Sowing the Future of Urban Farming and Community Health: Meet Christa Barfield

Have you ever stood at the crossroads of career and calling, unsure of which path to take? Christa Barfield didn't just stand at that crossroad; she blazed a trail from a decade-long healthcare profession to revolutionizing urban agriculture. Our latest episode charts Christa’s remarkable pivot, capturing her transformation from burnout to beacon of change. With the birth of Viva Leaf Tea Company and FarmerJawn, Christa has rooted herself deeply in the mission to heal communities through sustainable living and the power of food as medicine.

The seed of inspiration can come from the most unexpected places – for Krista, it was a trip to Martinique. She recounts her pivotal encounter with local Black farmers to establishing FarmerJawn, a name that has become a rallying cry for inclusivity and empowerment within the agricultural scene of Philadelphia. Christa shares some of the challenges and triumphs of intertwining food sovereignty with community development, and the importance of equipping future generations with knowledge to cultivate their own sustainable success.

In this episode, Christa shares FarmerJawn's next step, CornerJawn, which will sow seeds of health in food deserts. The first CornerJawn will open in summer 2024 in Germanton in Northwest Philadelphia.  Her approach intertwines business savvy with a profound social impact. The plan is to create partnerships with medical schools, integrating food education with health screenings, to reshape community health one zip code at a time. Tune in as we uncover the layers of Christa Barfield's extraordinary journey and the legacy she is cultivating for urban communities.

Christa's Bio
Christa Barfield is a health-care professional turned farmer and lifelong Philadelphia resident. It was 10 years into her career in health-care administration when her life led her to pursuing health and happiness in a more sustainable way. After a solo trip abroad in January 2018, she returned home inspired to connect with the land, plant life, and social issues that heavily impact Black and brown communities and all people’s perception of food. Her business is a reincarnation of her healthcare career with a focus on regeneration and nutrition security. Now with 128 acres across 3 counties in PA, she has built FarmerJawn with an equitable focus on Food is Medicine and she is leading conversations nationwide on how to take a Farm First approach to America’s relationship with food and health."

Website: https://www.farmerjawn.co/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/farmerjawn_/

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Transcript

Ann Price: 0:02

Hi everybody. Thanks so much for joining me on today's episode of Community Possibilities. I have a question for you before we get started Do you feel like you're living into your purpose, and by that, I mean, are you doing the thing that you were put on this planet to do? I don't know if you're like me you're still working on it, but I know when I see someone living their purpose, wow, I just get so excited. It's just such a beautiful dare I say, sacred thing, and that's exactly how I felt when I saw my next guest on the stage at the Root Cause Coalition Summit

Ann Price: 0:46

So Christa Barfield is an amazing young woman. She started out not intending to be a farmer. You're going to find out all about FarmerJawn in just a second. She spent 10 years in the healthcare industry and when she found herself burnout in 2018, she quit her job, not knowing what she was going to do, but knowing what she didn't want to do certainly anymore. So she flew to Martinique to practice her French, and there she met some Black farmers, and that really changed her life.

Ann Price: 1:22

She flew back to her hometown of Philadelphia, she started Viva Tea Leaf, and from that it grew into FarmerJawn, and you're going to hear all about that. So it started out as a CSA and now she has some other things on her agenda, like CornerJawns. She is committed to food as medicine and creating sustainable communities, healthy communities. She is just such an inspiration. Even if you are not maybe health and nutrition is not your space, I think you can gain a lot from this conversation, just in terms of inspiring you to live into your purpose. So let's jump into the episode, and I am so happy that Krista said yes and so excited for you to hear this conversation. Please let us know what you think. Be sure and check out the show notes so that you can find out what Farmer John is up to in Philadelphia and beyond. Thanks everybody, hey everybody. Welcome back to Community Possibilities. I am just so honored to have Christa Barfield on the show today. How are you, Christa.

Christa Barfield: 2:54

I'm so well, anne. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me, yeah.

Ann Price: 2:58

So you and I met at the Root Cause Coalition I think it was December 2023, like the first week of December. Like, who has a conference in December.

Christa Barfield: 3:09

It was. It was actually. I mean, it was really good. I was late at the beginning of the of the month.

Ann Price: 3:16

Yeah, definitely yeah, and I I've I've told a couple of people that I'd never been to that that summit before and I felt like I had found my people.

Christa Barfield: 3:25

Oh, my goodness. So true, that was my second time at well, actually the first time at like their larger conference, but I feel like everything root cause does is so well done, brings the right people at the right time. It was excellent.

Ann Price: 3:38

Yeah and um, I was, uh, presenting a panel. You were part of a panel on the big stage and I remember and excuse me if I get a little fangirl, I was so impressed with you. Oh, I appreciate that. No, you were up there with some muckety mucks I would be like, so nauseous and nervous and your presence and your confidence just radiated.

Christa Barfield: 4:04

Thank you, Ann.

Ann Price: 4:05

That means a lot so as soon as I heard you speaking and heard a little bit about your story, and then, of course, I had to like go look you up and all the things. And then we I got lucky. I got, I was able to sit next to you at dinner and we had the barbecue. I don't know about you, I thought it was kind of mediocre, but that's just me it was medium.

Christa Barfield: 4:28

However, we did have to try a St Louis staple.

Ann Price: 4:31

That's where we were right now.

Christa Barfield: 4:32

Where were we? We weren't in St Louis.

Ann Price: 4:34

Kansas City. We were in Kansas City, kansas City.

Christa Barfield: 4:37

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we needed to do it, we did it.

Ann Price: 4:41

Yeah, yeah, I don't. I don't nothing against Kansas City Barbecue. I think it was the location, but I was excited because I got to sit next to you and learn a little bit about yourself.

Christa Barfield: 4:51

Yeah, I agree.

Ann Price: 4:52

Enough of fangirl for me. I'm just going to hush now and just let you introduce yourself, and I always ask people to tell us how they came to be who they are, not your business bio. You can share a little bit of that if you want to. But really, how did you come to be Christa Barfield?

Christa Barfield: 5:10

Oh, I love this question. Nobody ever asks this. I love the way you ask that. Okay, so my name is Krista Barfield, I am the founder of FarmerJawn Agriculture, but before all of that, I am a lover of science. I'm a lover of being able to figure things out, and I've really. You know, when I think about how I became that.

Christa Barfield: 5:33

I grew up in Philadelphia and I was raised by a single mother who I was the youngest of two children in a household and I watched her go to work every single day as a nurse practitioner and really honestly, before that she just I just watched her escalate and work her way all the way up from being in health care as a respiratory therapist to then being a registered nurse, going to community college and just continuing to achieve goals, and then she became a nurse practitioner and then I watched her get her doctorate. So, I just I'm always amazed by my own mother, Dr. Stallworth, and really that's how I became who I am, that's how Christa Barfield is even who she is. I'm a lover of science and healthcare because of her, and she sent me to private school and that experience alone was also beautiful. But the real interesting juxtaposition is that we still lived in an underserved neighborhood, and she was working her behind off to make sure that I could get a good education. And so, yeah, I mean I owe all of this to her. So, being as though I went, ended up staying in a private school until it was just too much. She tried like super hard, and she was like, okay, I need you to take everything that I've instilled in you and go, be great.

Christa Barfield: 6:49

And so I finished off high school and public school and, um, yeah, I went to one of the best public schools in the city of Philadelphia engineering and science, where they did have a medical program, where I can continue on my on my track. Uh, st Joe's University is where I went through, went to for college and, um, and even in that there was there were difficulties, because I also, uh, I want to say, in my 10th grade year, I had my first child. So there was a lot going on, it was a lot happening, but, again, perseverance, um, and being able to see a model of of that perseverance, I continued on, went to college, took a break, came back, got my degree and, yeah, now I have two amazing children who are 20 years old and 16 years old and, yeah, I'm just really appreciative of the family that I have and I think that's what that definitely is, what gives me the initiative to keep pushing and keep going, because it's bigger than me. So that is how.

Christa Barfield: 7:52

Christa Barfield came to be. Yeah.

Ann Price: 7:55

Yeah, I, you know, I think I just think those stories are just so important and I think that's one of the reasons why I was attracted to you on that stage. I was just really curious as to how you came to like live the life that you were meant to live. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about Farmer John, because you probably didn't think about that when you were going through college. So tell, us yeah, so tell us a little bit about how that happened.

Christa Barfield: 8:26

Yeah. So FarmerJawn. really I loved healthcare. That's really where it goes. It always goes back to that. I always say FarmerJawn is actually a healthcare delivery system that is appearing as a farm, because I take a farm first approach to health. So when I was working in health care, I did that for 10 years and the last practice that I was at in health care administration managing all the before a patient arrives and all the after a patient arrives was the role that I had, and I was in management, so I managed a team of six to 10 other people at any given time that it was my job to guide them and make sure that everything looked good. So, um, upon doing that for 200 patients a day, five days a week, I ultimately got burnt out and I was like this, enough is enough, like I can't do this anymore and I don't know what my next steps are going to be. But I know it is not this. So I resigned from my job January 2nd of 2018.

Christa Barfield: 9:25

And I decided that I was going to go to a uh on my very first vacation. I decided that I was going to go on my very first vacation and I chose Martinique because it's a Francophone country, and at the school that I went to growing up, ever since fourth grade, I was learning French and not Spanish, like most people. To growing up ever since fourth grade, I was learning French and not Spanish like most people, and I was like this will be really nice to connect back to that language that I hadn't really used much, but I had learned so much of it from fourth grade all the way through college, didn't speak it for roughly 10 years, and so I was like, let me get back to that. That's something that I always felt joyful about being able to speak that language in particular. So I chose Martinique.

Christa Barfield: 10:06

I went, and before going, I had chosen two Airbnbs, and one Airbnb was owned by a Thai chef and their partner, and they made me cups of tea every single morning using herbs right from their backyard. I got to watch them pick them and put them in a cup. And the next Airbnb on that trip I went to was owned by Black farmers, and I had no idea ahead of time that these were the experiences I was going to have going in. Both of them had swimming pools. That was my only criteria. That was it, and so I went, experienced this agrarian lifestyle and realized it was so much different than what we are experiencing here in westernized society, and I was like I really want it. This is what I want. I want to be able to, to understand how soil works, I want to grow things um, and I, and I'm going to become a business owner, and I had never said those words before so you started with the tea business.

Ann Price: 11:02

Is that correct? Am I getting?

Christa Barfield: 11:03

that right. That is correct.

Ann Price: 11:05

Yes, yeah, so tell us a little bit about that. So you came back to Philadelphia and, hey mom, guess what I'm going to do?

Christa Barfield: 11:13

Yeah, I just started telling a bunch of people honestly, like I was telling friends and everyone thought it was like a bizarre idea. They're like, okay, Christa's in transition, like let her do her thing. But one of my really good friends was took me very serious and they gifted me with a greenhouse a 24 square foot small, six by four hobby greenhouse that you put up in your backyard. And by the time I got it built, I had figured out how to rig it with irrigation and rig it with heat and I began growing herbs and I had never touched soil before 2018. So this was all new to me. I get some egg cartons, some soil and seeds and I just start, you know, putting things in it and seeing what happens and like, lord and behold, things are growing. So I am really excited about that and I just keep going.

Christa Barfield: 12:00

And then I'm also doing farm visits as well. I'm trying to volunteer as many places. I just keep going and then I'm also doing farm visits as well. I'm trying to volunteer at many places that will have me. But then I realized that I wasn't getting all the knowledge I needed around running a farm business. Like, understanding how to farm is one thing, but running a farm business is another. So I wanted to get the whole experience and I realized that that wasn't available anywhere, especially not anywhere that I could get to close enough to Philly. So, yeah, I just started doing, and the act of doing and putting one foot in front of the other led to me having a tea company, which then led to, ultimately, FarmerJawn.

Ann Price: 12:36

Oh my gosh. So you had so many things that you had to learn. You had to learn how to grow the herbs, do the things Like? I mean, even when you talk about, like, you know the irrigation cause I have three raised beds out here and I still, I still can't figure out how to run the irrigation line, so it's not just like watering the yard. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, I may have to get some advice from you, right, but then you have to like. Then you got to like sell the thing because you've got kids to.

Christa Barfield: 13:08

It's true. So, yeah, so I mean, I resigned from my job, right? So, like, all I have is this little bit of savings. And then I did have what my design of my days really was from 5 am to 9 am I would drive Uber and Lyft, and from 5 pm to 9 pm I would do Instacart, delivering groceries. And then, in the middle of the day, that's where I was masterminding, figuring out all the things that Viva Leaf Tea and FarmerJawn was going to become.

Ann Price: 13:35

OMG.

Christa Barfield: 13:37

Yes.

Ann Price: 13:40

Yeah, and then I can imagine Christa knocking on your local I don't know Trader Joe's, whatever it is like. Hey, would you, would you buy my tea? How does that work? I'm really shy. I mean, I just can't even imagine like, please buy my tea.

Christa Barfield: 13:55

You know what it's actually. This is where I believe everything happens the way it's supposed to and it's not my, it's not by my design. It really isn't like. I decided one day and this was in 2019, when I made the decision to finally put myself out there with products, with finished product, and I was like, okay, Ch rista, you got packaging, you know, you have labels that say the name and the other thing, and it's nice, you have a logo that you designed. You got a little website, like, okay, Christa, go girl.

Christa Barfield: 14:23

And then I was like I'm going to go to my very first vending event. And so I remember I actually was in North Carolina, right, the weekend of this event. I'll never forget this because it was at my family reunion in September, north Carolina, in 2019. And the actual vending event was on that Sunday. So, like I left the event early, I was like, hey, all right, bye, family, good to see y'all. And I like literally jetted back to Philadelphia so that I can make this vending event. And I got there. It was in South Philadelphia, at what's called Bach Building. It's an old high school that's been transformed into offices and creative spaces and they have a vending event called the Bach Party similar to Black Party every year, and this was my very first event. So I get there, I have my teas, I have my infused honeys, and then I have this little workshop to draw kids in with their parents, where I'm just having them fill little cups of soil and put seeds in it and the kids are enjoying that, and while I have their parents waiting, I am having them taste. So they're tasting, and so that's just constant all throughout the day.

Christa Barfield: 15:33

And then one one person can comes up to me and he says this product is absolutely beautiful, it's packaged so well and it tastes amazing. And I'm like thank you, just as I've been saying to most people. But he was definitely like more into it than most than everybody else. And he says have you ever heard of UPCs? And I'm like UPCs, I'm like it sounds familiar, but like I don't think so. No, he was like you know, like the barcode on the bank, and I was like oh. I was like, yeah, I was to be honest with you. This is my very first time introducing my product to the public, so I haven't gotten that far just yet. And he was like well, I'd like to talk to you about it, because this I would love to have like talk about this in our being in our store. And I'm like being in our store.

Christa Barfield: 16:17

So he hands me a card and I look at it and it says the Bruno Brothers, which is, um, the specialty market here in Philadelphia region.

Christa Barfield: 16:24

They have five stores and I'm like I don't. At the first glance I'm like I know this name, I've seen this before, and then it hit me like, oh yeah, like you worked in Cedar City for years, like this is the specialty grocer of our area, so he invites me in for a meeting. We ended up connecting via email after that and yeah and yeah, and then, like you know, covid got in the way a little bit but bing, bam, boom, farmer john, uh, viva tea products are launched in all five of their stores. And so that was the real beginning for me of realizing like wow, like this is, this is great, like this is gonna, we can, I can something here. I can really like have a different career, very different than I ever thought. I never thought I'd be in food, definitely never thought I'd be in the CPG space, the consumer packaged goods. So this was, you know, all very new but all very exciting.

Ann Price: 17:19

Yeah, I. And that's one of the reasons, Christa, I wanted to have you on the show, because I think it's so amazing when people live into their purpose and just spread good everywhere. So, tell us what FarmerJawn means. It's not J-O-H-N people.

Christa Barfield: 17:36

Yes, yes, so John is a Philly word, it's J-A-W-N and Jawn means person, place or thing, so it is a noun.

Christa Barfield: 17:48

It is a Philly noun and sometimes a verb, but it really just means that you know like, oh, I'm going to that John, or let me get that John real quick, or could you do that John for me it's like that type of. It's just a word that's used thrown around in the Philly region and, um, when I named, when I was thinking about the name of the company and I was like FarmerJawn, I want it to be relatable. You know, I want people when they hear it, they know I'm from Philly or they ask about it so I can tell them. But really, what it means ultimately is that anybody can farm. And and If you don't want to be a farmer, which is like you said like you have raised beds, you kind of do your thing, but it's not your main thing and you don't, you don't expect to feed your whole household off of it. But if you can't farm your own food, you should at least have the right to know who your farmer is, and so you know.

Ann Price: 18:37

While everyone looks at me as being FarmerJawn, I look at anyone who wants to be reintroduced to agriculture and understand how to integrate this into their lifestyle, also as Farmer, john, regardless of where you live and where you're from, yeah, so let's talk about how you got from the tea business to Farmer John, because there's like iterations, right, there's like stages, yeah, and when I was looking around and everybody, you, you gotta go to Christa's website because they have the most beautiful like videos and you'll learn more about the story and you'll see the story. But you work in access, education and awareness and I also want to want you to talk about, because I think at the heart of this is really, um, the complicated, uh relationship, if I can be so bold, that black and brown people have with soil and with agriculture.

Christa Barfield: 19:27

Absolutely.

Ann Price: 19:28

And there's a reason for that. Oh for sure, we can go anywhere you want to go there?

Christa Barfield: 19:34

Yeah, definitely. Thanks for introducing that. You know when I really first started thinking about agriculture, when it was introduced to me right, I take no credit for it. I really do say all the time that agriculture was introduced to me and that's how I knew it was my true calling. When I went to this country and I saw these Black people farming and they were farming on land that they actually owned, they had Airbnbs, they had businesses, like they were doing their thing, and I just became inspired and I was like this is what I want to do.

Christa Barfield: 20:04

But in that moment I didn't really grasp what I said I was wanting to do. On the larger scale of it, on the overarching theme of it as reclamation of land for black and brown people, I didn't know that I was going to become this role model for other people to to feel less stigmatized by soil, um, and. And that's the journey that we're on right now, where I realized that when I got home from Martinique and I wanted to become a farmer, and I'm like what resources do I have to learn how to do this? Not only the skills of farming, but also the business, there wasn't any. There were not any, and volunteering was not going to cut it. So I was like, well, what about the other people that come from the city or a city that have a similar experience or just come to the realization that they want to be a farmer and there's no resources to help them do that? I said I had to make a change for, you know, so that we can continue this, because if I want this to be a legacy, I can't do it all by myself and there needs to be people that come behind me. And that's how companies continue. That's how organizations continue is because they have successors, um, and I would love to have successors that continue to look like me through throughout this ecosystem.

Christa Barfield: 21:15

So, um, I designed a program called FarmerJawn and Friends Foundation Fund, which is a nonprofit. It has an agripreneur academy is what I call it, and agripreneur, as you can understand, it, just means agriculture and entrepreneur mixed together and teaching people how to take farming and use it as a business and take back the harm and the hurt of our ancestors, how they were exploited. Black bodies were certainly exploited, and brown bodies to this day are continuing to be exploited for the purpose of American agriculture, and not even just in America. So it's really important for people to understand not only how to do it, but the business of it, so they can do it for themselves, so they can be sustainable and be profitable. And so that's what FarmerJawn is striving to be.

Christa Barfield: 22:02

As we continue to scale the business, we're getting to that next level of profitability and you know, an entrepreneurship is hard. But I want to be able to be an example for folks, to show them that this is possible, because a lot of what, when we look at American agriculture, we are told the story that this is a pauper occupation, like poor farmers are poor people, is what we, what we all think and what we all, uh, seem to to believe. But and in reality, um, while farming is very difficult and there are a lot of unexpected things that happen and loss is possible, there are many farmers who are doing quite well, especially ones that are growing food. It's just too big of an industry, and Pennsylvania alone is one of its top industry, top grossing industries, and across many other states as well. So I want to teach people how to black people and brown people how to get a piece of that pie.

Ann Price: 22:59

Yeah, I love that, I love that. So you started with. This is like just amazing, and I don't remember the exact statistics about like the small amount of acreage and then how that grew, and now you're bringing like volunteers onto the farm. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Christa Barfield: 23:15

Yeah.

Christa Barfield: 23:15

So, like I said in 2018, you know, I had this 24 square foot greenhouse and then got a little bit more space.

Christa Barfield: 23:22

I wanted to grow more herbs, so I had about 3000 square feet for herbs and began growing vegetables on that same spot, got 10 CSA members around that time, brought in families that wanted us to grow food for them that they picked up each week, and then I got a 40,000 square foot set of greenhouses they were awesome and beautiful and all glass and then transitioned to 123 more acres added to what we had. So, in total, over the last six years, the enterprise now stewards 128 acres of land across three counties in Pennsylvania, which makes us the largest Black-owned food grower in the state of Pennsylvania and likely across other states as well. But we're really striving in the right direction of transitioning land to regenerative organic. So we're not just focusing on food and the growth of food, but we're really really focusing on environmental health, and the health of the soil is super key to make sure that the food we're growing is nutrient dense. Which ties me back into the whole healthcare, you know, theme, which means I really never left healthcare actually.

Ann Price: 24:31

Yeah, I'm having a um, a flashback, one of the videos um that I was watching. I don't know if it was the volunteers or a class, but you were I, and I don't even know what the vegetable was, but I remember you were asking like is it? Does anybody know what this is? Or or something like that, like educating the, the kids on it was turnips, yeah, turnips.

Christa Barfield: 24:53

I remember someone asked me like what is this? And I was like, oh, it's a turnip. I was like it's some of the best you ever had in your life, like roasted roasted yes, roasted roasted, yes.

Ann Price: 25:01

You can roast any vegetable. Folks put some olive oil, salt and pepper. So yummy, so yummy. Yeah, so yummy, so, um, that makes me think uh of uh. I was telling you early before, before I hit, play about. But you know I follow you guys on LinkedIn and all the places and I saw your, uh, your latest and greatest idea. Well, maybe it's not your latest, but I think it's. I think it's pretty great. CornerJawn oh my gosh.

Christa Barfield: 25:30

Yeah.

Ann Price: 25:30

Speaking of um, you know, I don't know if you use the term food as medicine. That seems to be a really hip term these days, but, oh my gosh, the renderings of what this? You know what you think? It's not a bodega. It's not a bodega, not exactly. Yeah, tell us about that.

Christa Barfield: 25:47

So CornerJawn is this idea that I got in 2020, actually, and I really started to develop more on it in 2021, because I took a walk in my own neighborhood in Germantown, Philadelphia, and I walked to five corner stores which there's an abundance in most inner cities, and I walked and just started asking the owners you know, would it be okay to sell produce here? Would you mind purchasing produce to be able to sell in these stores? And all of them declined and I understood it, though it makes sense because it's like, from a business perspective, I don't want to buy anything that's going to die on the shelf. It needs to actually move. So I realized at that moment that it was a psyche thing for the people that are in communities, that are health despair, that are living in food deserts. They're not even thinking about. You know, the best produce they're thinking about was convenient, and corner stores are convenient, right, and they're typically filled with a bunch of boxed items that are processed, kangas that are processed and added with tons of sodium, lots of cholesterol. You know, there's there's nothing organic. So all of that I thought about deeply and I was like Krista, you're not going to find anyone that's going to want to work with you and then also get rid of all the nonsense too. So you have to make farming convenience. You have to make farm food convenience, and that's where the idea of CornerJawn came from.

Christa Barfield: 27:13

And it was going back and forth between two names One was Grow Dega and the other one was CornerJawn and I was like Corner Join is it? It's alignment with who we are Right, and the architect I was working with at the time actually was like I think that name is better. And I was like, yeah, you're right. So we've been drawing this up. It has many iterations and now we're finally towards the final one and we have our location. We're in Kensington and I chose Corner Join locations right, because I've been laying them out around the city like all right, where's the next one? Where are we doing? What are we doing?

Christa Barfield: 27:47

And I based it off of this study that was put out in 2019 by the Philadelphia Department of Health and Drexel School of Public Health. They worked together on this study and that's all about the health outcomes of every neighborhood in Philadelphia very detailed, I mean super eye-opening, and they ranked every neighborhood 1 through 46, by who's the healthiest, who's the not, and what are the determining factors of all of that? And this study was eye-opening. It blew my mind when I'm from was number 36 on the list, so to bury it at the bottom, and the most unhealthiest neighborhood was Kensington, which is number 46, and I was like that's going to be, that's where corner drone is going. That's going to be between where I'm from in Germantown and then this one in Kensington, like these are going to be.

Christa Barfield: 28:39

One of them is going to go first, and it just so happened that we were able to get the the in Kensington. And it made sense of why it became first, because Kensington is also the part of Philadelphia where the opioid crisis is currently taking place. At the same time, while the opioid crisis is taking place and there's tent camps everywhere and just people in need, they're also gentrifying another section of the same neighborhood, so there's development, redevelopments happening at the same time. So it made sense because we'll be able to impact both types of people. We'll also from a business perspective. It makes sense because we'll also be able to introduce these foods to people who can afford them and to people who need a little extra help to be able to access them.

Christa Barfield: 29:27

And we're in the right role, right location to be able to impact both of those communities so that we can stay afloat as a business but also still have impact, and so that is. I'm really looking forward to being open this summer of 2024. It's been a long time coming and, yeah, now we're right here at the finish line.

Ann Price: 29:49

Yeah, it's kind of humorous to me that you say it's a long time coming because you started this all in. What did you say, 2019?

Christa Barfield: 29:58

Well, I quit my job in 2018. So six years?

Ann Price: 30:00

It's been a long time.

Christa Barfield: 30:01

Yeah, I'm older than you. I quit my job in 2018.

Ann Price: 30:03

So six years, it's been a long time. Yeah, yeah, I'm older than you, so maybe that's it Cause I'm thinking like girl, that's a skinny minute. I mean you could like I mean not that, I know, I know you're not going to stop, you have great things ahead of you, but I mean you can stop now and feel like I have, like done my bit for the world.

Christa Barfield: 30:21

Not yet, like done my bit for the world.

Ann Price: 30:22

not yet, not, not yet not yet how I will look. Do you and maybe, maybe you haven't dreamed this far, but will corner john be doing some of what you were doing in the garden like? This is a tournament turnip and this is how you, this is how you eat it and this is how you know you can introduce it to your family and but I want to tell you this is the most exciting thing about corner zone, which I haven't publicized as much, yet this is like new for you right, new for your followers, for your folks.

Christa Barfield: 30:49

So Corner Drone is like I mentioned earlier. Our nonprofit is an educational platform for agriculture and it really is about pushing forward these ideals around environmental health, social health and physical health, and that is what I call the Farmer Joan formula. So we're taking the Farmer Joan formula and we're partnering with different schools of medicine throughout the city of Philadelphia and they will be piloting with us bringing clinicians, clinicians in training whether it's their nurse practitioners, their physician assistants or their medical doctors students coming to us and they'll be doing screenings on site, um, at the corner zone locations, in conjunction with being able to provide people, produce prescriptions, utilizing the food that's, yes, in the store, but also the food that's going to be available outside of the store as well, helping people understand, um, how they can put their hands in soil. The reason why this is so great?

Christa Barfield: 31:47

Because most clinicians in training do not get any experience putting their hands in soil. Most medical schools don't have that as a piece of their curriculum. So we get to impact the mental health of our up and coming, you know, clinicians, while we're also impacting the all the health of our community, and they get to have a hand in that, that they get to understand and be able to actually do lifestyle medicine in action, actually perform and practice lifestyle medicine in partnership with farmer john. So those, those, those areas in the front where we're going to, where it's going to be full of food, people are going to not only be able to learn how to grow food but also understand eating, how eating which foods will benefit their health overall.

Ann Price: 32:33

Yeah, cause you were talking about how you chose that first location right, and what we're really talking about is, you know, zip codes matter, yes, they do. Where people live, you know, is so correlated with their, their health and wellbeing. So incidents of high blood pressure and diabetes and heart disease and all of the things that that that you know, you know, ravage our health, but particularly black and brown communities, who don't have the access to healthy food, and you know, you know, like your mom, they're working 24 seven to feed their family and they need things that are quick and convenient and inexpensive.

Christa Barfield: 33:11

Right and nutrient dense Right, because we talk about food, insecurity is only one part of the issue and it's nutrition security that's really the problem, because if we talk about like like I mentioned there, my community was always riddled with a number of corner stores Like if I wanted something in a box or a can, like I can get that really quick. Or if I wanted something that was fried, you know, in the back of the store, like I can get whatever, right, really quickly really cheaply, but what I couldn't get was a tomato that actually tasted good.

Christa Barfield: 33:45

I couldn't get any beets, and that's why I actually love beef, and it's wonderful to to understand that the that is something I could enjoy now, but I didn't even know what it was growing up. I never was introduced to me and and the same time, culturally relevant foods. A lot of people have to leave their community to go get it because they're also not there, so this is an opportunity to be able to to design each of the corner jawns to have most similarities, but also make them specific to the people that we're serving as well.

Ann Price: 34:14

Yeah, I love that. Um, golly moses, there's so many things I want to ask you. Um, so I imagine you have a staff now and you've got an army. You've got a volunteer army, so so now you've, now you've grown from being like a farmer to a CEO. You're also an advocate and a spokesperson. You've been like you've. You've been on a lot of conferences and exhibitions that at least that's what it looks like from watching you on social what?

Ann Price: 34:50

what is, what is the army? That's probably not a great word. You, you fill in the word. What is it? What are the folks wrapped around you look like now.

Christa Barfield: 35:01

Yeah.

Ann Price: 35:02

That makes sense yeah.

Christa Barfield: 35:04

The teams are definitely being built out. You know they are. These are just dedicated people that want to be connected to their food system. It's super admirable. Like a couple of weeks ago I had put out a message to folks saying that we were hiring and that I wanted to invite people to the farm to get a firsthand look of every section of the farm, see what we're doing, what the plans are, and also see what our needs are. As far as you know humans, what we need, and we know we can't do this without, without people. And so I like just put out that call and that post went bananas. Like it went crazy.

Christa Barfield: 35:39

All of a sudden, the day of we had nearly a hundred people that showed up and yeah, and they're just walking the farm with me and learning about everything and giving their input. And then I and then at the very end of it I'm doing literally one-on-ones. I do one-on-ones for an hour and a half, but with at least 70 people at least it just was boom, boom, boom and it was so great. While I was exhausted at the end of that, I really was so honored and I just felt like, wow, this is such a big responsibility that I've been given and for people to trust the vision, to believe in this vision. But they're also entrusting me. They're also entrusting me to succeed, and so I was like, ok, so we got to make sure we get this plan right. We got to make sure we have the funding properly. Our strategy needs to be intact, because once we get people on board, we need to make sure that we can take care of them. We need to make sure that this plan is airtight, and so currently, I have the people who have been rocking with me for most of the time.

Christa Barfield: 36:37

My all-year people are our wonderful farm managers, bree and Maxwell. Melissa, our outreach coordinator, who makes sure she plans all of our events and volunteer opportunities. Sure, she plans all of our events and volunteer opportunities. Um, and then you know, we really are focusing in on I mean, I can't not mention nicole. She literally runs my life from email, so make sure I'm in places I'm supposed to be, but like that's the core in me and that's the core of my team.

Christa Barfield: 37:06

Um, and like you said, and then our volunteers are, who are just amazing, because I thought of this idea called structured volunteers and I was like I don't know if anybody would love to do this, but, like, do you think anyone would sign up to come be with us 20 hours a month and then they get free produce every single month for the entire season and so many people have wanted that. Everybody's like, yes, sign me up. Many people have wanted that. Everybody's like, yes, sign me up. Like wow, and it's been really great. Um, under getting to know people and, yeah, getting people who really want to just know how to grow their own food. People are wanting to be self-sustainable and so I'm really happy that I get to to help them do that yeah, and they get to help me, you know.

Ann Price: 37:45

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So if you were to, um, give advice to someone maybe they don't think of themselves as a community leader, but there's, there's, there's something that they're supposed to do what would you tell them? What? What advice would you give a? A Christa?

Christa Barfield: 38:06

Yeah, you know. Um, I would say, don't overthink it. That's something I would definitely say Don't overthink it. If you get an inkling, write it down. Write that down is also what I would say. Write that down.

Christa Barfield: 38:25

I want to say that my life really changed when I started doing mood boards. I started doing, like at the beginning of the year, I would do these. You know, you get a bunch of magazines and you cut out pictures and you make this board, dream board or vision board, vision board. Yeah, the vision board was life changing for me because I didn't know that it was a multi-year board that I was doing. But when I look at them, I'm like, wow, I can see that. I can see this. This is. This happened in 2020. This happened in 2021. This happened in. Like, I can see the progression of it from a board that I did, like you know, in 2019. So I would say that write that down.

Christa Barfield: 39:02

Be very firm on what your mission is and, and ultimately, bigger than anything, be OK with the beauty of the pivot, because that's the biggest part. People are always so scared to like, oh, I thought I was going to do this and, like, man, I gotta, but this isn't working. Be okay with the beauty of the pivot. Um, it is not easy business, or? Yeah, being a thought leader in any space is not for the faint of heart, um, but it doesn't mean you can't do it. Just be firm, have a plan, execute.

Ann Price: 39:34

Yeah, so when do you rest?

Christa Barfield: 39:38

A lot. So it does. It does change. Like, resting is definitely a relative, but I, my core belief and my team knows this there is no, there is no roi without rest. So, like, rest turns into roi and unless you actually take the time to be able to turn your brain off for a second and rest your body, a lot of the work that we do is physical, even me now, because, like, yes, I turned into a farmer, but now I'm really just an entrepreneur that knows how to farm. That's how I look at myself now.

Christa Barfield: 40:11

I'm a CEO that knows how to farm because I don't spend as much time in soil as I used to. I am, you know, traveling and meeting and, you know, at conferences, as you said, which is important for me as a CEO. My role is to fundraise. I need to make sure that we can fund these big dreams that I have and the vision for the community. So I do take the time to rest. I find the time because it is important, and one of the biggest things that I do to rest is I have a spa that is an amazing day spa that is very nominally priced. It's one's one of the bath houses like that. You can just go and like soak in the tubs all day and then you can go.

Christa Barfield: 40:56

So I have my one day off on Monday and a couple Mondays um out of a quarter. I'll go ahead and do that for myself, for some some personal restoration.

Ann Price: 41:06

That's yeah, that's great, Cause you it's hard. I mean it's hard, it's what you're. What you're doing is hard on so many levels, but it's also so important and it's just so beautiful to hear about how you've kind of leaned into your purpose and what's happening because of it. I love following you guys. I just think it's you know, you're amazing, you just are amazing. Is there anything that we haven't talked about?

Christa Barfield: 41:35

that you want to bring up or let's see. I mean, I would just say that one thing I'm very, very excited about is, um, we are, uh, we're almost the B Corp I'm so close so I'll finishing up my assessment but we're a pending B Corp. Um, I just came from the B Corp conference and just got a chance to connect and meet so many other B Corps, especially ones in Canada, and also just the. Really, the excitement of being a part of the regenerative organic movement like that is literally what's going to save our planet is. It starts with how we farm, and I really take a farm first approach to everything.

Christa Barfield: 42:09

That is health and that's why, like I mentioned, the farmer drone formula is environmental health, physical health and social health, and it starts with the environment, it starts with the soil and that's the only way that we're going to be able to save our people, our communities, is by making sure that we're taking care of it. So the regenerative organic movement will be the first Black farm to join that movement once we finally finish that certification. So I'm really proud of that because, again, it's the see it be it. I want other people to look at it and say like, wow, I never even heard of this before, but, like now, I'm going to get it too, and that's what it's all about.

Ann Price: 42:47

Yeah, that's awesome, all right.

Christa Barfield: 42:57

Well, as we wrap up here, I want to ask you the question that I ask all my guests, and that is what community possibilities do you see? Oh, um, the community possibilities that I see is that all of us will actually know what health is, and how to achieve it.

Ann Price: 43:07

I love it. I love it Well, krista, thank you so much. I am just pinching myself that I went to that conference, that I saw you on stage, that I got to sit next to you. I just feel really blessed to have met you and I just wish you all the best, all the best.

Christa Barfield: 43:24

Thank you, thank you, and, yeah, I'm truly honored to be invited to your podcast and also, you know, to have sat next to you. We enjoy seeing what each other was eating and it's really great to also hear about what you do as well.

Ann Price: 43:39

Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, see you in Baltimore, I hope.

Christa Barfield: 43:43

Yes, I'm looking forward to it All right.

Ann Price: 43:46

Thank you, Kristen.

Christa Barfield: 43:47

Thank you.

Ann Price: 43:48

Anne. Hi everybody. Thanks so much for joining me on today's episode of Community Possibilities. I hope you were inspired by what you heard. I have a big announcement for you. I have a new free mini course that is available that I have designed for community coalition and nonprofit leaders. I've found that something that gets community leaders over their fear of evaluation or maybe it helps them make it more of a priority anyway is to think about how they can use their data to reach their audience. So in this free mini course I talk about infographics and success stories and even throw in an activity that you can do with your community group. So check it out. I'll put the link in the show notes so that you can go on over and grab that mini course and, before I let you go, just want to remind you that it's so helpful if you would like and share and maybe even take that extra second to write a review about the podcast. Thanks so much. We'll see you next time.