This is part of WTOP’s continuing coverage of people making a difference from our community authored by Stephanie Gaines-Bryant. Read more of that coverage.
Arcadia in Greek mythology is known as a pastural paradise where there’s enough for everyone, including plants, animals and humans. One Alexandria, Virginia, farm said that’s what it’s trying to create: “a place of plenty, inclusion and community.”
Pamela Hess, executive director of the nonprofit Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture, said the farm — located on the grounds of Woodlawn Estate with the Pope-Leighey House — is asking for volunteers each Monday from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. throughout this harvest season.
“If you want to learn how to grow your own food, there’s no better way there’s no better way than to do that next to a professional,” Hess said.
Hess said their mission is to cultivate vibrant local food systems that prioritize health equity and sustainability from the farm forward to local families by making fresh, healthy food affordable and convenient to those in neighborhoods who don’t otherwise have access to it.
Through their mobile market program, they distribute hundreds of thousands of servings of fresh, healthy foods that serve D.C. and Hybla Valley, Virginia, neighborhoods, Hess said.
“[It’s] a public health mission, it’s an environmental mission and it’s a food justice mission,” she said.
Hess said there are also mental health benefits for people who volunteer in the D.C. region and lead hectic lives.
“We know by science that there are actually benefits to having your hands in the soil and doing that work,” she said, adding that being part of your food’s growth cycle is a transformative experience for all humans, especially children.
Learn more about volunteering opportunities and farm resources at the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture by visiting ArcadiaFood.org or calling 571-384-8845. Visitors or volunteers can find the historic farm at 9000 Richmond Highway in Alexandria.
Arcadia Farm’s history
Hess said the Arcadia Farm was once a plantation owned by George Washington and was part of his Mount Vernon holdings — the Dogue Run Farm. She said he deeded the property that housed about 90 enslaved people to his granddaughter in 1805.
In 1840, Hess said, Washington’s granddaughter packed up the entire property, including the slaves, and moved to another farm because they could never grow enough food on the Arcadia Farm to feed everyone.
A Philadelphia-area timber company used to come down to the Arcadia property to buy the wood for giant clipper ships. Hess said that’s where the name Woodlawn came from.
The company was owned by Quaker abolitionists who had been looking for a farm to prove that the institution of slavery was bankrupt financially and morally while also creating a free labor system. According to Hess, the Quaker abolitionists subdivided the property and created the free town of Woodlawn, where they sold and rented land to Black and white farmers in the integrated community.
The entire Woodlawn Estate is owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the center operates on the farm as part of a landmark partnership with the Trust for public good, Hess said.
