How one group of city kids helped transform a community garden project into a thriving business

By Peggy Acott
Photos by John Valls

My visit to the Food Works farm begins bright and early on a Friday morning. Swallows arch and dive, and a hawk glides slowly overhead. It’s quiet enough to hear the buzz of insects, and in the distance, a busy sound of another sort: young voices in conversation and laughter.

Arriving at 9:30 a.m., I’m clearly the slacker here—the work crew has already been harvesting for two hours. For the last three months, this troop of ten 14- to 21-year-olds has been rising earlier than roosters to catch a ride across the St. John’s Bridge and up Highway 30 to a one-acre plot of land on Sauvie Island. They’re part of a youth-run entrepreneurial business known as Food Works, and for their summer break they have had an uncommon job for city teens: farming.

To be fair, waking up early is almost unanimously the least favorite part for these teenagers. But the young Food Works farmers are committed to their jobs and happy to be working together. I picture my teenage son at home, snoring into his pillow, and I know I’m someplace extraordinary.

Food Works grew out of the St. Johns Woods Garden Project, an adventurous collaboration started in 2001 between the St. Johns Woods housing community in North Portland and Janus Youth Programs. Desiring to build community, create job opportunities for young people, and introduce urban agriculture, Janus and St. Johns Woods residents orchestrated the construction of three 2,500-square-foot gardens and hired one adult and seven high school students to manage the plots. The Garden Project gives 30 families living 200% below federal poverty guidelines the seeds, tools, fertile land, water, and technical support to grow their own food.

From the outset, the teenagers living and working in the community were the lifeblood pumping through the Garden Project and surging it forward. In 2003, these teens informed co-founder and supervisor Tera Couchman, in a no-nonsense way, “we need job skills and we want to sell food.” They decided to start with salad mix, approaching the Portland Farmers Market to request a table. By the end of the season, they had earned $1,000. It wasn’t a lot, but they felt a flush of victory that inspired another declaration: “We want to do a farm.”