Growing Food, Growing Community: Celebrating the 2026 FARE Farms Harvest

This year has been another exciting growing season for Afro Van Connect Society’s FARE Farms Initiative, and we’re proud to celebrate a successful 2026 harvest filled with fresh food, learning, connection, and community.

Throughout the season, our gardens have continued to demonstrate what can happen when we create spaces where people can reconnect with the land, learn from one another, and participate in growing food together.

Celebrating This Year’s Harvest

From planting and watering to weeding, maintaining, and finally harvesting, every stage of the growing season has been part of a larger community effort.

This year’s harvest represents more than the food coming out of the soil. It represents the time, knowledge, care, and energy contributed by community members, volunteers, partners, and everyone who has taken an interest in the FARE Farms Initiative.

Our gardens continue to be spaces where we can explore African and Afro-diasporic food-growing traditions, environmental stewardship, food security, cultural knowledge, and the importance of having community-controlled spaces where people can gather and learn.

There is something powerful about watching a seed become food—and even more powerful when that experience is shared.

The Growing Season Isn't Over Yet!

While we're celebrating what we've harvested so far, the season isn't over yet.

Late summer is still an active and important time in the garden. Plants are continuing to grow, crops are still being harvested, and there is plenty happening beneath and above the soil.

Over the coming weeks, we'll continue tending the gardens, harvesting what is ready, caring for crops that are still developing, collecting seeds, and preparing for the transition into the fall season.

So don't put away your gardening gloves just yet!

Come Take a Garden Tour

One of the best ways to understand the FARE Farms Initiative is to experience it in person.

We encourage community members, families, youth, gardeners, educators, organizations, and anyone curious about urban agriculture to stop by for a garden tour.

Come see what's growing, learn about some of the plants and growing practices we're exploring, ask questions, and hear more about the vision behind FARE Farms.

Our garden tours are also an opportunity to talk about larger questions:

How can urban agriculture strengthen food security?

How can we preserve African and Afro-diasporic agricultural knowledge?

How can gardens become spaces for cultural exchange, education, environmental stewardship, and community building?

And how can we create more opportunities for communities to participate directly in shaping the land and food systems around them?

Growing More Than Food

FARE Farms has always been about more than a harvest.

We're growing food. We're growing knowledge. We're growing relationships. And we're growing community.

Every planting season gives us another opportunity to learn from the land and from each other. Every harvest reminds us that the work we put into our communities can produce something meaningful when it is given the time, resources, and care to grow.

Thank you to everyone who has supported the FARE Farms Initiative throughout the 2026 season—from those who planted and watered to those who volunteered, visited, shared knowledge, asked questions, or simply stopped to see what was growing.

And remember: the growing season isn't finished yet.

Come visit us, take a garden tour, see what's growing, and be part of what we're cultivating next.

Growing food. Growing culture. Growing community. Growing the future.

— Afro Van Connect Society
FARE Farms Initiative