Alia Chambers and Jeremy Carry of Sun Path Family Farm tend their backyard plot in Richmond's South Side. (Photo by Jay Paul)
The reality of living in a food desert hit home for Alia Chambers and Jeremy Carry about three years ago, as they watched friends and neighbors walk to nearby convenience stores to buy food.
Chambers and Carry sought to ease the fresh foods void by creating Sun Path Family Farm in South Side’s Oakwood/Bellemeade community. The area is just a few minutes' walk to new high-rises and renovated homes, yet lacks a grocery store that carries fresh fruits and vegetables.
After watching a film produced by Virginia State University that details the food desert challenge in Virginia, Chambers and Carry, who previously grew fruits and vegetables as a hobby, created Sun Path Family Farm in their backyard four months ago to help feed their family and the wider community. Their plans include providing organic produce to restaurants, chefs and local grocery stores.
Many of their skills and gardening knowledge came from watching YouTube tutorials about bio-intensive urban farming, which allows farmers to grow large quantities of produce on small plots of land. They also consider as mentors the owners of TomTen Farm, an 18-acre farm in Prince Edward County.
Situated on a 40-by-40-foot plot, Sun Path Family Farm grows cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, herbs, peppers, radishes and leafy greens. The couple also grows microgreens inside their home. Every other Tuesday, they sell produce from their harvest at the Birdhouse Farmers Market on Grayland Avenue. Tending the garden requires six to seven hours each day.
Chambers, 32, had no qualms about leaving her job last September as an acquisitions specialist for the Defense Logistics Agency to follow her dreams.
The Virginia Commonwealth University communications graduate, who grew up in Richmond, says she’s always had a creative and entrepreneurial spirit, which shows in Sun Path’s vibrant and inviting website.
Chambers’ quiet, laid-back personality meshes well with that of her gregarious partner, Carry, who hails from Washington, D.C. Carry, 38, previously worked in oncology units at two D.C. hospitals and as the road manager for the rapper Wale. Having also completed a stint in culinary school, Carry says starting the farm with Chambers made sense in several ways.
“Working around people who are struggling for their life every day, you start to build relationships,” he says. “It puts a perspective on what life is.”
Carry also witnessed the effects of “the Big Pharma side” of medicine involving prescription drugs and chemotherapy, which attracted him to farming and growing foods that contribute to healthier lives.
“It’s about what you put into your body and how you take care of yourself,” he says. “I’d rather fellowship with people when they’re well.”
Carry says that he enjoys whipping up most of the family’s meals. He is eager to provide cooking demonstrations to his children, Jordan, 6 and Nadia, 10, and Chambers’ son, Jabari, 6, and spread the joy of preparing items such as salsa from a freshly picked tomato.
“We want to let [neighbors] know it’s not expensive,” adds Carry.
A visit to Sun Path shows neat rows of fresh plantings, with side and back borders of tomato plants, herbs and flowers.
The cucumber wall at Sun Path Family Farm (Photo by Jay Paul)
Chambers and Carry are especially proud of the cucumber wall scaling a side fence that they built using a bamboo wall structure from a local home and garden store. Several black fabric pots or horticultural grow bags are placed around the yard, and on the couple’s deck are packages of large red plastic cups typically associated with barbecues and tailgate parties.
“We used the red cups to start all of our seed transplants,” says Chambers, “so we planted hundred of seeds in the cups and had them in the greenhouse and then transferred them to their place in the yard once they grew large enough.”
Sun Path Family Farm is an urban farm that offers a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program for people in the area to become members and investors in the farm and share in its vegetable production. Developed in the 1960s in Japan, CSA programs are designed to build a relationship between the farmer and community. In recent years, CSA programs have seen a dramatic increase as consumers have been in search of local, fresh, organic produce, according to Sun Path’s website.
Thus far, “we have five or six CSA members who have bought into the idea of supporting their community,” says Chambers.
Beginning in July, Sun Path will have farm stand hours for the neighborhood and CSA members on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Getting more community buy-in is important for Sun Path, but so is educating the public about food.
On June 14, Chambers was one of five women on a food justice panel discussion at The Broad downtown. She shared that she wants more people to reconnect with the land, and she wants to see more children educated about the history of farming and why black farm ownership has dwindled.
Chambers often hears, “You don’t look like a farmer,” to which she replies, “A hundred and fifty years ago, we were the farmers.”
Never miss a Sunday Story: Sign up for the newsletter, and we’ll drop a fresh read into your inbox at the start of each week. To keep up with the latest posts, search for the hashtag #SundayStory on Twitter and Facebook.
