LocaL Farming in the Columbus Community – It’s more accessible than you think

Living amid the coronavirus pandemic has created many difficulties, including the ways we shop for food; items can be out of stock, lines can be cramped and long, and the risk of infection still remains a constant threat. Fortunately, there are farmers here in our community that offer safer and more environmentally friendly options. Not only does shopping locally help support businesses during the difficulties presented by the pandemic, it also avoids the stress of grocery stores. The LocaL caught up with a few of these places such as Dew Point Farm and MercyMed Farm, which are supplying their communities with fresh, Columbus-grown produce, and TurnTime Farms, which offers local, farm-raised meats delivered to your door. 

Of course, there are many more places in our region to explore, such as Tumbleweeds Provision and Durty Beets of the Columbus community, as well as White Oak Pastures and Pecan Point Farm, just to name a few. Today we’re going to talk about Dew Point, MercyMed Farm and TurnTime Farms.

Dew Point Farm

Brad Barnes and Jenn Collins alone manage their sustainable and recently Certified Naturally Grown pocket farm in Midtown Columbus. Barnes, a writer, and Collins, an environmental scientist, had originally started out as home gardeners growing food for themselves and generally living simplistically for a more sustainable lifestyle, something they began blogging about in 2007 on their website, TheDewAbides.com. Collins later began working at Jenny Jack Farm of Pine Mountain, Georgia, where she was able to gain experience and inspiration. “Not just growing for yourself, but growing for other people, that takes skill and there is a lot to it,” Collins said. 

Barnes and Collins became interested in starting their own urban farm within the city of Columbus as a way to offer sustainably-grown produce to the community and to fight food injustice in the city. Their simplistic lifestyle helped open their minds to the needs of their community, which led them to consider food injustice in the Columbus area.

The couple became involved with the Columbus chapter of Georgia Food Oasis, which led to some grants and funding for their urban farming dreams. They started out with a public orchard on 2nd Avenue in Bibb City, which features a small lot bordered with a muraled fence painted by the Columbus State University Art Department. Members of the community can freely enjoy the space as well as the fruit. “I think we kind of got the bug to create more resources for food,” Barnes said.

Barnes and Collins’s orchard project led them to connections with the program “Lots of Good Use,” part of the Columbus Land Bank Authority. Threw their help, Barnes and Collins have been developing the latest project, Dew Point Farms, for a year, with September marking the anniversary of their property purchase. 

Located on 16th Ave, the urban pocket farm has rehabilitated an abandoned lot into a full-grown farm.

One way to honor their commitment to fighting food injustice is to work with farmers markets that offer double SNAP, like the MercyMed Market, which allows those on food stamps to use their EBT card to get double their money on fresh groceries. 

Dew Point Farms offers produce to the local community through their seasonal, weekly Wednesday markets on-property at the farm, at the MercyMed Market which sets up outside of the MercyMed clinic weekly and in season on Fridays, and through supplying local restaurants interested in offering locally grown produce in their daily specials. In the past, Barnes and Collins have worked with Bare Roots of Downtown Columbus, and hope to expand their partnerships with more locally owned businesses. 

“It’s a small enough scale that we can give a lot of personal attention to every plant,” Barnes said as Collins continued, “There are days that we harvest early in the morning and take it straight to the restaurant or straight to the market. The quality is just incomparable to something you would buy in the grocery store that was harvested six weeks ago.” A customer at a restaurant could receive a dish so fresh that it was not only prepared to order, but harvested to order. 

Dew Point Farms is a work from the heart for Barnes and Collins, one they have made sacrifices for. They are well on their way to achieving their dreams of urban farming and their continual fight against food injustice. “Our point is not to have this as an outlet to make more money but for us to have an outlet for people who can’t drive to the market to walk up and get food,” Barnes explained. Collins agreed, and said, “We just want to get food to the people who need it.”

MercyMed Farm

Keith Sims, the MercyMed Farmer and Community Health Advocate, started out at MercyMed clinic as a medical assistant to Dr. Grant Scarborough. It was during his time there that he became interested in diet as a form of preventive medicine. After some time as an apprentice on Jenny Jack Farm growing vegetables, Sims returned to Dr. Scarborough to partner with MercyMed and establish an urban farm. 

Sims feels strongly that diet “is the foundation of our health” and that health and diet are “inextricably linked.” Sims hopes that patients of Mercy Med will see the farm and ask questions and discover the importance of the type of foods we put in our bodies. 

Sims believes there is a disconnect, which he blames on the commercialized popularity of processed foods. He is hopeful to bridge the gap between the people of Columbus and the land through his direct location outside the clinic.

“My idea is that this fixes the actual bleeding in someone’s life; the eating right, exercising, being connected with your food,” Sims said. 

MercyMed Farm has been active in the community for a year and a half with the hard work and commitment of Sims and thanks to fundraising, local grants, and support from companies like  Aflac and Synovus. Sims vision includes the belief that food should not only be accessible to the community, but affordable as well. 

The seasonal weekly Farmstand Friday MercyMed Market offers the double EBT benefit opportunity to members of the community through a partnership with the non-profit organization Wholesome Wave, which incentivizes food stamp holders to use their funds on healthy foods. Additionally, Sims offers patients of MercyMed and members of the direct community a 25% discount. MercyMed is located on 2nd Ave in Columbus. The Farmstand Friday markets will reopen for the fall season on October 2 from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. weekly. 

TurnTime Farms

While Dew Point Farm and MercyMed Farm have committed their work to sustainably growing produce for the Columbus community, TurnTime Farms has committed itself to sustainably raising livestock to serve the Columbus citizens who enjoy a little meat with their veggies. TurnTime Farms is a “beyond-organic,” non-GMO, pasture-based farm, just outside of the city in Ellerslie. 

TurnTime offers home delivery of their products, which include grass-fed beef, pastured heritage pork, pastured chicken, pastured eggs, and pastured turkey. Their on-site market also offers locally-sourced products such as cheeses, soaps, and hand-crafted ceramics. 

For five years, TurnTime Farms has been committed to the natural cyclic ecosystem that is involved in raising pasture-based livestock. The farm, managed by Daniel Hord and Matt Ward, is committed to producing healthy land and, in turn, healthy animals. 

The animals on the farm, coupled with the varying types of grasses and weeds, all work together to form the pasture-based farm ecosystem that allows for a healthier, chemical-free environment. TurnTime uses a method which employs a rotating cycle of the animals in which their grazing and roaming space moves on either a daily or weekly basis depending on the animal. With every rotation of the animals, the land improves.

Most importantly, this process is humane and allows the animals to live a full and healthy lifestyle, rather than being caged into small areas hovering over their fellow species. But it also allows for a better quality of meat when the animal is in good health. The corporate or factory farming style creates stress for the animal, as well as disease, while the pasture-based farming methods employed at TurnTime farm give the animals space to breathe and prevents diseases more common in corporate farming.

Hord believes their practices at TurnTime Farms to be natural in the sense of how farming was originally practiced, saying that, “God gave all of these animals different characteristics for a purpose. We didn’t invent this, it was already designed into the way farmers a hundred years ago were already farming.” Hord went on to say that “[farmers] didn’t have the industrialized opportunities to farm so they had to find ways to use the animals, and we’re just mimicking some of those practices on our farm.”

While the farm is currently focused on animal-based farming, TurnTime hopes for a future partnership for plant-based farming as well. “We would love to have vegetables grown out here, but we would love it to be someone who has that passion [to take that on],” Hord said. The market on-site at the farm is open every Wednesday and the first Saturday of the month from 12 p.m.-5 p.m. Delivery purchases can be made as well with no subscription requirement.

By Paige Adams