By Laura Whitt
Rooted Wisconsin
With the Troy Drive construction concluding, we can’t wait to welcome the community to Troy Farm and Gardens for our upcoming free community events. Please join us on the land this season: Garden Nights, Thursdays, Aug. 27 and Sept. 24, 4:30–7 pm; Farm to School Aid, Saturday, Sept. 12, 2–7 pm; Troy Farm Harvest Fest, Saturday, Oct. 3, 12–5 pm.
This year Rooted is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Troy Farm. Established in 2001, Troy Farm has provided locally grown produce to our Madison neighbors for a quarter of a century. It is a community farm, and that relationship with our neighbors has remained central to our mission.
Neighborhood residents have been gardening at Troy since the 1980s, and formed the Troy Gardens Coalition in 1995, along with other local organizations, to legally preserve the land from development. The city accepted the coalition’s proposal for mixed gardening, farming, housing and green space, and the site was purchased from the State by Madison Area Community Land Trust (MACLT) in 2001.
Troy Farm was established that same year, with the intention from its inception to grow food for the community. Troy Farm has been a working community farm ever since, managed first by the Friends of Troy Gardens, which later became Community GroundWorks, which then became Rooted, the nonprofit organization that farms and stewards the land at Troy today.
In an age of stretching global supply chains, growing food right where we live is the path to long-term food security for communities. Troy Farm and Gardens has been an integral part of Madison’s Northside and beloved by the people who live and work here since the beginning, and that community support is poured into the soil and given back in the produce we grow.
We look forward to growing in community with all of you in the next 25 years!
