In This Issue
• Today’s Farmers Market Week Market Schedule
• Meet Windy City Harvest’s Urban Ag Programs
• The ILFMA Bag At Home
Farmers Market Week Day 4 Lineup
Wednesday, August 4
Andersonville Farmers Market, 1500 W. Catalpa Ave., Chicago, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Elmhurst Farmers Market, 541 S. York St., Elmhurst, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Garfield Ridge Farmers Market, 6072 S. Archer Ave., Chicago, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Grayslake Farmers Market, 201 Center St., Grayslake, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Green City Wednesday Market, 1817 N. Clark St., Chicago, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Northbrook Farmers Market, 1975 Cherry Lane, Northbrook, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Palos Heights Farmers Market, 12217 S. Harlem Ave., Palos Heights, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Pullman City Market, 11100 S. Cottage Grove Ave., Chicago, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Ravenswood Farmers Market, 4900 N. Damen Ave., Chicago, 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Ravinia Farmers Market, Jen Jensen Park, Highland Park, 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Riverside Farmers Market, 10 Pine Ave., Riverside, 2:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Uptown Farmers Market, W. Wilson Ave. & Broadway, Chicago, 2:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Meet Windy City Harvest’s Urban Ag Programs
Local Food Forum is committed to providing information about important issues in building a better food system. One such issue is urban agriculture. Another is healthy food access for all. And another is food as a tool for economic growth and jobs — across all demographics and specifically for residents of under-resourced communities and individuals with employment issues.
Few organizations embody all these issues like Windy City Harvest — Chicago Botanic Garden's education and jobs training initiative to help build a local food system, healthier communities and a greener economy. Local Food Forum is proud to announce its partnership with Windy City Harvest, beginning with this article, that will shine a light on multiple aspects of this amazing nonprofit organization’s work.
To lay the groundwork, we present a rundown of each of Windy City Harvest’s major activities, provided by the lead of each activity. Windy City Harvest serves a variety of people with comprehensive programs that focus on youth development, workforce training and job placement, entrepreneurship training, farm business opportunities, and access to quality fresh produce. Multiple articles focused on each of these efforts will follow.
Apprenticeship: The Windy City Harvest Apprenticeship Program provides hands-on technical training in sustainable urban agriculture, offered in partnership with the City Colleges of Chicago. As part of the certificate program, students receive a combination of classroom, lab and field experience at the Arturo Velasquez Institute classroom (located at 2800 S. Western Ave.) and at Windy City Harvest farm sites; this is complemented by a 12-week paid on-the-job training at a Windy City Harvest farm or partner urban farming operation.
The goal of the program is to train beginning Chicago farmers and local food advocates to start and lead growing operations in the Chicagoland area.
The curriculum focuses on annual vegetable production, using plain language and a hands-on work- and team-focused approach. Students are trained in greenhouse and raised-bed production, soil science, plant health care, food safety and more throughout the Apprenticeship program. Instructors are qualified educators and guest speakers, including full-time Windy City Harvest staff members who have deep experience in particular aspects of sustainable growing and marketing.
VeggieRx: VeggieRx is a cooperative program developed by the Garden, Lawndale Christian Health Center (LCHC), and the University of Illinois-Chicago’s Chicago Partnership for Health Promotion (CPHP) to help patients with diet-related diseases who living in communities experiencing food insecurity.
Windy City Harvest works closely with four healthcare providers (Lawndale Christian Health Center, PCC Community Wellness, Esperanza Health Centers, and Loyola Medicine) to provide fresh produce to eligible patients who have or are at risk of diet-related illness. Along with the produce packs — complete with recipes for healthfully preparing kale, collard greens and other organically grown vegetables — participants receive weekly nutrition education and cooking lessons from University of Illinois-Chicago’s Chicago Partnership for Health Promotion.
In 2020, VeggieRx distributed more than 7,000 produce boxes to more than 900 families across the Chicago neighborhoods of North Lawndale, Austin and Belmont Cragin, as well as suburban Maywood. VeggieRx continues to grow enormously, already distributing more than 5,000 boxes to participants this year.
Harvest Corps: The Windy City Harvest Corps program employs 30 to 40 justice-involved individuals and veterans per year in closely mentored, full-time, paid transitional jobs, and supports them in finding full-time, long-term employment. The goal of the program is to help these participants overcome multiple challenges to obtain and sustain employment with wages at or above the Standard City Minimum Wage. This paid 14-week subsidized transitional job is coupled with workforce preparedness training, skills development, and referrals to wrap-around services delivered by partner organizations.
Youth Farm: Windy City Harvest Youth Farm is an after-school and summer job program for high school students. The youth development program educates and employs 80 to 90 teens from underserved communities at three farm sites in Chicago and one in Lake County each year.
Youth Farm participants work in all aspects of sustainable farming and food systems —from planting a farm to managing a beehive, from cooking with the food they grow to selling it at local farm stands and markets. Students are paid stipends for participating in the program. By the end of the season, they have gained valuable job and teamwork skills, discovered a whole new way to look at the food they eat, and grown their support system to include supervisors, program coordinators and their fellow participants.
In addition to actual farming and farm-based workshops, each Youth Farm season combines field trips, nutrition education and entrepreneurship to create a richer educational and life experience for each of the participants.
Entrepreneur and Career and Farm Incubator Programs: Launched in 2013, Windy City Harvest’s Farm Incubator Program was developed to help reduce the risks beginning farmers face. Incubator farmers are carefully selected each year from applicants who have completed Windy City Harvest’s Apprenticeship and the Business and Entrepreneurship Certificate course. These programs are supported by the USDA–NIFA (U.S. Department of Agriculture–National Institute of Food and Agriculture) Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program.
Windy City Harvest has incubated 26 farm businesses; seven are currently in the program and 11 have graduated to proudly operate independent of Windy City Harvest, supporting our local food system. Incubator farmers are based at Legends Farm in Chicago.
Community Gardening Support: Windy City Harvest operates five allotment gardens, serving more than 60 Chicago Housing Authority families, with access to raised beds; safe soil, water, seeds and transplants; and mentoring. An introduction to local food production, these plots can also serve as an entry point into Windy City Harvest job training programs.
Horticultural Therapy Services: Horticultural therapy is the professionally facilitated plant, gardening and nature-based activities to help restore physical and mental health. Chicago Botanic Garden offers therapeutic horticulture programs with its community health center partners, supporting healing from physical and psychological health challenges, including trauma that many people in the service areas face.
This includes, for example, working with Lawndale Christian Health Center’s Medicine Assisted Therapy program for patients with opioid addiction, and serving older community residents through their senior day facility. New programs and partnerships, including with Bethel New Life, and the renewal of longstanding service contracts with health care partners such as Shriners Children’s’ Hospital – Chicago are under way now that COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted.
Healing Environments Ambassadors Learning Through Horticulture (HEALTH): Offered with Chicago’s Instituto Health Sciences Career Academy, HEALTH trains Chicago youth to use horticulture and landscape design to create healthier learning environments for themselves, their families and communities. School gardens and public greenspaces, designed and built by previous program participants, serve the entire school community by creating safe places to experience the benefits of nature. After the program concludes in summer 2022, Chicago Botanic Garden will report on the program model, benefits and results (including how it advances youth violence prevention) to the botanic garden and museum communities.
The ILFMA Bag At Home
Oops. I had to rush home from Lincoln Square Farmers Market yesterday for a Zoom meeting, and forgt to photograph the tote bag from Illinois Farmers Market Association (ILFMA) there. So I took a quick pic of the market haul at home instead, with the bag doing a cameo.
Corn, eggplant, mushrooms and zucchini. That will do for a quick market hit.