast blame and make things a moral issue when it’s something deeper.

Whether alone or in a relationship, we can fight off our self-judgment by understanding the roots of our domestic history. Oppression within the home is still very prevalent in our culture and it’s easy to let the home become a morally gray area. What matters most is that we take the time to process, learn and grow from where we are.

Compassion and grace are the keys to a If you’re looking to support local businesses, the home that reflects the best parts of our huCo-op can be your one-stop shop. We source manity—a home where we all want to live.

Spring is on the way!

lois volta is a home life consultant, artist and founder of The Volta Way. Send questions to info@thevoltaway.com.

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www.weaversway.coop M ARCH 20 22

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9:37 AM

urban naturalist

City Slickers

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t the first hint of spring in March, thousands of voices ring out from our ponds and wetlands.

It might still feel chilly to human skin, but the thawing ground and lengthening days tell hordes of frogs that life is returning to the earth.

It’s time to get it on.

Each male wood frog, spring peeper and leopard frog finds a good spot to sing from and begins the performance, fighting off rivals while trying to win the attention of a female, thick with eggs, that he can fertilize.

It took until 2012 to recognize that one 6 GRID P H IL LY.CO M M A RC H 20 22

of these spring voices belonged to a cryptic species—one that appears (to human eyes and ears) so similar to others that we didn’t realize it was distinct.

Meet the Atlantic Coast leopard frog. Tan with round spots and a generic frog shape, you—and lots of herpetologists (scientists who study reptiles and amphibians)—could be excused for mixing it up with the southern leopard frog, a species that looks almost identical and whose range reaches from the Deep South to the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

Of course, frogs care less about looks than they do about sounds.

by

bernard brown

Male southern leopard frogs sing with what to our ears sound like bursts of highpitched chuckles mixed with slower, lower snores. The Atlantic Coast species uses lower and slightly longer individual chucks and not as many snores, and it sings earlier in the spring—at the same time as the nearly-identical sounding wood frog.

Generations of scientists would see Atlantic Coast leopard frogs and assume they were southern leopard frogs. They would also hear them singing in the spring and assume they were hearing wood frogs.

The frogs can tell each other apart, but

P H OTO G R A H P Y C O U R T E S Y DAV E F I T Z PAT R I C K

A cryptic species of leopard frog escaped detection until 2012

Similar to one species in appearance and another in mating call, the Atlantic Coast leopard frog was finally identified as a distinct species in 2012.

Generations of scientists would see Atlantic Coast leopard frogs and assume they were southern leopard frogs.

I was one of the naturalists who mixed them up. There are citizen science projects, known as frog call surveys, where listeners document the frogs they hear calling as a way to monitor their populations. I took part in multiple frog call studies in the 2000s, and I recall marking down wood frogs in places where, when I later thought about it, no one had ever seen a wood frog.

“Your experience is very common … ,”

Jeremy Feinberg, research collaborator at the Smithsonian Institution, tells me.

Feinberg, along with a team of researchers, figured out that there was a yet-unidentified species of frog living along the I-95 corridor, which they described in two scientific journal articles in 2012 and 2014.

Some earlier observers had their suspicions, too.

For example, the prominent herpetologist

Carl Kauffeld tried to reorganize the leopard frog species in 1933 but his proposals didn’t catch on and don’t exactly fit the variation that Feinberg ultimately documented 80 years later. More recently Ned Gilmore, vertebrate collections manager at the Academy of Natural Sciences, who lives in South Jersey, says he had long noticed that the leopard frogs “along the river are different than the ones in the Pine Barrens.”

As a graduate student Feinberg was studying the decline of leopard frogs in the New York City area. He found that apparently pristine wetlands in places like the eastern end of Long Island were leopard frog-free, but highly degraded marshes in Staten Island, the New Jersey Meadowlands and other urban locations still had them. A closer look at the acoustics, genetics and finer physical points revealed that these urban leopard frogs were a distinct species.

It’s unclear why the Atlantic Coast leopard frog has hung on while other species have declined in the Mid-Atlantic. Wetlands have been under assault from invasive plant species, development and centuries of pollution.

Frogs have also been victims of disease globalization, as humans have spread frog pathogens to populations that had not evolved resistance to them. Feinberg’s best guess is that the vast marshes of the New York area as well as the Delaware Bay provide enough habitat for the Atlantic Coast leopard frogs to hang on. Even if a lot of them get killed off, a few survivors from another corner of habitat can then reestablish the population.

This month you can listen to Atlantic Coast leopard frogs in any of our big tidal wetlands, from Bucks County down to Wilmington, and across the river in South Jersey.

Pick a wet evening, find a safe spot to park and enjoy the concert. Organized frog call surveys, like the Frog Watch organized by the Philadelphia Zoo and the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum, offer a structured way to take part, with experts to help you figure out what you’re hearing. ◆ M ARCH 20 22 G R I DP HILLY.COM 7

water

Out of this World Limited-edition, alien-themed card game presents watershed education in a fun, unique way by bernard brown

R

ecently my family tried out a new card game, Aqua Marooned!

We are big fans of old classics like Uno, and we try out new games from time to time, usually when they end up in the gift pile on birthdays or holidays.

Aqua Marooned! showed up at the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center, and I had grabbed a deck for the house on a recent visit, along with a center-specific expansion deck. Our 10-year-old snatched the foil packs out of my hand and opened them up.

Inside we found cartoon aliens exploring a world we already thought we knew, the 8 GRID P H I L LY.CO M M A RC H 20 22

Delaware River Basin. The four aliens, looking a bit like a slug, spider, lizard and fish, were colored in blue, orange, and green.

They’ve just landed and have one day to explore Lenapehoking, “the Land of the Lenape people,” which mostly falls within the watershed of the Lenapewihittuck (aka the Delaware River).

Players draw cards featuring bold cartoon illustrations and follow the instructions to win points. For example, the “Observational Vantage Point” card directs players to get as high up above the ground as possible. When players draw the “Trunk Roughness Appraiser” card, the first to snuggle a tree wins.

“We wanted the game to capitalize on discovery,” says Adrienne Mackey, founder and artistic director of Swim Pony, the company that developed Aqua Marooned!

“If you’re someone who doesn’t know a lot about nature, it doesn’t treat you like you’re bad. It doesn’t disadvantage you but rewards you for a sense of discovery.”

In 2018 the Alliance for Watershed Education of the Delaware River commissioned Aqua Marooned!, along with an outdoor sculpture project by artist Sarah Kavage, after a call for proposals for art projects that would connect visitors to the work of its 23 member organizations.

The 23 members range across the watershed from the Pocono Mountains down to Wilmington, Delaware. In addition to geography they vary in a lot of other ways that make cross-cutting projects difficult. Some have physical environmental centers, while others, like the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford

P H OTO G R A H P Y C O U R T E S Y S W I M P O N Y

Each Aqua Marooned! playing card has instructions on it to win points and learn about nature.

The ability to integrate science learning, greening, a calming space—you can’t quantify the benefit.”

— emma melvin, School District of Philadelphia green infrastructure program manager

Watershed Partnership, work entirely in the community.

Some are run by government agencies, others by private nonprofit organizations.

Some are in rural communities, others in the suburbs and several, like Bartram’s Garden in Southwest Philadelphia or the Center for Aquatic Sciences in Camden, sit in the heart of the city.

“What would an art project look like across a watershed with 23 centers that are unique?” asks Teresa Jaynes, project director for the alliance’s Lenapehoking Watershed program. “How can we introduce the idea of art as a methodology to talk about the issues the alliance had put at the front of their goals, like equity, indigenous sovereignty and community engagement?”

Swim Pony, which had previously produced interactive performance works, submitted a proposal for a game, which they refined as they participated in successive

We wanted the game to capitalize on discovery.”

— adrienne mackey, Swim Pony founder and artistic director

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water Aqua Marooned! cards, along with center-specific expansion decks, can be picked up for free at any of the 23 participating environmental centers.

rounds of the competition. As the Swim Pony team talked with staff from alliance member organizations, they noticed a gap in environmental programming.

“One of the things I was hearing a lot was that there is a lot of programming for little kids, a lot for retirees, but there is this band of people, 20- to 30-somethings who are active but not necessarily outdoorsy and just don’t go to nature centers,” Mackey says. “Sometimes it’s cultural. If you haven’t grown up going to nature centers you might walk in the door and you don’t know what to do.”

They worked to develop a self-directed game that wouldn’t require additional time from the overworked staff of environmental organizations. “Something you can hand people and they could go, learn about the center, and ideally come back and learn more,” Mackey says.

Swim Pony selected illustrators Meg Lemieur and Bri Barton for the artwork on the cards.

“We wanted date night energy, fun, silly, approachable and not homework. I didn’t want this to feel like art broccoli,” Mackey says.

They also worked with the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation as they developed Aqua Marooned!, ultimately producing a Lenape expansion deck.

“They recognized they needed to have someone to speak on Lenape issues to make sure it was a positive representation of Lenape people and culture,” says Trinity Norwood, a citizen of the nation and a consultant for the game.

“Lots of times people want to honor the Lenape people and they might go about it with a positive heart, but they might still make mistakes,” Norwood continues. “A good example is people cover Lenape history but they talk about us in the past tense. We’re still 10 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M M A RC H 20 22

here, we are current people and we will be here in the future. So there are cards in there that talk about what Lenape people are doing today and doing for the environment.”

Aqua Marooned! was supposed to land in Lenapehoking in August 2021, but shipments of the cards were delayed by supply chain issues. They ultimately arrived in December.

Packs are available for free from alliance member organizations. With no plans to print more, Aqua Marooned!’s stay will be brief, just like the aliens’ expedition. ◆ To find a deck, call or visit participating locations. Locations are listed at lenapehoking-watershed-art.com/centers

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city healing

A New Chapter Budget cuts have shuttered school libraries for decades. A young English teacher has built one from scratch by constance garcia-barrio

T

he only thing you absolutely have to know,” as Albert Einstein once said, “is the location of the library.”

When it comes to Philadelphia’s public schools, Einstein’s dictum leaves most students hamstrung, as the district’s number of librarians has declined sharply in recent decades.

“In 1991, the School District of Philadelphia had 176 paid librarians,” says Debra Kachel, advocacy committee co-chair for the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association. “By our best estimate, that number has dropped to four. Philadelphia may have the worst public school library system in the U.S.” Thank goodness for exceptions. Eric Hitchner, 33, an English teacher at Building 21, a public high school in West Oak Lane, took a box of books into his classroom five years ago.

“The students got excited and asked if they could borrow them,” says Hitchner, a poet. “I realized we needed more than a shelf of books.”

The library has grown to a room with some 4,000 books.

“Eric started the library, I called it the ‘Field of Dreams Project’—‘If you build it, they will come,’” says Brianne MacNamara, 37, Building 21’s principal. “That has proven to be true.”

The library drew in more staff and colleagues.

“Eric’s been working on the library for several years,” says history teacher Jared McElroy, 41, who hand-sawed wood for bookshelves. “Without shelves, you just have stacks of books. Ultimately, one person can’t do everything.” McElroy also helped haul books and furniture up three flights of stairs.

“I’ve had help from most of the staff,” Hitchner says. “That includes book and magazine donations.”

McElroy brought in four James Baldwin books for the library after a student request12 GR ID P H IL LY.CO M M A RC H 20 22

ed one. Faculty and staff also offered encouragement and helped with brainstorming.

“This year, my principal didn’t assign me a new advisory and instead gave me that prep time to focus on the library,” Hitchner says. “And there’s a contingent of folks who

volunteer to chaperone when we go on trips [to meet book authors].”

Strangers have also jumped aboard.

“When book vendors learn I’m building a library, instead of charging me $10 or $20, they’ll donate a box of books,” Hitchner says.

P HOTO G RAP HY BY RACHAE L WARRI NER

STARTUP CULTURE Creating a school library is a straightforward task that takes dedication. Here’s how: Just do it! “You don’t need a certified librarian or formal room,” says principal Brianne MacNamara. Take small steps. Find an empty shelf or two, seek interested people and ask the community for donations.

Bring books! Many schools already have a dedicated library space that’s been shuttered.

Such rooms just need books.

Contact WePAC at (215) 452-0333 or wepac.org to volunteer, donate or get advice about reopening public school libraries. A nonprofit funded by private money, WePAC runs 19 libraries in public schools through volunteers.

Take up the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association’s offer. The organization (www.psla.org) pitched City Council a proposal to help find certified school librarians, mentor them and assist them in building a collection. Tell Councilmembers to grab the proposal (info@phila3-0.org or call 311).

Ask your state legislators to support HB 1168 and SB964—bills that would require librarians in every Pennsylvania school.

Email the School District of Philadelphia’s Board of Education members. Ask them to return funding for school libraries.

Find the district’s school board members at philasd.org/schoolboard

The library demanded not only time and cash but soul-searching.

“You have to be careful not to play at being the white savior,” Hitchner says, noting that Building 21’s students are 98% young people of color. “It would be a disservice to who our

Opposite page: English teacher Eric Hitchner spearheaded the creation of the library (above) for students at Building 21, a public high school in West Oak Lane.

students are. You have to be constantly mindful of how you approach the work.”

Hitchner found ways to embed skill-building in lessons and give students a stake in the library’s growth. He had students make bookmarks and write messages on them. One says, There’s no hood like motherhood.

“It honors students who are parents.

They’re a segment of our school population,” Hitchner says.

He adds that students did research to find books in Spanish for ESL (English as a Second Language) students.

Building 21 students do a senior project that engages the skills and knowledge acquired throughout their academic career.

“It may be career-based or passion-based,” Hitchner says, noting that the library can serve as a resource for projects.

“For example, one girl, Samirah, wanted to learn [American Sign Language]. She posed questions such as: ‘Why isn’t it one of the languages taught in school?’”

The library has become a refuge for some students, who take advantage of the chess board to get in a game. Hitchner envisions more.

“If we had a little more shelving, we could maximize the space,” says Hitchner, who’s eager to add to the collection of diverse books.

“The students have also expressed interest in doing a mural and getting the technology to self-publish a school anthology.”

Hitchner’s chief goal remains introducing more children to the pleasure of reading.

“I ask students to take a reading pledge,” he says. “If students have a young person in their life, maybe a sibling or a neighbor, that student can pledge to read to them, then choose a free book. You can take a new pledge every month. Reading is vital to a child’s ability to learn and be successful,” says Hitchner, who is married and the father of two small children. “It doesn’t happen automatically.”

The school’s closing due to COVID-19 interrupted the training of the library’s student volunteers. “I started as a library intern in my junior year, but I really dove in during my senior year,” says Egypt Luckey, 19, who graduated in 2020. “[As an intern] I carried books upstairs and put them into the system so that we had a digital catalog. The library holds a special place in my heart.” Luckey works in a bookstore on a college campus now.

The project also has borne fruit in other ways.

“Some retired librarians have offered to come in and help,” Hitchner says. “Colleagues have made space for a Little Free Library in the school’s community garden so neighbors can stop by and get free books.”

Hitchner sees a possible coalition of groups working to open school libraries.

“I’m in touch with WePAC,” he says of the West Philadelphia Alliance for Children, an organization that reopens closed elementary school libraries.

School libraries provide more than a place to research papers or dive into fiction.

“Colleges expect students to know how to use a library,” says Kachel, of the librarian association, who also teaches online courses for Antioch University Seattle’s Library Media Endorsement program. “School librarians also teach students how to evaluate online sources, which affects their whole lives.

They’ll have to assess information when they seek medical guidance or buy a house or a car.”

“A lack of money isn’t an excuse to cut libraries,” Kachel says. “Choices are made on how to allocate money. Priorities need to be set by thinking about what’s best for kids.

People have to stop and say, ‘What we’re doing is damaging our kids.’” ◆ M ARCH 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 13

UNDERGROUND MOVEMENT An advocacy group, citing economic and environmental reasons, pushes for investment in geothermal heating and cooling story by jessica quiroli

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tem pressure and maintaining our monthly duct filter change outs.”

He also points out that GSHP has allowed for the garden to ditch the large and noisy compressors that once took up space in the garden itself, avoid weather-related maintenance issues and reduce pressure on the landscape previously applied by trucks and repair people accessing the previous systems.

“The result is a more vibrant, healthy and historically accurate Bartram’s,” he says.

For Emily Davis, a core member of the Sierra Club’s Southeastern Pennsylvania Group, stories like the one Reber tells inspire her to think big—to push more parks, businesses and homeowners to consider GSHP as a greener, more cost-effective way to heat and cool buildings.

Davis is a founding member of Geodelphia, an organization of volunteers and experts dedicated to researching and promoting geothermal energy. The group’s members meet every second and fourth Tuesday of the month via Zoom to discuss goals and support each other’s efforts.

The group emphasizes that the technology has been in use for at least 40 years.

“Many people think geothermal is still a very new technology, so our focus is raising awareness and education,” says Mehdi Entezari, another Geodelphia founding member.

Using GSHP, people run water pipes underground and send them through heat pumps to warm indoor air in the winter and cool it in the summer.

The Bartram House, built in 1731, installed ground source heat pumps in 2016, phasing out its dependence on fossil fuels for temperature control.

“Most of the energy needed to do this is going unused, ten feet or so underground.

[It’s] solar energy stored in the earth. Run some pipes down there, add a small amount of power to run the heat pump and you get practically free heating and cooling,” Geodelphia’s website states.

The GSHP process, while colloquially known as “geothermal,” is quite different from the conventional geothermal systems, which use naturally occurring hot water or steam flows that are heated by volcanic systems in areas with active or young volcanoes.

As the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) points out, “there are no known conventional geothermal resources suitable for power

P H OTO G R A P H BY R . K E N N E D Y F O R V I S I T P H I L A D E L P H I A

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t’s been just over six years since Bartram’s Garden made the switch to geothermal heating and cooling, using ground source heat pumps (or GSHP) to heat the public garden’s 18th century buildings. By drilling deep into the ground, geothermal systems tap into heat that is stored in the earth. It greatly reduces the need for fossil fuels.

The GSHP installation took place as part of restoration work to the Bartram House and Carr Garden. Prior to this, most of the buildings were utilizing traditional HVAC systems, which use electric resistant heat strips, gas furnaces and condensers to heat or cool air. The stone house, which John Bartram began building in 1728, was heated with an oil furnace until 2015 when the oil infrastructure was removed.

Tom Reber, director of landscapes and facilities at Bartram’s, says the garden’s goals in switching to geothermal were to reduce energy consumption, achieve a quieter and cleaner landscape and reduce the site’s internal HVAC maintenance needs.

“While we don’t know the exact reduction on the utility bill here [because utilities are billed to the City of Philadelphia] we do know that it has absolutely reduced our utility cost for the historic buildings, as the heat pumps are more energy efficient and we are no longer heating with fuel oil,” Reber says. “Maintenance has shifted from relying heavily on compressor and boiler maintenance to cleaning strainers for the geothermal water loops, monitoring the sys-

production in Pennsylvania.”

“However,” the DEP continues, “there are suitable conditions for the use of energy efficient ground source heat pump technology, also referred to as ‘Geoexchange’ and geothermal heat pump.”

And these systems don’t require much space.

“You don’t need lots of land for GSHP,” the DEP explains, “it is dependent on your needed tonnage of heating and cooling.”

The state agency notes that commercial buildings, classrooms and dorms could benefit from the energy savings the system offers.

In Philadelphia, where 60% of the city’s carbon footprint comes from heating and cooling homes and buildings, replacing

Many people think geothermal is still a very new technology, so our focus is raising awareness and education.”

— mehdi ente zari, founding member of Geodelphia

our HVAC systems with geothermal would reduce our emissions significantly.

“A main goal is getting geothermal cooling and heating systems into the schools, companies and municipal buildings owned by the local government,” Entezari explains.

To members of Geodelphia, there’s another compelling reason to consider GSHP. According to Davis, once you become aware

of it, it’s hard not to think about.

A recent study measuring natural gas leaks across Philadelphia shows danger lurking just below the city’s surface. Davis says she was horrified by the report, which revealed 1,001 gas leaks from pipes that deliver natural gas to buildings for heat, cooling, cooking and laundry throughout the city.

“I was flabbergasted by how many [leaks] there are, how big they are and how close M ARCH 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 1 5

many of them are to schools,” Davis says.

And the study was by no means comprehensive—it only surveyed about 10% of the city.

It was commissioned by volunteers from the Southeastern PA Sierra Club, after they connected with Gas Safety USA, which had mapped gas leaks in Boston a few years ago.

As Meenal Raval explains in a blog post for the Sierra Club about the study, the initial mapping was meant to demonstrate the overall scope of the gas leak problem, in hopes of raising public concern about the leaks.

“Ideally this initial mapping will build demand and resources ($100,000 goal) for a subsequent street-by-street mapping of the entire city, which could be used to more confidently pinpoint areas of the city that have the highest leakage,” Raval says. “The initial sponsors of this study want the results to influence PGW’s [Philadelphia Gas Works] leak prioritization plans.”

Currently, PGW’s timeline to fix the pipes causing the leak would span the next few decades.

“PGW anticipates that all of its unprotected steel service lines and cast iron mains will be replaced by 2038 and 2058, respectively,” PGW explained in a June 2021 post.

There are an estimated 1,230 miles of natural gas pipes beneath Philadelphia that connect to homes and businesses.

At least 50% of these natural gas mains are estimated to be cast iron, a material that easily rusts and deteriorates, allowing leaks to occur. It is no longer used in new gas main installations.

Raval warns that there could be deadly consequences, like the 2019 explosion that killed two people and destroyed three row homes in South Philly, which was linked to a natural gas pipe leak.

“Gas leaks in the distribution pipes within our city could lead to, and have led to, explosions, making urban areas quite unsafe,” Raval writes.

She adds that the gas leaks are also contributing to climate change.

“Gas in the pipes coming into our homes is indeed methane. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, contributing more than 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, says the National Resources Defense Council and many others,” Raval writes. “And, the fact that it’s wasted, not even used by anyone is outrageous.”

As the full scope of the problem is not yet known, Davis agrees more funding is 16 GRID P H IL LY.CO M M A RC H 2022

Mehdi Entezari (left) of Geodelphia and Tom Reber of Bartram’s Garden stand beside piping installed to heat and cool Bartram’s historic buildings.

necessary.

Without funding, and without a larger study of the leaks, it could be tough to convince the city and its home and business owners to invest financially in making the switch to something more sustainable.

And that’s where the work begins.

Entezari explains that a big part of that is getting the business model in front of PGW, the natural gas company owned by the City of Philadelphia.

“We want to say to PGW, that what they’re doing is providing a service. If you own the

geothermal system in the homes, then they can charge for the [energy] they provide …

[T]hat becomes another source of revenue.

And it’s good for the union workers too because now they can begin being involved in building these geothermal systems. So that’s our other goal,” Entezari says.

Published in December 2021, a Philadelphia’s Office of Sustainability study aimed to better understand how PGW could diversify its energy sources and work toward a lower-carbon future. One of the pathways it identified was building more geothermal heating systems. However, the study noted P HOTO G RAP HY BY RACHAE L WARRI NER

These pipes serve as the main supply and return for water going between the geothermal wells and the red heat pumps.

...I believe it has also made us more attuned to the living, breathing nature of our historic buildings...”

— tom reber, director of landscapes and facilities at Bartram’s Garden concerns about the costs.

“Networked geothermal systems, if owned and operated by PGW, may provide a diversification option for PGW, but this solution is likely to require significant capital investments and regulatory analysis; more study is needed to assess the exact costs and feasibility of the concept in Philadelphia,” the study says.

On average, HomeGuide.com notes installation costs anywhere from $15,000 to $35,000 for a complete system.

For Bartram’s Garden, the GSHP system cost around $500,000 according to Reber, who notes the park’s buildings likely required many more GSHP pumps than your average residence.

PGW’s involvement is essential to transforming the city into a clean-energy leader.

According to Entezari, it’s better for everyone in the long run.

The DEP notes that the upfront cost of a GSHP system is typically more expensive than a traditional HVAC system “due to the additional heat exchange components.”

“The return on investment in savings often occurs within 5 to 10 years, but depends upon many factors such as the cost of energy, cost of system, installation costs and size

of system,” the state writes. “These systems typically last 25 or more years.”

Geothermal-curious Philadelphians who own buildings and businesses have plenty of local examples to consider if they are interested in making the shift to a clean energy source.

In 2019, the German Society of Pennsylvania, a 130-year-old building, upgraded its heating and cooling system to geothermal.

Construction of Kensington High School for the Creative & Performing Arts, which aimed to use less energy than any other school in the School District of Philadelphia, was completed in 2010 and implemented a geothermal heating and cooling system.

According to Reber, the process to drill wells and trenches for GSHP at Bartram’s took about four to five months. He says another month or two was needed after this to install the equipment.

He notes that the process did present some challenges considering the nature of the structures involved. “ … [T]he site itself presented some unique issues in that the historic buildings sit on a 200-foot prehistoric sand dune and the boreholes were collapsing while drilling

through that sand,” he says. “Ultimately we ended up casing all twelve wells, but it required additional specialized drilling equipment and crews—actually sent down from Alberta, Canada.”

The process of drilling and trenching is quite disruptive, he says.

“We also had a lot of drilling spoils and erosion and sediment controls to contend with during drilling—all of that material was hauled off-site and disposed of so as to not impact our soils,” Reber explains.

Jack DiEnna is another Geodelphia founding member and executive director of the Geothermal National and International Initiative, a nonprofit organization founded in 2019. He has an idea for how Philadelphia should kick off its GSHP transition.

“I propose that we start with the K through 12 schools. That way the students get to know about the technology, and the parents are ‘schooled’ by their kids,” DiEnna says.

He points to an elementary school on Long Island that switched over to a geothermal heat pump system with the help of his organization.

“I get at least five to six calls per month from parents of students at that school asking how they can install it in their home,” DiEnna says. “It proves that having the students be the ‘marketing team’ is the way to go.”

One last thing Reber likes to mention is how the implementation of the geothermal system has changed how people at Bartram’s connect to the heating and cooling most of us take for granted.

“It has required us all to rethink how we live and work in the buildings here,” Reber explains. “Geothermal responds to thermostat changes slowly, so gone are the days of tweaking the thermostat at every turn when it’s too hot or cold. That change was definitely evolutionary here, but I believe it has also made us more attuned to the living, breathing nature of our historic buildings and enabled us to be better stewards of them.” ◆ M ARCH 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 17

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VINTAGE, YET MODERN

Antique lover-turned-jeweler reworks old treasures with an eye for today story by sophia d. merow

F

east jewelry’s Adrienne Manno doesn’t upcycle because it’s trendy or because she’s on some sustainability soapbox. Manno describes the reclaim-and-repurpose aspect of her jewelry making as an organic outgrowth of incorrigible collecting.

20 GRID P H I L LY.CO M M A RC H 2022

On her once-frequent travels, Manno would spot and acquire a piece here, an element there, a 1980s faux horn belt at a London flea market, a slew of African glass beads on a trip to D.C. Such finds accumulated as Manno amassed 15-plus years of experience in the

fashion industry. For five years in the midaughts, Manno supplemented her corporate day job with a side gig, producing handsewn, small-batch apparel using deadstock and upcycled vintage fabric.

“I kind of revived that concept in making jewelry,” Manno says of her Kensington-based business, Feast Jewelry, which she launched in 2018. “It’s about giving new life to things that have been pre-loved.”

Feast is a line of seasonal capsule collections characterized by what Manno calls a “vintage aesthetic, but made very modern.”

Manno works with a combination of new and upcycled materials, sourcing deadstock metal components from suppliers in Philadelphia and New York, scouring thrift store and estate sales, and re-envisioning dated pieces languishing in her clients’ drawers.

Past offerings have incorporated vintage coral, recycled glass and surplus brass nuggets from a turn-of-the-century bead production out of Varanasi, India. The Fall 2019 collection debuted freshwater pearls that

P H OTO G R A P H Y C O U R T E S Y A D R I E N N E M A N N O A N D A N D R E A C I P R I A N I M E C C H I

Adrienne Manno (left) of Feast Jewelry uses freshwater pearl alongside deadstock and upcycled materials, like vintage metals and glass, to create seasonal jewelry lines.

have become Feast’s signature. The serendipity inherent in reliance on found, leftover and subject-to-natural-variation materials defines Feast.

“That’s really the essence of everything I do,” Manno says of how upcycling constraints shape her process. “I have all this material. How do I design around this?”

Manno’s choice of materials impacts a collection from start to finish. While some brands artificially manufacture scarcity to drive demand, Feast comes by it naturally.

The line’s use of vintage and deadstock elements ensures that pieces are unique and few.

When a limited run of a popular style like the FLORES drop earrings featuring those deadstock brass nuggets sells out, Manno can’t just hit up a findings supplier and restock. She moves on to the next inspiration.

It’s about giving new life to things that have been pre-loved.”

— adrienne manno, Feast Jewelry owner

Manno relishes mastering new materials and skills, and she cites Philadelphia’s vibrant community of makers as a resource vital to her growth as a creative and entrepreneur. “It’s been wild to see that blossom,” she says.

Even as she learns (the properties of porcelain, for example), Manno teaches.

This semester she’ll instruct a sustainable sportswear class as an adjunct professor at Drexel University.

Her students’ energy bolsters Manno’s

sense that circular design is not just having a moment, it’s building potentially industry-altering momentum. Feast is a small part of the broader shift Manno would like to see toward a sector-wide consciousness of sourcing, footprint and reuse.

“I’m hoping that [sustainable fashion] is not just a trend because ‘trend’ really signifies that it dies out,” Manno says. “I’m hoping that it becomes much more of an impact on the environment through larger businesses getting involved.” ◆ M ARCH 20 22 G R I DP HILLY.COM 21

Dolly Park thrifts with her customers in mind for her Mount Airy shop, I Spy, You Buy.

I SPY SOMETHING STYLISH Shop owner’s vintage finds make for great looks and loyal customers

22 GRID P H I L LY.CO M M A RC H 20 22

that perfectly fitted denim jacket, or styling local music groups for an upcoming show. The store is unique in that Park not only plays the role of business owner and merchandise specialist, but also personal shopping buddy.

“Dolly is different,” Evans says. “She makes you feel confident in the clothes that you’re getting. She’s always there to assist, to pick out entire outfits … from bags to shirts to shoes.”

In her off time, Park is always on the hunt for more clothing to stock her store. She doesn’t accept donations, but rather thrifts herself to curate the perfect selections of retro and name brand items from other thrift shops, like The Salvation Army, New Life

Thrift, Bargain Thrift Center and Second Chances Thrift Shoppe.

“After a while with the return of the customers, I just knew what they would buy,” Park says. “So you want Uggs, you want Nike, you want Adidas. Okay, so now I know what you want … you won’t come here and just see anything random. Everything has a purpose.”

Park’s keeping an eye out for her customers has certainly been noted by Evans.

“I don’t feel the love and the attention … when I go to other thrift stores,” Evans says.

Park says there are certain clothes she is always on the lookout for: mom jeans, jerseys, graphic T-shirts, windbreakers and army fatigues. She also tries to avoid certain

P H OTO G R A H P Y C O U R T E S Y J E N N Y R O B E R T S

W

hen laverne evans needed a red purse for her birthday outfit this past November, she knew exactly where to go.

Evans, 28, made her way to I Spy, You Buy, a curated thrift store in Mount Airy, to see if owner Dolly Park had something in stock.

“She told me to come back tomorrow,” Evans says. “She was going out thrifting [and] if I came back, she’d have it. And she sure did have it.”

Park, 33, of Jenkintown, has sold her thrifted finds from the storefront at 7151 Germantown Avenue for about five years.

On any given day, you can walk into the store and find Park helping customers find

story by jenny roberts

clothing, too, including most items from fast fashion brands like Forever 21 and H&M. The quality just isn’t up to par, she says.

“With clothes being mass-produced, they’re trash,” Park says. “[With the] fabrics they’re using, they’re just landing in landfills. That’s where the clothes are going.

You wash them one time, and then they become rags.”

Park notes that she keeps an eye out for vintage and retro clothes that are made from 100% cotton, a fiber that makes for “quality merchandise.”

Natasha Martinez, 42, a longtime customer of I Spy, You Buy, says she always gets compliments on the clothes she buys from Park.

Sometimes Martinez comes into the shop looking for vintage clothes from the

1980s and ’90s; other times she’s looking for something more trendy. The store’s variety of clothing keeps her coming back, as well as Park herself.

“It’s just her energy is always positive,” Martinez, of Northeast Philly says. “She’s had me buy things that I would normally not wear, but she makes me feel so good about it. I feel like a million bucks in the outfit.”

Martinez has been buying clothes from Park since her early days.

Before opening the storefront, Park would sell thrifted clothing on the sidewalk outside of the Philadelphia Interfaith Hospitality Network, also on Germantown Avenue. Park estimates more than half of her current customer base has been shopping with her since the sidewalk sale days.

And before that, Park was thrifting for her girlfriends, who would buy from a makeshift store in her own living room.

Fashion is Park’s passion, she says. She also upcycles damaged clothes she finds to repurpose them. She’ll bleach and tie dye clothes that could use a little love and sell them as part of her brand, Stylish Behavior.

“I feel like it’s a big stage, and we’re all actors, and we’re performing and the clothes definitely give you this finish,” Park says.

In high school, her fashion sense made her stand out, she says. Her black nail polish and Doc Martens were not the norm.

Today, the youth are more adventurous in terms of fashion, Park says, sharing that she has teen customers frequenting her store.

“Now being weird or being able to express yourself however you want is acceptable,” Park says.

“People used to turn their noses up at thrifting, ‘What, you got that from a thrift store? Oh, that means you’re poor,’” she adds. “No, that means you have swag. You have personality. You don’t want to look like everybody else.”

Cordell Green, 25, of West Philly, is working on a documentary that captures Dolly’s thrifting story for his production company Green Light Studios.

“I was never into thrifting, but the way she throws everything together, and the way she sells it makes me want to get more into it,” Green says of Park.

“She is very creative and expressive about her art and thrifting,” he adds. “The goal is to get people to see Dolly’s vision.” ◆ I Spy, You Buy is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

M ARCH 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 23

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AMBITIOUS & NUTRITIOUS FarmerJawn is breaking new ground with dirt, grit and optimism story by nic esposito

—

photography by drew dennis

For Christa Barfield, the entrance into agriculture was prompted by her exit from another industry. ¶ Before the success of FarmerJawn— Barfield’s ambitious and sprawling enterprise that includes farming at the historic Elkins Estate, running a CSA, being part of a development project in East Kensington, opening a garden shop in Germantown, selling herbal-infused teas and providing education designed to prepare the next generation of Black and Brown farmers—Barfield was an overworked, undervalued mid-level healthcare administration professional working 16-hour days while trying to raise two kids. Being responsible for serving up to 200 patients a day left her burnt out and as she puts it, “unable to refresh myself emotionally, mentally and even physically.”

With no plan for future employment in place, she resigned from her job in 2018.

She decided to take two weeks for herself—away from the kids and away from her career search—to travel alone to the Caribbean island of Martinique, where she hoped to immerse herself in the French language and sit by the pool.

However, another avenue for self-care quickly emerged—maybe through coincidence, maybe through her subconscious need for deeper connection with her own wellbeing.

Growing food was central to each homestay she booked.

The first spot was with a Thai chef who 26 GRID P H I L LY.CO M M A RC H 2022

would greet her each morning with tea made from fresh garden herbs and finish each day with freshly-cut coconut for dessert, picked right from the tree in her yard.

The next farm Barfield stayed on was called Petit Cocotier (translation: Little Coconut Tree), which is Black-owned. There, the sight of people who looked like her thriving off the land made a deep impression.

“I just felt drawn to it. Like they didn’t ask me to help them pack up boxes with freshly-picked herbs, fruits and vegetables … I just did it,” Barfield recalls.

Speaking about her experience, Barfield’s voice shifts—her words taking on an air of vibrant easiness, as if she’s being transport-

ed back to the tropical paradise.

“I was also getting the opportunity to watch their CSA members come and collect their shares,” Barfield says. “It was just so amazing.”

U

pon her return she couldn’t shake the stark juxtaposition between what she witnessed on Petit Cocotier and “the discrimination that’s systemically built into the healthcare system, and how that applies to our food system.”

Growing up in Germantown, Barfield was acutely aware of how much she and her neighbors relied on the corner store, which was stocked with processed foods and lacked a variety of healthy options.

She was now inspired to do something about it. Although she never thought of herself as entrepreneurial, she set up a fourby-six-foot greenhouse in her backyard.

Following the example of her Thai host in Martinique, she started growing herbs and founded Viva Leaf Tea Company (Grid #144, May 2021), in 2019.

She remembers the intense pressure she felt.

“I’m like, ‘Okay Christa, you just quit your job. You have two kids, you have a car,

FarmerJawn founder Christa Barfield (right) stands with chief operating officer Brandon Ritter.

P HOTO GRA P H Y BY DR EW D E N N I S

M ARCH 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 27

a house and you’re single. So you need to figure out how you’re going to maintain and sustain yourself,’” recalls Barfield.

She began driving for Uber from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. and then 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., giving herself a full 8 hours during the day to make sure her kids got to school and she could work in the greenhouse growing herbs for Viva Leaf.

While Viva Leaf was starting to pick up steam and gain customers, Barfield also realized that she wanted to take her daughter out of the local elementary school and

FarmerJawn uses the greenhouses at Elkins Estate in Elkins Park.

28 GRID P H IL LY.CO M M A RC H 20 22

homeschool her. On a mission to find enriching things for her daughter to do, Barfield went to the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education where she encountered the center’s community garden.

Barfield jumped at the opportunity to join the garden and grow herbs on a 3,000 square-foot plot, while giving her daughter a nature experience at the same time. While Barfield started out with herbs, she realized that the community garden space presented an opportunity for her to grow other fruits and vegetables. And drawing on her experi-

ence at Petit Cocotier, she soon grew enough produce for Viva Leaf as well as a 10-member CSA, which she branded FarmerJawn in 2019.

A

fter a favorable early 2020 write-up about Viva Leaf in the Phila�delphia Inquirer, Barfield experienced yet another unexpected turn in March 2020 when she received a call from a developer. He had just read the story and had access to eight greenhouses on a large property in

Elkins Park. At first, the magnitude of the move and unfamiliarity with the developer caused Barfield to say, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ But after a bit, she found the entrepreneurial urge to explore. Barfield accepted.

By April 2020, she had gone from a 3,000 square-foot growing space at the Schuylkill Center to 40,000 square-feet of greenhouse space—nearly an acre. Making the most of the opportunity, Barfield went to work expanding FarmerJawn’s CSA to 60 members and increasing Viva Leaf’s production.

Despite the pandemic, FarmerJawn had

a good growing season. Its production and community engagement were growing.

Then, obstacles began to appear. The first was the inconsistent, and sometimes total, lack of heat in the greenhouse during the winter of 2021. Then came the burst pipes.

And then came word from the developer that the entire property could be going up for sale.

By April 2021, with plants already thriving in the greenhouse, this possibility became reality and FarmerJawn had to move out. One of her last acts before leaving, aside from quickly salvaging what was left of her

My main goal is to make sure that we make it so that kids say, ‘I’m gonna be a farmer when I grow up because ... you can sustain your family, and make really good money.’”

— christa barfield, FarmerJawn founder

plants, was to paint over the FarmerJawn logo on the side of one of the buildings. The move was symbolic for Barfield.

“It was me, leaving [the space] on my own will,” she says, “and it not being snatched away for me.”

P H OTO G R A P H Y O F B O O KS & S T U F F C O U R T E S Y O F L I N E T T E K I E L I N S K I

D

istraught but not defeated, Barfield quickly started working on her next move.

First, she returned to the Schuylkill Center and put her crops back in the ground to maintain food production. She had an idea to create a micro-farming operation where she would work through community connections in Philly and beyond to set up a network of small-scale fully-equipped urban farms that would collectively produce enough vegetables for a centralized CSA. At the same time, she was questioning if FarmerJawn should even be doing farming at all. What if it could instead be a knowledge hub that would train a whole new generation of primarily Black and Brown farmers?

“Sustainability and profitability are key to FarmerJawn, which is also especially important for Black and Brown people that are stigmatized and bruised in a sense by farming because of how it has existed in our

past,” she explains. “But farming is a part of our heritage.”

What Barfield landed on for the 2021 season was to grow as much from her Schuylkill Center plot as possible and source produce from other local farms. Remarkably, she was not only able to maintain her 2020 CSA members, but also grew the business. Her CSA membership grew to 70 members.

U

nbeknownst to barfield, as all this was going on, two FarmerJawn volunteers, Karen Shaffran and her son Zachariah Gharrafi, were looking out for her vision.

Shaffran teaches an environmental science project-based curriculum to cohorts of 11th and 12th graders at Cheltenham High School.

She first connected with FarmerJawn as an internship opportunity for her Spring 2020 cohort. But Shaffran explains that when she was young, even though she didn’t grow up on or even near farms, she wanted to be a farmer. Her son, Gharrafi, who is majoring in environmental engineering at Columbia University, also shares her love of farming and volunteering at FarmerJawn.

While going on “Covid walks” during the spring and summer of 2021, they came across the Elkins Estate, which formerly served as a 42-acre retreat for Dominican nuns.

Shaffran remembered the estate from her youth and swore that there were greenhouses on the property, and sure enough there were. Upon further investigation, Shaffran learned that Landmark Developers had proposed developing the site into a highend event space. But due to the pandemic, these plans had been put on hold.

Shaffran saw an opportunity.

After a few months of what Shaffran called “nibbles,” she and Gharrafi were finally able to get the right people on the phone and work out a tentative deal with Landmark to utilize a few acres of the land and its greenhouse space. After what happened to Barfield at the previous space, Shaffran didn’t want to create false hope, so she kept her exploration between her and her son. But when the deal looked good to go, the mother-son pair drove Barfield to the property, explained the situation and asked her what she thought.

Barfield quickly ran with it, worked out a formal arrangement with Landmark and re-established FarmerJawn on the property as an integrated urban farming operation M ARCH 20 22 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 29

utilizing about 5 acres of the 42-acre estate, with two greenhouses and 3.5 acres of outdoor vegetable and fruit production that supply produce for a 75-member CSA. Barfield then joined forces with Brandon Ritter, bringing the longtime FarmerJawn volunteer on to establish a foundation, as well as serve as the chief operating officer.

“One thing that’s important is that we’re doing things from the nonprofit side and the for-profit side,” Ritter explains.

The revenue-generating operations, like FarmerJawn’s CSA and Viva Leaf, fuel the for-profit operation. While the FarmerJawn Foundation arm raises money and makes partnerships to subsidize educational training opportunities for those who want to learn how to make a business out of urban farming, focusing on Black and Brown people in particular.

The model has certain advantages according to Ritter.

“If a person is learning with us at an urban educational level on the nonprofit side, we already have the necessary means to help them integrate into a for-profit,” Ritter says.

“Or even start their own for-profit business, because we can demonstrate that it’s already been done and that we’re able to make it a sustainable and profitable venture.”

The foundation has already been working with Cheltenham High School to promote agricultural career paths and are actively training students like the ones in Shaffran’s class. On a recent winter day, Barfield taught Shaffran’s students how to tap sugar maple trees for maple syrup.

FarmerJawn plans to build off such educational experiences to develop a fullyfledged agricultural school program in 2022, hoping to launch in 2023.

Barfield and Ritter say they have every reason to believe that their model can not only exist in a post-Covid world, but thrive, while righting some of the historic inequities that have made farming such a challenging occupation, especially for Black and Brown people.

T

he sustainability and profitability FarmerJawn aims for can be hard to find in the agriculture industry.

A 2021 report from the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) found that many direct-to-mar30 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M M A RC H 20 22

Barfield was inspired to grow healthy food for her community after farmstays on the Caribbean island of Martinique in 2018.

ket farmers in Pennsylvania barely make enough money to live.

“Participating farms had a median net income of $18,500, which approximates the 2020 poverty rate in Pennsylvania for a two-person household,” the report found, noting that the farms involved included dairy, row crop and wholesale vegetable operations.

“While all farmers want to operate profitable, self-sustaining businesses, the financial benchmarks identified by our study are consistent with industry structural challenges that negatively impact small- and medium-scale farms,” the report continues.

“Creating and expanding public and private programs and partnerships will be necessary to help direct-market vegetable farmers continue their essential work providing fresh, nutritious food for their communities.”

As one of the few small-scale urban farmers in the area who has been able to make a living, Amanda Staples has high hopes for Barfield. “[Barfield is] trying to answer what is the intersection of affordable food and a living wage for a farmer, because historically those two things don’t meet up,” says Staples, who founded the Germantown Kitchen Garden in 2008 with her then-partner.

Still at it more than a decade later, Staples is living proof that Barfield and Ritter’s vision is achievable. Staples bought her oneacre property at a time when the demand for local food was resurging in the media and programs like the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s City Harvest, established in 2005, were providing necessary materials as well as technical and community support for growers in Philadelphia.

[Barfield is] trying to answer what is the intersection of affordable food and a living wage for a farmer, because historically those two things don’t meet up.”

— amanda staple s, founder of the Germantown Kitchen Garden

But even with this support and demand, a big question at the time was if it would be possible to actually make a living wage as an urban farmer. This is a question Staples has answered, although with some caveats.

“It’s been a challenge and a pleasure,” Staples explains. “I think that I’m a bit unique in that I don’t have children. If I had anything in my life that was different, I don’t know that I would be able to be doing what I’m doing. I’m not making a ton of money, but I am making a living and I’m not in debt.”

In 2015, after splitting up with her partner, she didn’t know if she could sustain the farm and ended up taking another job.

But urban farming is a lifestyle. She loves to be able to farm but, as she puts it, “also not live way far out in the country.” A lesson in winter wreath-making she’d taken with her grandmother when she was young came in handy. In 2016, she started creating wreaths to sell during the winter, which added a new revenue stream. She restarted the urban farming operation in 2016 and continues to earn winter wreath income along with the year-round income from her on-site farmer’s market—where the social capital of being at the center of her Germantown community is just as important as the financial capital.

When asked what she thinks of Barfields’s operations, she says, “It seems like she’s got a big voice and people are listening to her, so I’m really excited to see where that conversation goes.”

Judy Wicks, whose career building Philadelphia’s local food sector has left an impactful legacy, has similar sentiments on the

potential of FarmerJawn ushering in a new generation of profitable and sustainable farmers. She thinks Christa is the person to do it.

“There is a magical quality to Christa, as though she is leading us into the world we all want to live in. One of abundance, goodness and joy,” Wicks says.

Wicks cites Barfield as a “creative entrepreneur” and “a powerful force for change.”

“While participating in her events, I have witnessed her as a dynamic, articulate and caring leader, with contagious enthusiasm, who builds community and brings hope, encouraging others to make a difference, while enjoying life,” Wicks says.

B

arfield and ritter are taking that conversation to a new level with their most recent venture in East Kensington. They have partnered with the owners of the Comly Commons on the 1800 block of East Boston Street to integrate urban agriculture into the building’s conversion plan. The space is set to be developed into apartments with ground-floor commercial spaces. FarmerJawn’s vision would add a 2,500 square-foot indoor growing space in the complex where the organization can produce herbs and edible flowers for Viva Leaf.

This location will also bring opportunities to expand their CSA to the 100-plus residents in the building, not to mention the broader River Wards and Kensington area.

Barfield and Ritter also said that the owner of the building is planning to make 6,000

square-feet of the building’s commercial space available to Black-owned businesses that FarmerJawn will help attract.

FarmerJawn envisions setting up Viva Leaf operations, which is currently online only, in the commercial space, where they’ll sell teas, herbal wellness products and produce coming straight from the indoor farm, just a few floors above. They also envision inviting the community into the space to host their own events.

FarmerJawn is also opening a garden supply center at 6730 Germantown Avenue in Mount Airy (where Viva Leaf was once headquartered) in a building that Barfield already owns. There, local gardeners will be able to buy materials and gain the resources and knowledge they need to grow food at home. The shop will host a grand opening during Earth Week in April 2022.

Opening up these new sites in East Kensington and Germantown will not only revive Barfield’s vision of decentralized farming sites throughout the city, but it also dramatically expands access for the new farmers that FarmerJawn is training.

In Barfield’s mind, this is how you grow business opportunities and make farming sustainable for growers, so that more people become interested in growing food for a living.

“Farming is just dope,” Barfield says.

“My main goal is to make sure that we make it so that kids say, ‘I’m gonna be a farmer when I grow up because it’s a way that you can sustain your family, and make really good money.’” ◆ M ARCH 20 22 G R I DP HILLY.COM 31

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Understanding the laws of the land—worldwide With an established career in environmental law, Adam Zebryk (MES ‘16) entered the Master of Environmental Studies program planning to deepen his environmental expertise to better serve the needs of his corporate clients.

“That’s the interdisciplinary approach that Penn offers,” he says.

Adam Zebryk Associate General Counsel, Americas, Elementis

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Now the Associate General Counsel, Americas for the global chemical company Elementis, Adam values the opportunities he had to study global policy and corporate sustainability, and understands how environmental challenges impact corporations worldwide. “We have locations all over the world. So if I come across a document that involves a different country, having that global perspective is important,” he explains, adding “I can speak to a number of different environmental perspectives because the program covers a lot of diverse disciplines.”

“When you come out of the Penn MES program, you’re well-suited to hit the ground running,” he concludes.

Learn more about how MES alumni put environmental studies to work:

www.upenn.edu/grid