In 2018, south Minneapolis residents Carrie Thompson and Jade Townsend—a photographer and artist, respectively—decided to take their lives in a new direction. After experiencing some personal losses in 2016 and 2017, Thompson left her full-time job, cutting back her working hours. She and Townsend decided to use that time to convert their front yard into growing space and sell the produce they grew through CSA shares.

“We wanted to do something where it just felt like it was more important and we were working for ourselves instead of for other people,” Thompson says. “We would be able to spend the time that we have doing what we want to do.”

“We wanted to make a difference,” Townsend adds. “We wanted to do something that had some sort of finished product that people truly want and need and enjoy.”

Their goal was, and continues to be, to provide affordable, locally grown produce to community members using sustainable and organic farming practices.

It’s an idea that had legs. In their first year, Townsend and Thompson started with 10 CSA members—and then had several neighbors approach them about converting their own front yards into growing spaces. This expanded what ultimately became the couple’s urban farm, the Black Radish. Every year since then, they have added two to three neighbors’ yards to their sprawling urban farm, expanding the number of CSA shares they can offer. In exchange for land and water use, neighbors who donate growing space get a CSA membership.

The Black Radish grew to the point that in 2021, Thompson and Townsend officially left their jobs and made the farm their full-time endeavor.

“This was our job,” Townsend says. “We made the decision to do this, to see if we could see this through. Life is just too short not to. We do some freelance things on the side as we have to—but this is pretty much our full-time gig.”

 

A Community Affair

The Black Radish now sprawls across 14 yards. The CSA has 75 members, and the farm wholesales produce to four local restaurants. Last year, they began the process of expanding the farm with a quarter-acre plot two blocks away.

Currently, Thompson and Townsend’s home is the hub of the Black Radish. This is where all the harvested produce is washed and prepared for pickup each Wednesday. The pickup site itself is in the couple’s backyard, where they converted a shed into a small market. Members can browse that week’s produce and fill a box with what they want or need. It’s a different model than most CSAs, which give members a set selection of produce each week. This is because Thompson and Townsend’s goal is to reduce food waste by letting members choose what they’ll actually use (while still trying to expose them to new and different crops).

“This year, we’ll have 75 members, but in the past, we had 50 members, and probably 40 of them lived within walking distance,” Thompson says. “So, on Wednesday when people come to pick up their food, they’re all just walking with their kids and with baskets to our house. It’s kind of like a parade of neighbors. In the backyard, people just congregate and hang out and chat and meet each other. We didn’t try to make it a community thing. It just ended up being really community oriented.”

It’s an unconventional approach that’s certainly not straightforward or easy to manage. But it’s rewarding. “Instead of just going to your farm [like traditional farmers], we go from yard to yard,” says Thompson. “It’s probably not the best use of time or the easiest way to farm, but it’s the way that we’ve built community.”

“People see us, they know us, we cross paths, we talk,” Townsend adds. “Now we know everybody. And I think agriculture has become kind of the centerpiece of that in a way.”

 

Sustainability on Display

From the very beginning, Townsend and Thompson wanted to focus on sustainable, low-waste growing practices. They use cover crops, prioritize soil health and minimize food waste, both from the fields and in their distribution process.

“As much as you can be a zero-waste farm, we are,” Thompson says. “All of our cover crops go back into the soil. We have stuff at the end of the year that needs to come out, like dead tomato plants, but all of that goes to our chicken coop compost, where our chickens eat it all, or worm bins. So, nothing goes to landfills.”

Much of this knowledge of sustainability, waste reduction and growing techniques is self-taught, though Thompson says she learned a lot from her mom and dad, both avid gardeners. But Townsend credits Thompson for their growth and success.

“Carrie was really good in those first couple of years about studying and learning how to get the highest yield out of the tightest spaces,” he says, noting that the learning has paid off. “The produce that we’re getting out of it is amazing.”

They’re happy to pass along this knowledge to community members as they’re out in people’s yards—sometimes explicitly through conversations, and sometimes implicitly simply through the way they’re choosing to farm.

“We’re trying to learn more and more. And as we’re learning, that process goes on display to the people of the community,” Townsend says. “Our interest in soil health and how that contributes to the health of the produce gives an example for people of how to be stewards of not only the earth but of anything they come in contact with. To know that it’s a reciprocal relationship, that we need to take care of the things we’re treading upon. It’s really in people’s faces when it’s in their front yard.”

“That’s the artists in us—we’re trying to show something,” Thompson adds. “Instead of making a painting or a drawing or a sculpture or a photograph, we’re doing a real-life installation of what we believe in. We get a sweet product, too, one you can sell and consume, that people can get healthy from and learn from and potentially be able to grow themselves.”

 

A Teaching Space

Agricultural education has been an unintentional secondary focus of Thompson and Townsend’s work at the Black Radish. As they’ve gotten to know more of their neighbors, residents often stop and talk to them when they’re farming—asking questions, looking for tips for their own gardens or just being curious about what’s being grown and how.

“It educates the community, not just how food grows, but that it grows,” Thompson says. “Some people don’t know how things grow, and that something grows on a vine or a tree. So, they’re learning.”

 

Doubling Their Impact

This growing season has even more in store. In 2025, the opportunity arose for the Black Radish to acquire dedicated land nearby, which will double the farm’s growing space. Though the purchase won’t be finalized until later this summer, the purchase agreement with the current landowners allows them to grow on the land this year.

There’s infrastructure that needs to go on the property: sheds, fences, electricity. But once that is in place, Thompson and Townsend’s hope is to move the produce washing station and CSA pickup to the new land.

“I think it’s going to take a year or two or three to really get it rolling over there,” Townsend says. “It’s going to be a lot more on our plates, and we’ll have to figure out how that works smoothly. It’s going to take a little while for us to figure that out.”

The couple also plan to create dedicated space for educational events and teaching youth about urban farming.

“We’ll be able to do things that are just not possible at our house, which will be great,” Thompson says.

When the farm gained access to the land last fall, the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation donated 120 fruit trees to the farm. Twenty trees were planted on the property, and their yield will go directly to food distribution at the Sanneh Foundation, a local nonprofit with which the farm partners (read more on page 12).

The Black Radish also hosted its first event on the new property the day all the trees were planted, with the remaining 100 trees given away to community members and volunteers in attendance. It was a way for Townsend and Thompson to thank their neighbors for all the support they’ve received over the past eight years as they’ve grown their dream of an urban farm into a flourishing reality.


Feeding the Community

Three years ago, the Black Radish formed a partnership with the Sanneh Foundation, a Twin Cities nonprofit whose mission is to empower youth, improve lives and unite communities. One way it does this is through a weekly food distribution at five locations in the metro area.

The foundation uses a grant to purchase a certain portion of the farm’s CSA shares. Beyond that, any produce that’s left over at the end of the Black Radish’s weekly CSA pickup day is loaded up, delivered to the Sanneh Foundation and given away at its Friday food distribution at Corcoran Park, just one mile from the farm.

“It’s very coveted, because it’s fresh, fresh food,” says Carrie Thompson, the Black Radish’s co-founder. “Normally it’s all gone [by the end of Friday]. But anything that’s extra goes with them back to their warehouse, so that it doesn’t get wasted. Then they have food distributions in St. Paul other days. So, it’s always used in some way.”

The Black Radish also grows some culturally relevant vegetables and herbs for the families that Sanneh serves, donating that produce directly to the nonprofit.

“The connection with the Sanneh Foundation is one of the greatest things that has happened for us,” says Black Radish co-founder Jade Townsend. “We’re so grateful to have the ability to bring all of our extra stuff to the food shelf so we have zero food waste.”

 

Bridging the Urban and Rural Gap

In 2025, urban farmer Todd Western IV joined the Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation (MFBF) as a member of the newly formed Urban Ag Advisory Group. With a family legacy of agriculture, Western is the primary farmer behind Freedom Farms in north Minneapolis—a Black-owned urban farm founded in 2020 that aims to flood urban food deserts with nutrient-rich food. The married father of three works full-time in marketing, but he’s motivated to carve out time and growing space for this endeavor.

“When I started this journey, Minneapolis was one of the worst food deserts in the country.” he says. “I don’t have much space, but I have some space, and I have a motivation.” Western has appreciated the connections he’s formed and the opportunities he’s encountered through MFBF membership.

MFBF formed the Urban Ag Advisory Group last summer, two years after launching the annual Urban Ag Conference. Made up of a mix of urban farmers, representatives from metro-area Farm Bureaus and some agricultural organizations, the group now helps plan the annual conference, along with other programming.

The goal? Strengthening Minnesota’s agricultural community through reciprocal learning between urban and rural farmers. Events hosted by the advisory group have proved to be an excellent pathway for connection among peers—something many urban farmers crave. And by connecting urban farmers to MFBF, organizational leaders and other members can learn more about the unique opportunities and challenges in urban agriculture.

Urban farmers can also bring their voices to the policy-making table through the Farm Bureau’s advocacy work. Topics like land access and integrating local ag into community food systems have energized Western’s involvement with MFBF and grown his interest in policy and advocacy work.

He grows microgreens in his home year-round, and for the past two years he has also grown produce on a 5,000-square-foot plot through the Minneapolis Garden Lease Program, selling his crops at farmers markets. But since the land is on a year-to-year lease, Western never knows if it will be available to him the following year.

“It makes it hard to set up sustainable systems within agriculture,” he says.

Western encourages other urban farmers to get involved with MFBF’s advocacy work. “MFBF has a policy book … but if we don’t have urban farmers bringing stuff forward, we don’t make policies about urban farming,” he says.

“I now have a desire to rally all the urban farmers and say, ‘Hey, if we want help fighting for some of these things that we want in urban ag, there’s an organization that’s willing to do it,’” he adds. “We just have to join and unify about what we want.”