Chicago Patchwork Farm creates an accessible urban oasis for education, sustainability, and community.
Stepping into Chicago Patchwork Farm's main campus feels like you’ve left the city behind. You walk by the brightly painted shipping container and fridge, the seedling trays, and chickens squawking around the compost pile. You pass through the gate and enter the tidy garden beds.
A plethora of birds and bees swoop among the rows of flower-topped herbs, rainbow Swiss chard, and curling squash vines. A few people are weeding. At the back of the campus, an open space with twinkle lights, a bonfire pit, several chairs, and plenty of trees form an oasis from the bustle of the city.
Today, a group of ten folks give the space new life. Several people crowd around two tables under a tent. Some peel and chop radishes, a few tinker with vinaigrettes, and a handful tend to the smoky fire. In about an hour, everyone is sitting around the fire, munching on some of the freshest salad imaginable.
Chicago Patchwork Farm hosted its first “Chop It Up” event on July 11, 2024 where volunteers and workers turned excess produce into a zesty salad and several fermentation combinations to enjoy.
“To provide something simple for the community, to be able to come together, that's my goal,” said Patchwork Owner and Head Farmer Robert Zamora Phillips. “We’re so lucky we get to play with these ideas and create the future here.”
The urban farm, which has 3 campuses scattered across the city, focuses on organic vegetable production, a bi-weekly seasonal farmstand, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) organization, community plot delegations, and dreams of the future. It’s a lot to balance between the ever-busy hands and minds of two employed farmers, including Phillips. But the growing community of volunteers and participants give the farm its heartbeat.
“It’s been an uphill battle, so it feels good for the community to come in and everyone feels at home,” Phillips said. “The things that we're dreaming about doing, like fermenting and pickling and pizza, are starting to feel more tangible and sustainable for us to conduct in the future.”
Philips knows It’s not easy to run a farm. He’s trying to pay livable wages while offering high-quality produce to the community at accessible sliding scale prices. Oftentimes there’s more produce the farm can sell, but it leads to some creative creations, according to frequent volunteer Audre Smikle.
“I learned about fermentation from [Phillips]. He was like, ‘Let me show you this cool little drink I made,’ and it was like literally drinking ambrosia from the gods. I never knew you could ferment and preserve food like that,” Smikle said. “It's really encouraged me to play at home too, so I'll bring a lot of herbs back, and now I have things like chamomile and holy basil in honey.”
When abundance becomes an issue, Phillips loves showing others how to upcycle those goods into new things. Pickled veggies, preserves, teas, elixirs… there’s endless possibilities. It’s a lot to juggle, but it’s worth it.
“I know that sustainability and reciprocity towards the environment is where my heart is at, and wherever that window has existed is where I've gone,” Phillips said.
This is Phillips’ fifth year with Patchwork, and during his time, he’s experimented with his philosophy of upcycling on Patchwork’s southside campus at The Plant. Over the years, Phillips created lasagna-like structures of layering old logs, mushroom substrate and sawdust, and spent grain to build an 8-foot tall, 5-foot wide mound, known as a hugelkultur.
“The idea is that these logs will be like a battery, which will decompose over the next 10 to 15 years and slowly release nutrients and increase water cooling capacity and turn into really good soil,” Phillips said. “There's a lot of spent grain here in the city, coffee grounds, things that like, are in bulk. If you maneuver them in the right way at the right time, you can make these naturescapes.”
In April 2023, the farm hosted a workday at The Plant to turn the organic waste materials from various businesses into a new hugelkultur with the help of 20 volunteers.
“Oftentimes, in order to create a naturescape here in the city, they're gonna tell you, you gotta remove the soil and then truck in a bunch of new soil. That's millions of dollars, and meanwhile, we're still landfilling all of our greatest resources here in the city because it's cheaper. There's no accountability here in the city yet, but there can be, and there should be. There's more ways to do it right.”
Phillips takes upcycling a step further by planting fruit trees and native plants into the mounds. He plans to propagate cuttings from these blooming species to begin his own plant nursery. The city of Chicago even awarded Patchwork a Green Infrastructure grant to continue powering his method to create these green spaces.
“I just want to focus on things that live internally in the city, and how we can turn them into living places,” Phillips said. “Then I'll have a good example of what that means to provide an upcycled system.”
The success of the hugelkultur mounds led the farm to do more with the scrap logs he would pick up from Pilsen. In March 2024, he gathered together some mushroom substrate and the logs to host Patchwork’s first Mushroom Inoculation Workshop. He instructed participants how to convert old rotting logs into their own mini laboratory for growing oyster, lion’s mane, and other delectable species of mushrooms they could take home.
“That was a good manifestation of all of the energy we've been investing into our education and resources, and knowing how to present them so that the community can enjoy that, and we can learn together. That was my first time getting to teach a class on mushroom inoculation, and it was really special to do that with everybody.”
In the cooler fall months, Phillips plans to do another round of the Mushroom Inoculation Workshop, and envisions a frequent “Beans and Greens” night where members can bring their own dinnerware and share a community potluck with the farm’s abundant produce. There’s so many plans for the future: a community kitchen, an adobe pizza oven, plenty of workshops.
“To honor the beings that we're working with is amazing. It's such a pleasure, I get to just give people the tools and let them run.” said Phillips.
Within just over a year of her involvement at Patchwork, volunteer Audre Smikle finds herself running with her own relationship with community and land. She started coming on volunteer days and shopping at the farmstand. Now she has her own community plot on the City Farm campus, and recently organized an art sale fundraiser on the central campus.
“It made me realize what I value most: my community and working with land. Patchwork has been that place for community members to come and learn about the labor, to learn where their food comes from, and really take care of it,” Smikle said. “At Patchwork, you're doing stuff with your hands. You're all working towards a common goal, and then when you're done with that common goal, you feel really good. You’re actively contributing to something that makes everybody's lives better.”
Get the best content and best stories
in your inbox every day!