Hello 2018! This year one of our goals is to incorporate more storytelling into our work. Whether it be updates on our day-to-day activities, more information about our team, or our hopes for the future, you’ll be able to learn more about us and our stories right here on this blog!
As a cooperative, we’ve been able to work and build relationships with a variety of folk in the Dayton area and beyond. In today’s feature, we’ll be highlighting some of the incredible work of our friend, Lisa Helm!
Lisa is the director of the Dayton Urban Grown (D.U.G.) urban farm cooperative, owner of 2nd Street Market’s Dayton Urban Green, and former director of what was Garden Station. Through each of these ventures, one of Lisa’s primary goals has been to provide a space and opportunity for aspiring urban farmers to get started. It also provided her with a platform to educate Dayton locals on urban agriculture and sustainable practices. By pooling together seed and plant orders, individual farmers are able to get subsidized prices on goods, which can be crucial when first starting one’s enterprise. By hosting a variety of workshops open to the public, Daytonians were able to expand skills into a variety of trades such as canning, sprouting, cheesemaking, DIY sustainability, and propagation.
Perhaps Lisa’s collaborative culture is best seen in her latest development: an incubator farm known as Dayton Urban Grown, or D.U.G. for short. As an incubator farm, D.U.G. serves as a place where people are given temporary and affordable access to a small parcel of land, as well as training, in order to hone skills and eventually launch farm businesses. You can find D.U.G. at 333 Xenia Ave. — not to far from our Xenia site!
The produce from D.U.G. is then sold at the Dayton Urban Grown venue at 2nd Street Market. And, in the true spirit of a farm cooperative, Lisa also sells our winter produce for us! Thanks, Lisa! And be sure to take a peek at what’s for sale at Dayton Urban Grown next time you visit the market!