When farming meets the classroom

Seven years ago, three and a half acres of vacant lots in downtown Birmingham were transformed into rows of produce and flowers. Today the farm is still teeming with garden growth, and its life spills over to transform thousands of children outside its boundaries with a broader mission.

Since starting on its board, Mountain Brook resident Taylor Pursell has watched Jones Valley Teaching Farm’s reach grow from a couple hundred children to more than 5,000. Today its goal is to reach 10,000 students annually.

“I think it’s one of the coolest things in the state,” Pursell said.

A leader comes home

Much of today’s vision for Jones Valley’s work started in 2011. Pursell was leading the board at the time when Jones Valley founder Edwin Marty decided to leave for a similar project in Montgomery. Pursell heard about Grant Brigham through a friend who knew Grant’s dad, Tommy Brigham, and knew he wanted to recruit him to lead the farm.

Since graduating from Mountain Brook High School, Brigham had learned about the connection between agriculture and education while working for a startup nonprofit organization in Uganda. Following that experience, he studied agricultural education from an international development perspective at North Carolina State University.

“It was one of my best sales jobs to get him to come back,” Pursell said. “We were fortunate that he had a one-year-old at the time and that his mom and dad lived here in Mountain Brook.”

Brigham admits the pull was strong to come back to the place where he had grown up and already had connections. It seemed like the right thing to do, he said.

Entering the position of executive director at age 27, he said he felt young and inexperienced but learned how to lead people and develop a long-term plan. He had figured out what to do on the ground in Uganda, and he knew he would at Jones Valley as well.

Into the schools

Since starting the job three years ago, Brigham has led Jones Valley to take the educational platform from their farm downtown to make an impact at a school level. Through its Good School Food program, Jones Valley integrates urban farming with core curriculum on Birmingham City Schools campuses.

Each day at select schools, students receive instruction from a Jones Valley staff member. 

“When a student walks into a school, that child, regardless of their background, has an incredible amount of untapped potential,” Brigham said. “The style of education we do, hands-on, project-based learning, can release that potential. We see ourselves as a catalyst for that, more than we do as a catalyst for healthy eating.” 

Good School Food was at two schools at the end of the last school year and will be at three additional schools by the close of next school year. The program works with students in kindergarten through eighth grade, and Jones Valley has plans to also be in one high school soon. The work they do there doesn’t go unnoticed by board members.

“When you go out there, you watch kids sliding down slides and planting veggies,” Pursell said. “It becomes part of their life.”

Board president Braxton Goodrich, also a Mountain Brook resident, said Jones Valley’s project-based learning and Good School Food program drew him to get involved with the organization.

 “Having children learn that way, being able to touch and feel and having gardens at schools is really impossible to replicate,” Goodrich said. “Learning and lessons stick much more when they are learning that way. It’s one thing to talk about nutrition in the abstract, but to plant seed and harvest it, it’s no longer in the abstract.”

Brigham envisions students one day participating in their program from pre-K through high school graduation. That’s when he thinks change will happen.

“We are supporting what schools are trying to do already with [test] scores and overall growth as people and to prove that hands-on learning can complement and enhance core subjects,” Brigham said. “The byproduct is that the students consume food in different ways and are trying and eating healthy food on a regular basis.”

Jones Valley is already starting to see this change take place. After participating in a family kitchen program, they found that 80 percent of families cook more, and 60 percent purchase more fruits and vegetables. In schools, they have seen a 13 percent increase in math scores after students design and build their own mobile markets.

Community connections

It takes many individuals to make Good School Food and other programs happen for Jones Valley, and many of those instrumental to its leadership make their home in Mountain Brook. In addition to Pursell and Goodrich, Mountain Brook residents Kate Darden, Mike Moss and Christiana Roussel serve on Jones Valley’s board.

 “You wouldn’t believe how many people from Mountain Brook volunteer on the farm,” Pursell said. “A lot of times I’ll be with a friend, and someone will say they volunteer a week at a time out there. A lot of the mission for Jones Valley is outside Mountain Brook, but the citizens [here] have really given back in a good way by working at the farm and with these kids who come through it.”

Last year Pursell’s rising fourth-grade daughter, Saylors, and her Mountain Brook Elementary classmates ventured to Jones Valley’s flagship garden for its Seed to Plate program. In addition to MBE, Cherokee Bend Elementary students visit the farm on field trips each year. The longtime program is open to any school in the area to attend and welcomed 5,084 students last year alone.

“[Saylors] had a blast through several hours of education,” Pursell said. “She had no idea how to plant a garden or cook it or eat it before, but it made an impact on her in one visit. It made a difference that all the kids were doing it together.”

Pursell said his neighbor Sid Evans, Time Inc. group editor over titles such as Southern Living and Cooking Light, has been a great supporter. Recently, magazine staff members have welcomed target families from Jones Valley to their test kitchens to show them how to cook and prepare a healthy meal. Together they complete their time by all sitting around a table as a family and having dinner and discussion.

Pursell noted the essential role of advocacy for what Jones Valley does and that it’s key for professionals to come see what is going on and better understand the importance of farming and nutrition.

“The best way to get involved is to come to an event, because you can engage with the work we do,” Brigham said.

Jones Valley’s biggest fundraiser of the year is a Twilight Dinner on the Farm — what Goodrich calls “the best dinner in Birmingham.” This year it is set for Sept. 25 for a ticket price of $1,000 a person.

“It’s important that foundations and corporations are the anchor for what we do, but we need individuals’ support as well,” Brigham said. “It’s not an individual giving us $1,000. It’s a collective supporter, and it’s individuals helping us grow.” 

The farm also offers other fundraisers at lower price points. In June, Jones Valley’s junior board hosted a Cocktails on the Farm event featuring live music and cocktails paired with food from local restaurants, and Frank and Pardis Stitt hosted a Gather Dinner event for the farm as well.

The primary goal of all the events is to connect people with the mission and work of Jones Valley, and those involved are eager to share that with their community.

 “Food is such a central aspect of our lives, and Jones Valley uses it to educate the children in a much better way than if they were just taught from a book,” Goodrich said.

To learn more, visit jonesvalleyteachingfarm.org.