>>I love being in nature.

So anything where it's like I get to like feel the dirt a little bit, it's always a great experience.

I think it is important that this area is here because especially since kids can come in and people like me can go learn about different types of food and see how, like though it takes a lot of effort to grow some of these things, but that it's actually like, it doesn't have to be too hard and just see that food is actually more plentiful than we believe it to be.

There's always another path to do things.

Nothing is what your first choice is.

>>He talks a lot about how like Petersburg is a food desert.

A lot of what I take away from this place and Cherry is less about like the actual act of growing things and more about what that does for the community and the earth around us.

>>So when I found out that we lived in a so-called food desert, like we lacked access to nutrient dense food, the solution that I found was to grow your own food.

So we started in our front yard with a community garden and over the last 10 years it's grown into this youth farm.

>>And for those who may not know what a food desert means, can you explain that a little bit?

>>Yeah, for sure.

Thanks for asking.

If you have to go more than 3.1 miles to get access to nutrient dense food, not just produce, not just food, but nutrient dense food, then the USDA designates you as a food desert.

Right?

>>Okay.

>>Another term for that is food insecurity, right?

So in the state of Virginia, Petersburg has the highest rate of food insecurity.

We have 30,000 people in the city of Petersburg.

We have one commercial grocery store.

>>Wow.

>>So this experience in urban agriculture, you know, the efforts that we're implementing and the ideas that we're implementing are super important.

It can show the community how to survive in the food desert.

>>Okay.

>>You know what I mean?

So the initial goal is how to survive in this food desert, growing our own food.

Then the next level is how do we thrive in this food desert?

>>Awesome.

Now, I've had the opportunity to walk around this amazing space.

I have seen onions.

I've seen greens.

I've seen cucumbers.

You have a lot going on.

>>Yeah.

I couldn't even tell you how many plants we have.

>>Okay.

>>And that's honestly the goal.

The goal is for the youth to come here and get inspired and encouraged to grow.

You know what I mean?

>>Right.

>>So we have the Medicine Maze.

It has herbs in it.

It's a conversation that we have about how food is medicine, but it's a way to get them into gardening, right?

They get to taste the rosemary, they get to taste the mint.

We get to talk about how that tastes like the gum that they eat.

Then we go over to try the kale or pick a sunflower.

We just want to show them how things grow and how easy it is to grow.

Like I was telling you earlier, you gotta sow to grow.

>>Okay.

>>So we try to teach them that.

>>Sow to grow.

>>You got it.

>>I like that.

I like that.

>>You gotta sow to grow.

>>I'm gonna take that and use it.

>>Okay.

>>And the mint tastes just like gum.

>>Oh, there we go.

>>It really does.

>>There we go.

That's how it should be.

Yeah.

My goal, so my favorite movie is "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

>>Okay.

So my goal with the Medicine Maze was to play Willy Wonka, right?

>>Okay.

>>Everything's edible.

Everything's eatable.

You can eat everything.

>>Okay!

>>I like to snack on the strawberries and the peas and the herbs.

My job is garden manager.

My sister, Ellie, she is livestock manager.

So she takes care of the animals.

My little brother, Justice, he trains our dog, Freedin, for the farm, and Jade is the manager for me, Justice, and Ellie.

>>When I grow up, I want to be a yoga teacher.

That's what I want to be, probably.

I think I would have a garden.

I should have some chickens, sheep, duck, rabbits.

I should have maybe all the animals.

My dad teaches us about our history and like our bodies and the farm.

It's fun.

You get a good workout on farms.

You get to eat good, like healthy snacks and you get to like connect with Mother Nature.

>>So I understand that you have four little children that help you out with the garden.

>>Yeah.

So we're homeschooling our four children and it's all about life skills, right?

We teach them that life is the lesson.

So home is school.

So they start their days off here at the farm.

They start off with mindfulness and breath work, and then each one of them have a job or responsibility here on the farm.

>>That is awesome.

Now, I understand that you have named different areas of this space.

Some of them mean a lot to you.

Tell us about that.

>>Yeah.

Yeah.

They all do.

They all do.

So they're all named after loved ones that helped me get to the space that I am now in urban agriculture.

>>Okay.

>>So we have the Mama Cherry Reading Garden.

We have the Khulu Kevin Medicine Maze.

>>Khulu Kevin.

>>We have the Papa Kelly Vegetable Garden.

>>Papa Kelly.

>>Yep.

We have the Classics Chicken Coop, which is-- >>Classic Chicken Coop.

>>Yeah, Classics.

>>Okay.

>>Yep.

Local business here in Petersburg.

You hear El Ray in the back.

We have the George Washington Carver Outdoor Classroom.

>>Okay.

>>Okay.

That's literally our outdoor classroom in honor of George Washington Carver in regenerative agriculture.

>>Okay.

>>We have the Happily Natural Outdoor Learning Lab.

That's like our science lab.

>>Okay.

>>As an educator, my first class was science, so that I know that lab part, that experience, being able to touch things makes a difference.

>>Right.

>>We have our Trash to Treasure compost station where we teach the youth about composting, vermicomposting, worm farming, JADAM liquid fertilizers, things like that.

We have the Papa Graves Community Kitchen where we go from soil to stomach or garden to gut, where we actually pick things out the vegetable garden and then prepare them and break bread together.

And then we also have the mobile farmstand, the Petersburg League of Urban Growers Mobile Farmstand.

>>That is absolutely wonderful.

Now, with so much going on in this space, how can I get involved?

How can the community get involved?

Where do we start?

>>So the most direct way to have impact on the space is to come to the space and exchange energy with it.

So every Monday, we host a volunteer day from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

>>Okay.

>>We call it Mondays for Many Hands.

That's a play on the Haitian proverb "Many hands make for light work."

And what we usually do is we send those volunteers home with fresh produce from the farm.

So in exchange for their energy, they get some energy from the farm.

>>That is absolutely amazing.

Now, tell us a little bit about your vision.

What do you see in the future for this space?

>>To be honest with you, I don't even want that to be on me or be on us as an organization.

I want that to be on the community.

Right?

>>Okay.

>>I want this space to be a reflection of the community, you know, what it is that they feel like they want, what it is that they feel like that they need.

The more events that we host here, the more youth that we have come through here, like I tell everybody that comes here, this is still a blank canvas and it's hard for them to understand that 'cause there's so much growing on.

But this is still a blank canvas.

There are still crevices that could have some things growing in it.

If you had an idea or a vision while you were here or after you leave here, please share it with us and then we'll apply that.

You know, I had a youth come here one day and say, "Cherry, I would love to be able to climb up in that tree and read a book."

So we got a Eagle Scout that's working on a project to build a little small tree house so that kids can go and read inside the tree.

So I just want it to be a reflection of the community.

I want you to say, "Hey, I came out there one day and I told Cherry that I wanted this and I came back the next day and it was there."

You know what I mean?

So-- >>Absolutely.

>>What it looks like in the future, I'm excited to see.

I just want to make sure that Petersburg is growing.

>>Petersburg is growing thanks to people like you and your community.

We appreciate you.

We appreciate everything that you're doing and I hope you keep it up.

>>Appreciate it.

>>Thank you so much for having us.

>>No, thank you.

>>I've seen kids come up here, like you would think would never step out foot here, and they've learned to love it.

>>Even people who were scared of bees a while ago, it took 'em a few minutes, a little bit longer than a few minutes, but eventually, as we were all just staring, learning a little bit about bees, we got 'em to walk closer and closer, be like, "Hey, these bees are actually kind of chill."

Now it's a whole nother world that you didn't know before.

It's great to be able to see that.

>>One thing I want people to know about this place is that it's not just this place.

Like this place is more about the idea than it is the physical ground underneath us.

You are bigger than the space you have provided.

You are bigger than just what you can do.

If you can get there and do stuff with other people, you'll be able to make something bigger than you could have ever dreamed of for yourself and for others.