Located on the 55-acre historic American River Ranch agricultural estate in Rancho Cordova, Soil Born Farms and Education Project is entrenched in the local community.
Soil Born Farms and Education Project, a nonprofit organization, offers a diverse range of programs catering to both youth and adults, including cooking classes, herbal medicine making, school gardens, and field trips.
The farm hosts 140 classes annually, according to Shawn Harrison, co-director of Soil Born Farms, and is inviting the community to celebrate its 25th anniversary on September 20.
“This year, it's really meant to commemorate this sort of chapter in our life as an organization, to get people excited about where we've been, and where it goes,” he said. “So there'll be a presentation, but it really is meant to be a time to celebrate, and look forward.”
Harrison said Sacramento has started to embrace and promote the idea of food, mentioning their upcoming event, September being Food Literacy Month in California, and the Terra Madre America’s Festival taking place just a week later.
“We have sort of this opportunity for folks to really use this month to explore all things food,” he said. “We can grow just about everything in Sacramento. So this fall period, where almost everything is in great abundance, and there are festivals and education, things sort of created to help people to experience the whole space.”
According to Harrison, the farm aims to enhance community health through education, sustainable practices, and career pathways in the food and health sectors. He said the creation of the farm stemmed from his desire to teach people how to grow their own food.
“That was sort of the foundational goal of creating an urban farm,” Harrison said. “Once the group started to grow some of their own food, they could potentially get in the kitchen and start eating better and producing healthier food.”
Food education
Harrison is a local who grew up in Sacramento, surrounded by agriculture throughout his childhood.
He noticed a lot of people's well-being and suffering came from what people were putting into their bodies food-wise. There was an opportunity to teach people about what food they could put in their bodies to live a healthier life.
“The idea for a farm and education center kind of came out of this awareness that maybe we got a problem,” Harrison said. “I got really energized around the idea of a project that would address some of those core realities: We could grow food better, we could strengthen people's relationship with food, we could actually give them skills.”
In the early 2000s, he and his co-director Marco Franciosa, started the Soil Born Farms project on a three acre farm in the Arden area. Janet Zeller, the third founder, joined in 2002, and the three decided to get their nonprofit status in 2004.
The nonprofit currently offers a range of education programs, from youth to adult, according to Harrison.
“We want to teach skills from an early age to early adulthood around these issues of food, health and the environment,” he said.
Soil Born Farms programs and initiatives include growing your own groceries, a youth program called Roots & Wings and herbal studies.
A sign inside of the greenhouse at Soil Born Farms in Ranch Cordova.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio“We help schools create the gardens, we give them curriculum, we train the teachers, and then we place interns through a partnership with UC Davis, Sac State and Los Rios Community College,” he said. “Then we help them run those school garden programs.”
Harrison mentioned there’s also teen empowerment programs that serve 400 kids.
“Right now, we have about 26 teens employed, and that's really about life and leadership and kills development,” Harrison said. “And getting our kids ideas about what careers could look like in environmental stewardship, in health and wellness and in agriculture, etc.”
Farm ecosystems
According to Harrison, American River Ranch is a 55-acre ecosystem that has six different areas where they grow crops.
They have a pasture system with sheep, chickens and rabbits.
“We grow grass because we have animals,” he said. “We're actually building a brand new animal barn this year that will help us to better steward those animals, and that whole program will be run by our youth, particularly youth from Cordova High School.”
The farm produces food year-round which includes vegetable fields — tomatoes and peppers and eggplant and basil and corn. Orchards with peaches, apples, pears and nectarines. There is also a creek.
After the restoration of the Cordova Creek.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio“We have a whole restored creek ecosystem, which is where really kind of the heart of the farm lies,” Harrison said. “What used to be this cement ditch that was sort of ecologically broken is now a thriving ecosystem where it's essentially our source of all these natural predators — insects, birds, lizards, and snakes. These are all the critters that are out there eating the things that we don't want to be eating our food.”
The farm also includes native, medicinal and ecological plants, according to Harrison.
“Two of the species in one of the big ecosystems on the farm are oak and elderberry in particular,” he said. “So those will be growing oak for acorns to make low glycemic, high-protein flour from the acorns, and then the elderberry, you harvest the flowers and berries, and you make tincture and syrup, which is highly medicinal. It's an immune system building plant.”
Soil Born Farms will host its 25th anniversary fundraiser, titled "Party at the Farm" 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday, September 20. The event will feature food and beverages. Find ticket information here.
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