“Arugula!” a woman shouts, browsing the available produce at Raleigh City Farm’s seasonal weekly farmstand, a big smile on her face.
I chuckle with shared delight over her joy in the leafy green. Arugula isn’t necessarily always a hot commodity, says Lisa Grele Barrie, executive director for the nonprofit farm. But this was the first farmstand of the season and, as such, certain vegetables were going quickly.
“We’re just starting to ramp up our veg, and we harvested just 190 pounds of food today,” she explained. “But in the summer, I think the most we’ve harvested is 1,500 pounds in a week.”
Raleigh City Farm sits on a 1.3-acre corner lot near downtown Raleigh—a vibrant pocket of urban green, sandwiched between Blount Street on one side and a popular neighborhood shopping center, which houses the likes of Yellowdog Bakery and Standard Beer and Food, on the other.
Over the course of the next few months, the farm will produce everything from strawberries and mulberries to gorgeous wildflowers and vegetables like kale, arugula, eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers. Just over half of this produce will be sold during the Wednesday “pay what you can” farmstands that run from April to October.
The rest of the approximately 10,000 pounds of food grown each year will be distributed to community partners focused on food insecurity around Raleigh, like A Place at the Table, Feed the Pack, and Carolina Cares.
Raleigh City Farm started with a vacant lot in 2011. Grele Barrie said farm cofounders Laura Fieselman and Laurel Varnado Passera first started “noodling” on the idea in 2010, before pulling in three other friends—Josh Whiton, Erin Bergstrom, and Jonathan Morgan—to help. By the following year, the team had secured the land the farm is on now and raised $25,000 from the community with various fundraisers and a Kickstarter campaign. It was enough to get growing.
At this point in the story, Grele Barrie pauses to greet a farmstand regular by name; over the course of our conversation, she greets every customer by name and seems genuinely excited to see them. It’s clear she’s the unofficial mayor of the farm, as well as its executive director, and someone who makes it her business to get to know everyone in the community.
“Before 2020, our business model was about supporting farmers and incubating farmers, and different ones had a different piece of the property,” she continued. One farmer, for instance, ran a community-supported agriculture (CSA) subscription business, another grew hydroponic lettuce, and another sold food to restaurants.
The site began to “fall apart,” she said, so farm leadership decided to make a pivotal change during the pandemic, hiring its first farm manager to take control over the produce and production schedule. The nonprofit farm then evolved into its current iteration, working to meet food insecurity needs around the city.
“Our programming began to evolve to this hybrid distribution of giving away food all year long and finding partners,” said Grele Barrie. “Our mission became one to connect and nourish our community through regenerative agriculture. It really took root, and from 2020 to 2026, we’ve grown quite exponentially.”
Raleigh City Farm maintains a small staff, but much of the work is handled by farmer interns and volunteers. The intern “wall of fame” on a shed commemorates the roughly 50 hopeful farmers who have been through the intensive semester-long teaching program.
Through the course of the year, Grele Barrie estimates that nearly 3,000 volunteers will help with the farm’s upkeep. One of the most popular volunteer programs on Wednesdays, called Wine and Weeds, involves volunteers pulling weeds while socializing. It’s often booked weeks in advance.
“Caring for the site is a labor of love and connection,” she said.
On April 25, the farm will commemorate its 15th “bearthday,” a combo celebration of Earth Day and birthday, with a free community event.
But there’s also another reason to celebrate. In November last year, the farm announced that it is growing, through a partnership with the city of Raleigh, and putting down roots at Marsh Creek Park with a second farm.
“It’s our next iteration and extension of the farm,” said Grele Barrie, adding that the current location’s lease is up for renewal in 2029. While it’s unclear what might happen to the site then, this expansion will allow the farm’s mission to continue if the lease isn’t renewed.
“We’re looking at the future and seeing how we put down roots before we are uprooted,” she said.
If you need to touch grass (and honestly, don’t we all?), swinging by Raleigh City Farm, whether to shop at the farmstand, pick weeds, or just wander, is an accessible way to do so without even leaving the downtown Raleigh orbit.
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