Photos by Madeline Pado
The Truck Farm, a nationwide project aimed at teaching young people how to eat healthier, debuted a brand new truck downtown at the Phoenix Public Market on Wednesday.
Phoenix residents had the opportunity to learn the importance of proper nutrition and growing food locally while planting vegetables, including tomatoes, snap peas, basil and strawberry spinach, at the truck-planting event. The vehicle’s appearance at the market is the first of many visits to different local venues, such as community centers, youth centers and elementary schools.
The opening of the Phoenix chapter marks the 25th city in which the Truck Farm initiative has reached out to youths via truck gardening. Other cities include Chicago, New York City and Los Angeles.
Local parent Stacey Woodward brought her son to the event and said she was thrilled that the organization had arrived in Phoenix.
“Kids today are very disconnected from where food comes from, and I think that it’s important for urban children to learn how to eat healthy,” Woodward said.
The Truck Farm project was originally started in 2009 by Ian Cheney, who lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., and wanted to create a small place where he could grow food.
Cheney decided to use green-roof materials and converted the bed of a small truck into a vegetable garden. Within the small space, he was able to grow a wide range of crops.
Cheney was inspired to try to teach urban young people the importance of healthy eating, so he brought together a small film crew last year and produced a film about his experience growing a small garden.
The 50-minute film, called Truck Farm, was shown at film festivals across the country, including at the Telluride Film Festival, and caused more people to become interested in Cheney’s project.
This new-found spark of interest in the Truck Farm project led Cheney to produce “the Fleet,” a group of 25 trucks that reside in cities across the country. The Fleet’s main goal is to enter areas that have few resources and educate people on how to plant proper gardens while teaching communities how easy it can be to garden with what they have.
Phoenix’s truck features a clean square-foot layout, with 12 perfect 18- by 18-inch squares just waiting for seeds to be planted and vegetables to be grown.
Mikey Avila, a Phoenix resident who is passionate about planting vegetables for the truck, said that the design allows everyone to easily maintain a garden of their own.
“The square-foot plan allows anyone to keep track of what is growing in their garden, how to maximize space in their backyards and how to visualize when to harvest each vegetable,” Avila said. “It’s the perfect way for kids and parents to have hands-on experience with growing their own food.”
As the temperature begins to drop for the fall season, Natalie Morris, a Phoenix native who worked with Cheney on the Fleet last spring, believes it is the perfect time for Phoenicians to engage in the gardening project.
“Because Arizona does not have the most ideal weather climate during the spring and summer, it was harder for our group to start the project here,” Morris said. “Hopefully with fall and winter, we’ll have better luck to keep the idea alive.”
Morris said she hopes that the little farm truck’s debut will inspire locals to change the way they eat.
“My mission for the Phoenix community is to see kids, as well as parents, take away how to eat better and learn that fresh food tastes good, it costs less and it helps create a sense of community,” Morris said. “I want to plant the idea in kids that gardening and healthy eating is fun.”
Contact the reporter at djescob1@asu.edu
