On Tuesday, July 18, Lezley McSpadden and her family and friends from the Michael O.D. Brown Foundation were out gardening in the middle of the day, despite the 100-degree heat. McSpadden’s Michael O.D. Brown We Love Our Sons and Daughters Foundation – named for her son, who was killed in 2014, and dedicated to reforming police practices and improving community health – created this farm, on the campus of the Jennings School District’s Gore Community center.
The garden was already thriving, though it had only been planted in early June. The corn sprouted a few feet tall already. McSpadden listed the vegetables growing there, occasionally looking over to her mother Desuira Harris and aunt Barbara Berry, who helped her out if she forgot something: corn, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, greens, carrots, herbs, green beans – the list went on and on.
“This is a family effort,” said McSpadden. “I’m glad to have the help of my mother, and my aunt, and everyone else.”
Her daughter Deja Brown, who graduated from Jennings High School this year and is headed to Tennessee State University in the fall, pointed out all the members of her family who were part of the gardening group: “This is my aunt, and my grandma, and my little cousin, my brother Andre, and Marquise and Jazmine… MJ is over there, and my mama husband, Louis.”
The farm is one of many new projects in McSpadden’s life. She will start college classes at Harris-Stowe State University in the fall, too, after graduating from Jennings High School alongside her daughter Deja this spring. She plans to major in Business Administration.
“I’m on my way,” McSpadden said. “But, you know, my daughter’s going to TSU, and she’s my first priority. I have to get everything situated for her, to make sure that I have time to give some of my brain span to Harris-Stowe.”
Aside from sending Deja off to college, and raising her other two children, Andre (12) and Jazmine (8), and working with her foundation, McSpadden plans to continue working to plant new seeds in Jennings.
The farm effort is spearheaded by three organizations: The Michael O.D. Brown Foundation, the Jennings School District and the St. Louis County Police Athletic League (PAL). PAL is a program through which police officers volunteer as mentors for kids.
Mondays are the assigned day for all three organizations to work in the garden, though since the PAL kids are out of school for the summer, they will rejoin the others in the fall.
The PAL program previously helped kids with “boxing, basketball, and homework help,” according to Jennings Superintendent Art McCoy Jr., “but now it’s including gardening too.” PAL’s goal in introducing a gardening program with Jennings was to teach kids about nutrition. Establishing programs to promote better nutrition and healthier living also is a core goal of the Michael Brown Foundation.
“This all came about because of my son suffering from hypertension at a young age and having to change his eating habits and eat more fresh vegetables, uncanned vegetables, and white meats instead of red meats and dark meats,” she said.
McSpadden, PAL, and Jennings officials started the garden in early June. PAL provided grant funding for tools and supplies, and is recruiting students to help with the farm. Jennings and the Michael Brown Foundation also recruited kids for the project.
The garden is decorated by tires painted in rainbow colors and filled with flowers by the Michael O.D. Brown Foundation children, and rocks painted rainbow colors by the PAL program kids. The first day of work on the farm, the children from both organizations planted the seeds for the garden together.
“I think that one of the most important things about this partnership,” McCoy said, “is that you literally have the Michael Brown Foundation, and then PAL, which is the St. Louis County Police Athletic League, doing something together, with the Jennings School District as a conduit. You know, after seeing Ferguson, some would think that you could never do anything together. This is proof that that’s not true.”
Jennings School Board member Yolanda Fountain-Henderson also works with the district’s other farm at Jennings High School and at a Jennings community garden. So, given that she puts in work at three different farms, she said, “I let the rest of them do the weeding!”
“Not ‘she let us do it’!” McSpadden laughed. “Not ‘let’! That has to be done! That’s the process of taking care of a garden.”
There are already plans to include more compost in the soil next year, which McCoy was originally nervous about – “I was like, I don’t want to touch any manure!” he said.
All food grown will be donated to the food pantry which is also on the Gore Community Center site. The Gore building, which was originally an elementary school, now serves as food pantry, farm and the site of various exercise classes and sports groups, with more community partnerships coming.
“My whole goal as a board member is to make sure all our schools have a garden,” said Fountain-Henderson. But the group’s ambitions stretch beyond that: the Brown Foundation has created a gardening curriculum guide that can be distributed to any school in the St. Louis area or anywhere else, to make nutritious food more accessible to kids and communities everywhere.
McSpadden’s passion for gardening is clear when she talks about how the kids watch the garden grow.
“Kids, you know, they like to see things,” McSpadden said. “How amazing, you can put something down in the dirt and then it starts to sprout, and then it gets tall, and it gets bigger, and it grows colors, and it actually grows something they can pick off and eat and enjoy.”
To her, gardening provides a learning experience, but it’s also a “survival skill, when you can’t afford grocery-store foods.”
“This is a joint effort of us working in harmony to grow something and to help the community be nourished, taken care of and supported,” McCoy said.
“We’re hoping we’re planting new seeds,” McSpadden said, “and watching things grow, because of the uprising and the outcome of the Ferguson situation pertaining to my son.”
