By Anna Yoder | Columnist

As an avid gardener, I arrived at the Northside with many gardening tools: multiple sized shovels and spades, hoes and rakes, a mattock, sledge hammers, a pitchfork, etc.

No longer living on acreage but rather having a tiny courtyard (that I readily admit I have over planted), I yearned to donate these tools to a place that really could use them.

Never in my wildest imagination did I expect to be able to connect with a farm on the Northside (It still blows my mind to this day). When I was contacted by Carol Gonzales — a Northside resident and crop manager at Ballfield Farm — about the gardening tools, I was absolutely intrigued. I arranged to meet Carol and find out where in the world this farm was located on the Northside. As it turns out, Ballfield Farm was located not that far from my home and is in the Perry South neighborhood.

Experiencing Ballfield Farm was almost magical. As I waited for Carol to arrive at the farm, two hummingbirds nestled into a honeysuckle vine, one of the resident groundhogs made an appearance from his burrow to say “hi,” and I spied a dawn redwood conifer, pawpaw, and dogwood trees. And I had not yet entered the farm’s rows and rows of fenced vegetable and fruit growing areas!

See the full story in the September edition of The Northside Chronicle.