Weekend mornings are the busiest days of the week at D-Town Farm. That’s when up to 30 volunteers from across Detroit come out to till the earth and tend the crops at the seven-acre mini-farm on the city’s west side. They sow, hoe, prune, compost, trap pest animals, build paths and fences, and harvestÂ-all the activities necessary to grow healthy organic fruits and vegetables to nurture the community. There is a 1.5-acre vegetable garden, a 150-square-foot garlic plot, a small apple orchard, numerous beds of salad greens in a couple of hoop houses, a small apiary, and a plot of medicinal herbs such as purslane, burdock, and white thistle.
‘One of our goals is to present healthy eating to people,’ says Malik Yakini, Director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), which runs D-Town. ‘We think that healthy eating optimizes a good life generally. A diet close to nature allows the human body to function the way it is supposed to function.’
D-Town is set in one of the city’s greenest areas, a former tree nursery in the 1,184-acre River Rouge Park. It’s a couple of miles downriver from Ford Motor Co.’s famous Rouge plant (that once employed 100,000 workers) […]
