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https://communityimpact.com/houston/...cerated-youth/

Blackwood Skyfarm connects nature, plants hope for incarcerated youth

By Melissa Enaje | 6:00 PM Oct 17, 2023 CDT
Updated 7:24 PM Oct 17, 2023 CDT

During one of the rare days when Houston saw rain in its forecast after brutal record-breaking summer temperatures, Cath Conlon carted trays of vegetables through the elevators at a multiuse development in the heart of Downtown Houston. The president and CEO of the nonprofit Blackwood Educational Land Institute wasn’t at the wrong building, even though it housed everything from restaurant pop-ups and coworking spaces.

Instead, she was headed to bring fresh crops from her Hempstead farm to one of biggest urban rooftop farms in Texas, Blackwood’s Skyfarm. Located at POST Houston, the farm laboratory, as they call it, experiments with different regenerative agricultural techniques such as permaculture in a distinctive urban rooftop soil setting. The nonprofit also hosts various educational experiences for guests, volunteers and anyone who is interested in becoming what it calls eco-literate.

With its fresh, organic produce, the organization’s mission is to build community around food, reduce its carbon footprint and create healthier outcomes for the city with every piece of food that is distributed, sold and eaten.

Conlon and her lead farmer, Aaron Flores, were delighted that their scorched rows of crops could bask in drops of water coming from the sky.

“What I would like most people to understand about what extreme weather does to food production is it just really shortens windows. It’s cutting our seasons terribly short. August is becoming a time you cannot grow food. What is that going to look like if we're losing whole months of the year where we can’t produce food?” Flores said.

Along the 1-acre rooftop farm, some rows were empty for next season, and some rows were filled with crops that thrived in the heat, such as the hibiscus and basil plants. Toward the western side of the farm were pops of colors with the pale orange pumpkins and green watermelons. If every crop has its own how-to-survive story, then connected to each watermelon and pumpkin would be the stories of the young people who participated in Skyfarm’s latest educational program with the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department.