Carla Bristol was the owner of an art gallery in St. Petersburg, Florida in 2016. On occasion, she would stop by the neighborhood Walmart to pick up supplies for artist receptions. While shopping there, she noticed that many food items had expired at least a month earlier, and the meat was due to expire the next day.
“I thought this must be some kind of dumping ground for them since we were in an underserved community,” Bristol recalls. She and others reported it to the media, and not long afterward, the store closed. This resulted in a food access shortage, since another nearby grocery store had closed four years prior.
A series of discussions began among several city organizations on how to address this food and nutrition insecurity situation that the community was facing.
One interesting idea was to start an urban farm that would be staffed by teenagers within the community. There was an empty 0.83 acre lot owned by the city of St. Petersburg that could be used for the farm. They would grow a variety of produce that would be provided to community residents, who could also learn to grow their own food. Also, programs for teens would be implemented that would promote leadership skills, entrepreneurship, urban agriculture, financial literacy and wellness.
The city of St. Petersburg, the Pinellas Education Foundation and the Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg worked together to make the idea come true. In 2019, the pilot program for the St. Pete Youth Farm was established, along with hiring Bristol as collaboration manager to implement it.
Who is Carla Bristol?
Born in Guyana and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Bristol had worked as a global account manager for Verizon and did not have much experience in agriculture except for a small home garden. But she had always been very involved in the community and her gallery was a known place for teens to hang out. They would frequently stop by, and Bristol would buy them an ice cream if they improved their grades. She was an expert in getting people involved, and says that “those who know me realize that deliverables will be delivered.”
Fifteen youths were hired that summer and many of them would remain with the program through the next two years. To date, the St. Pete Youth Farm has hired over 100 youths in the community, and they’ve grown over 2,000 herbs and vegetables. All food grown can be picked up by community members at the farm during the afternoon and early evening.
The entire community learns and benefits
There are volunteer days at least once per month when local residents of all ages come to the farm and help plant and harvest the food. When the farm received 500 milk crates, the teens planted four to five plants in each one so people could take them home and grow their own vegetables for free.
LocalShops1 donated $10,000, which helped launch a community compost center. Residents can pick up a bucket, fill it with household food scraps and bring it back to the farm for processing. The farm also offers on-site demonstrations and composting activities at community events.
Thanks to a generous grant from the Ford Foundation, a greenhouse was built, along with an aquaponic system where blue and red tilapia provide fertilizer for everything growing at the farm.
Mental health and wellness programming helps the entire community
“In 2019, 33% of the young people that came to us had already been ‘Baker Acted’ at some point,” Bristol explains. Florida’s Baker Act allows for the temporary detention of someone experiencing a mental health crisis. “And once I saw that, I felt like that was something that needed to be included in our programming, with the stigma associated with mental health.”
“We started having ‘Mental Health Mondays’ and we deliberately do it on Mondays because I have no idea what their weekend was like; I have no idea what their first day back to school was like,” Bristol says. “But if we start giving them tools and areas of how to communicate, how to address their frustration and anger, not only will it be helpful for them, it will be helpful for their family, their friends and interactions at school.”
Kianna Chambers was 15 when she started working on the farm. “I liked Mental Health Mondays because we would talk about different mental health topics and how we can basically help ourselves. There are suggestions on what we can do to help us overcome, and how it benefits us, like pros and cons.”
Chambers says she took her lessons from work and shared them with her friends and family. “I tell my friends what I learned here, like some of the strategies from the mental health topics such as depression and how they can help.” Chambers is now a senior in high school and works at a grocery store with plans for college.
“Through this consistent work, we’ve seen the difference it’s made,” Bristol says. “We’ve also found that opening up this offering beyond just our youth… to their families, neighbors and more can make the difference we want to see.”
Financial literacy
The teens working at the farm earn a salary well above Florida’s minimum wage and work about 10 hours per week after school and 20 hours per week during the summer. And that calls for learning how to manage your finances. Local experts come to the farm bi-weekly to teach kids how to save money, manage credit and set financial goals. In addition, the students offer products to sell at local events such as their famous, farm-grown collard greens pesto for a recent collard greens festival. Over $1,700 was raised.
Darion Newkirk says he was a different person when he first started the program in 2019. “I wasn’t talking to anybody,” he says. “And I was just doing my own thing. I was just resting. I was actually thinking about leaving the program.”
But Bristol kept sowing the seeds of encouragement. She told him the work they were doing was important, and he was doing it. Today, Newkirk agrees. “From one okra, you can grow like 15, 20, 30, 50, 100 different okra plants,” he says. “So from one, you can make it for your entire family. I also learned how to manage money, so it’s a lot more than just farming. Right now, I’m saving up for a car.”
Newkirk was promoted to instructor at the youth farm and now aspires to become a licensed mechanic. “It’s grown me as a person for sure,” he says. “Right now, I probably wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t stay here. I’d probably be at home or hanging out with friends or at some job and probably not liking it as much. So it’s taught me a lot.”
Exciting future plans
Bristol’s plans for the near future include building a chicken coop, which she says is perfect timing considering the current cost of eggs. Also in the planning stages are a beehive to harvest honey and more flowers that can be grown and become accessible to the local residents.
Bristol says that U.S. Representative Kathy Castor will be presenting the youth farm’s contributions to the U.S. House of Representatives, which will be recorded in the Library of Congress. Hopefully, it will serve as a fine example for other communities to emulate.
Photo courtesy of St. Pete Youth Farm
