Description
Grows sunflowers, zinnia, tomatoes, sage, greek oregano, rosemary, pumpkin, swiss chard, bush beans; launched and directs Dynamite Hill-Smithfield Community Land Trust and a founder of S.W.E.E.T Alabama
Ua Mer (Wah-Mare) Urban Farm began as an act of divine inspiration to partner with Nature and use what we have to meet our own personal and family needs of fresh food access. Ua Mer is an ancient Kemetic name that means "Beloved Water." We named our urban farm for the sacred and precious gift that water is as the source of life, the fountain of life on Earth.
Our home in the Historic Smithfield Community of Birmingham, Alabama, is in a "food desert," an area in which access to fresh food is not available or at a considerable distance to a community. Our situation is further compounded by a grossly inadequate public transportation system that makes fetching fresh food home a severe challenge and hardship for those without personal transportation. To meet our own needs, we began growing tomatoes, eggplant, Swiss chard, beans, squash, sage, oregano, mint and basil spring 0f 2015 to see what we could do. We had an abundance of fresh tomatoes throughout the growing season with enough to give away to friends and neighbors. We could have canned many of those tomatoes if we had planned for it. This gave us the encouragement to grow more tomatoes, our most abundant produce, and try and sell it at a farmer’s market or to our friends next season.
It is our intention that Ua Mer Urban Farms will inspire other community members to grow food in Smithfield and create a Cooperative Community Fresh Market to foster a thriving local economy.
Farmer-Susan Diane Mitchell