After a decade of teaching young and old about urban farming, Full Circle Farm will cease operations on July 31.
The Santa Clara Unified School District has chosen not to renew its lease with the nonprofit farm, which uses land adjacent to Peterson Middle School. The district will take over the property in August, after summer camps wrap up that first week.
The district says the farm was unable to maintain financially stability and offer the programs agreed upon in its lease for students.
“The managing group members, though they have tried mightily, have not been able to make the enterprise financially sustainable and offer our students a program in gardening, cooking, soil science, etc. per the terms of the lease,” said superintendent Stan Rose in an April 18 letter to the community. “Since their board was not able to come up with a satisfactory solution to continue their program and meet the requirements of the lease, the district and the nonprofit have agreed to part ways.”
Full Circle’s parent organization, Sustainable Community Gardens, opened the farm in 2007. The farm on an 11-acre site runs a variety of educational programs in addition to producing eggs, fruits and vegetables for purchase. Programs include student farm tours, summer camps, educational garden volunteering and “Yoga on the Farm” on Saturdays.
Jennifer Dericco, the district’s public information officer, said there are plans to bring a similar farm and other environmental science education amenity to the site.
“We’re moving on to a new opportunity to retain a farm at that location and continue outstanding environmental science for Santa Clara Unified students,” she said. “We have decided to take on the management and educational programming of the property in order to expand the opportunities available for district students after the (Sustainable Community Gardens) lease expires.”
Full Circle Farm staffers said they were surprised to learn of the district’s decision.
According to Melissa Patel, board member of Sustainable Community Gardens and operations manager, farm staff received a letter last month stating the lease would not be renewed. The letter instructed them to vacate by the end of July and remove on-site structures and buildings such as the chicken coops and greenhouse.
“No one is really happy about it. It’s very emotional,” Patel said. “The way they handled it was not very professional. There were no previous conversations, none since except, ‘You need to be out and take these things with you.’ ”
Without much information from the district, garden manager Dan Hafeman said he had been asking Full Circle’s board, which is the same board asSustainable Community Gardens, for six months about the future of the lease. Dericco said there have been “continued conversations” with the chair of Sustainable Community Gardens regarding the farm’s fate since July last year.
According to a farm community leader who didn’t want to be named, farm staff met with the district last June to discuss a business proposal for farm operations going forward. A plan was presented to focus the farm more toward education, with revenue to be generated by tours, activities and camps, which have kept the farm financially stable the past year.
Dericco said in an email that the business plan conflicted with what the farm and the district had agreed upon and that it “relied heavily upon increasing fee-based field trips for district students, contradicting lease terms which specified that programming for district students would be free.”
Hafeman said the farm began a decade ago with a focus on growing produce, but it was difficult to find workers and pay them or their housing in the pricey region. Hafeman said that for a time the farm was able to operate well with volunteers from AmeriCorps, but things became more difficult when it transitioned to community volunteers.
“They made some bold promises when the lease was first made (in 2007). They felt at the time that we could raise enough produce with farm workers who would live in temporary housing on the property, to generate enough revenue to pay for academic programs (on the farm) and provide the district with wholesale prices on produce,” said Hafeman. “We couldn’t have interns live on the farm; we had to pay Silicon Valley rent.”
Roughly a decade’s worth of equipment and structures at the site will need to be removed over the next three months. Some of the equipment will have to be dismantled while tours and camps are still in operation, Patel said.
“It’s not just a matter of finding homes for 50 chickens or a greenhouse donated by the community,” she said. “Even if we found homes for everything, I think the hard part is they are leaving the community. Being in the heart of Silicon Valley, that open space is so important to the children and adults in the Bay Area.”
Dericco said the structures and buildings that do not meet Department of State Architect requirements for school district facilities will need to be dismantled.
Dericco added that there will be a community meeting to explore what residents and other local stakeholders would like to see at the site. The meeting is set for 6 p.m. June 1 at Peterson Middle School.
“The most important piece is we’re in the very early stages of what is next and what is possible for Santa Clara Unified students with that piece of property at the Peterson Middle School campus, and we are looking forward to including the community in that conversation,” said Dericco.
In his April 18 letter, Rose stated that a smaller farm could potentially be a better fit for the site and “there is no plan to build housing on a part of the land or to sell any part of it.” The district’s intention, the letter stated, is for the site to “continue to have an educational purpose.”
Full Circle Farm is located at 1055 Dunford Way. For more information, visit fullcirclesunnyvale.org.
