Stephanie Simmons | PolyCulture Production at Gaia Gardens
/Stephanie Simmons
PolyCulture Production @ Gaia Gardens
Decatur, DeKalb County
Stephanie Simmons is no stranger to working the land at Gaia Gardens in Decatur. She started as a farm hand for Love is Love and in January 2022, she took over the site at Gaia Gardens and launched PolyCulture Production, the first Black, female-owned farm at that location.
At PolyCulture Production, Stephanie grows a variety of crops that are available to the community through her CSA program and is working on becoming Organic Certified. “Part of the organic certification is intensive record keeping,” said Stephanie. “I need to trace a vegetable from the plot it was planted in down to the seed packet. It’s intense, which makes it hard to accept seed donations from the community because I need to know exactly where it came from.”
Stephanie wants to create ways to make the farm more accessible to the community. Some of her creative ideas include organizing alternatives for gym memberships where people can get a workout by volunteering and offering the farm as a space for field trips to homeschooling moms. During her time at FoodCorps in Boston, she saw how kids enjoyed working in the dirt and trying fresh food. “We were harvesting and the kids were fighting over the green beans. I couldn’t even be mad because they were so excited about eating vegetables.”
One of her biggest challenges is labor support. She single-handedly runs the farm and a task like weeding a bed takes half a day to do by herself. Volunteers and support from Eco-PARADIGM through Food Well Alliance’s Labor Support offering make a huge difference when it comes to completing projects. “Of all the wonderful resources that Food Well has to offer, the extra hands have been the most helpful.”
“I love that Food Well is flexible, nimble, agile, and listens to growers. They adapt to what we need and make the resources as available as possible. I feel like Food Well has shown a real commitment to inject resources in building up a local food system and it’s important right now.” Stephanie believes that by donating to Food Well, “you can help sustain the passion that brings people to this work.”
