In 2017 Dr. Cynthia Hall and her husband Micaiah decided to start their own farm to plant, harvest, and sell organic fruits and produce grown on their property in Lawnside, New Jersey, to support their healthy lifestyle. Neither was a stranger to farming and growing crops. “I’m from Lawnside, and my husband is from Connecticut. We met and got married in Atlanta and started growing food because I was in school and we didn’t have a lot of money. I was a vegetarian, and I ate a lot of organics, and my husband grew up growing food for his family. At the time, we were living in an apartment, and when we bought our first house he said, ‘You know I can grow food in the back.’ He did, and we just kept going. Eventually, we said, we wanted to do this full time.”
Originally, they started selling excess fruits and vegetables from their home garden. They live on a dead-end street that is difficult to find, so they joined several local South Jersey farmer’s markets and flea markets and in Philly. They were doing well until COVID hit last year. They were forced to shut down or curtail their normal schedule. They had an abundance of boxes they used to deliver their produce, so they started doing direct deliveries to their customers in the absence of farmers’ markets. They would personally deliver a box of fruits and vegetables to select customers. This year they are doing both.
“Last year COVID hit, and we already had these boxes where people would subscribe for the whole season and get a box every week. Last year, that was all we did because the farmers’ markets shut down or had modifications, so now we are doing both. We still have our boxes for people who subscribe for the season, and these are our primary customers because they have invested in our farm and our flowers. Things we have in abundance we sell here at the Lawnside Farmer’s Market” shared Dr. Hall.
In addition to the one-acre plot on their property, they also lease five acres in Pemberton in Burlington County, New Jersey. Currently, they are selling flowers and plants as well as asparagus, kale, lettuce, and collards. As the season progresses, they will add tomatoes, strawberries, seeded watermelons, peaches, peppers, eggplant, okra, cu-cumbers squash, and zucchini. Later in the summer, they will plant and harvest pumpkins for the fall and squash.
“Everything is organic. We don’t use any chemicals. We rotate the crops, and we’ll also have root crops beets, garlic, and onions. We have a waiting list (for weekly deliveries). If a customer doesn’t sign up for the next month we have an opening. We deliver locally to South Jersey and Philly,” she added.
Dr. Hall loves the fact she can sell their produce at the Lawnside Farmers Market. A new venture, opening opportunities for the couple to market their products and share information about organic foods and produce. “My family’s from here, my grandparents moved here in 1947, so this is my home. The significance of this is our farm is Free Haven Farms. So, we have tied in our mission with the history of Lawnside. Lawnside is an incorporated self-governing Black town that was known as Free Haven at one time because it was a refuge for escaping enslaved African- Americans. We’ve been serving all these neighboring farmers’ markets, but now we have our own home farmer’s marketplace, and it is African-American run. Normally we were the only African-American vendors at those farmers’ markets. We’re still the only African-American farmers, but we’re home. It’s nice to be literally right around the corner from our farm, where everything is super local, and our customers are our neighbors, and some of them are family. So, it’s nice to be here serving our community. It’s nice to be able to serve the community at large but to come back home. That’s what we always wanted.”
Part of their mission is to educate and inform the community about the benefits of organic, healthy, nutritious fruits and vegetables. “It was a lot of education in the beginning. Social media has been helpful. We’ve been educating our market through social media and using that as a platform to be able to impact younger people. It’s been building. Every year we get a little bit bigger.
We had challenges at the beginning with farming. Once we got the town council on board and they approved what we are doing, that helped. Here in Camden County, we don’t have a lot of farms. The USDA doesn’t even have an office here, and we
have to go to Burlington County to get service. We’re not in a place that supports us, so we’ve had to create that and get some of the rules at the USDA level changed in terms of what is considered a farm. They just created a new department within the USDA for urban farming, so that has been helpful.”
As part of their educational mission, the Hall’s operate a summer farming and science camp (Dr. Hall is a geochemist and a tenured college professor) called The Free Haven Summer Science Camp. Kids get to come out, and we teach them about science, nature, and agriculture. It’s a hands-on learning experience. It’s a science camp and a farming camp we do both because I’m a scientist and a farmer.
I get into the science of nature and growing food. With the older kids, we do a research project throughout the week. Science is infused in everything I do. There are four one-week sessions in July and August. Children are placed into age groups of five to eight-year-olds and nine to twelve,” Dr. Hall explained.
Dr. Hall is looking forward to a lengthy partnership with the Lawnside Farmers Market and hopes the word will get out about it and what they are doing. For additional infor- mation about Free Haven Farms or their summer camp visit, https://freehaveneducationalfarms.com. Check out their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/FreeHavenFarms or E-mail them at freehavenfarms@gmail.com.
