Turning vacant lots in near NW OKC into productive green spaces.......

About Us | CommonWealth Urban Farms

CommonWealth formed out of a small group of people who began meeting in the fall of 2010 with the common goal of turning vacant lots in near NW OKC into productive green spaces that would benefit the local community. Since then, many more people have joined in, and CommonWealth has partnered with Sustainable OKC in order to strengthen our effectiveness. The vision has coalesced into a focus on local food production as a way of creating a healthier and more just world. The initial goal is to create a thriving urban farm that will provide healthy, fresh food to the immediate community, and to teach gardening and urban farming skills to people throughout Oklahoma City. More deeply, CommonWealth’s focus is on community abundance: using gardening and the commonality of food as a means of connecting neighbors and enlivening our local communities.

Urban Farm

CommonWealth Urban Farms is currently developing several vacant lots in the Central Park neighborhood. CommonWealth will expand to other vacant lots as capacity allows. Planting will begin this fall and early spring, with vegetable sales beginning in mid-spring 2012. The surrounding neighborhoods are highly diverse economically and racially, and we look forward to offering moderately priced fresh food that caters to this diversity.

CommonWealth is currently growing compost that will provide the nutrient base for the farm. Using a model developed by Growing Power in Milwaukee, our volunteers are using food waste from grocery stores and leftover beer grains from local breweries and mixing it with wood chip waste. Youth from the Closer To Earth Youth Gardens are a major part of the team effort, offering experience with composting and vermiculture (worm composting) while developing leadership capabilities

Community Strengthening

As CommonWealth becomes more established, services will expand to include an educational component. Workshops will be offered on composting, gardening and marketing related topics. An internship program will be developed in our second year, so that individuals who are seriously interested in food production can learn the many aspects of urban farming, gaining the skills needed to successfully start their own urban farms in OKC. Oklahoma City has a great wealth of unused land, offering the potential for local food to become a significant portion of the OKC food economy. To accomplish that, many more urban farmers are needed.