It’s 3:59 p.m. on a recent Wednesday, and Buddhi Rai is preparing her stand for market.
“I have a lot of different kind of vegetable: beans, eggplant, bitter melon and bok choy, pumpkin, watery spinach, buckwheat, radish, onion," she said, as she unpacked her produce.
At 4 p.m. exactly, the market opens, and a flood of people rush to Rai’s stand, clamoring to get their hands on Rai's veggies before she sells out.
Rai grew up in Nepal and has been gardening at Akron Cooperative Farms since its launch six years ago, after noticing people gathering at the farm in her neighborhood. For the past few years, the community garden has partnered with Asian Services in Action, a nonprofit serving Northeast Ohio’s Asian American/Pacific Islander community, to operate the HAPI (Healthy Asian Pacific Islander) Fresh Farmer's Market.
What started as a small gathering now draws hundreds.
“We’ve doubled every year, with what we’ve done, with people coming out," said Doug Wurtz, executive director of Akron Cooperative Farms.
And that’s been a big boon in business for Rai, who can be found tending her plot several times a day.
“People are calling from the Facebook, by phone, they order," she said. "You can see already I’ve packed this, all ordered.”
Wurtz founded Akron Cooperative Farms, a 4 1/2-acre plot of land right off of state Route 8, after seeing a need in North Hill’s immigrant community in 2019.
“Eighty-five percent of our gardeners are Nepali Bhutanese," he said. "And that’s just the relationship I developed.”
Five percent of Akron’s population is Asian, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, with many immigrating from Nepal and Bhutan and settling in North Hill.
While working at Time Warner setting up internet in the neighborhood, Wurtz began to notice a challenge facing the community.
“They needed to get out. There was that issue that we had with so many with that depression, and there was suicide and so much," he said. "And it was so difficult. And so this really, to me, was that key.”
Farming or gardening and eating fresh produce plays a big role in Nepali and Bhutanese culture, Wurtz said.
"They grow up eating vegetables," he said. "In American culture, it's really not the same."
Wurtz’s response was to start a small community garden in a vacant lot behind an apartment complex in the neighborhood. He was moved by an older woman who would come to garden every day.
“This was her place. This was her thing, and it just dawned on me, that’s her purpose," he said. "That’s her life. That’s how she grew up, and it was just so important to me then, the realization that they needed access to land.”
Wurtz began to dream of something bigger, and with the help of former Mayor Dan Horrigan’s administration, he took over an underutilized city-owned baseball field to launch the farm. Now, the farm is jam-packed with several greenhouses, plots for 140 gardeners and plants vining up the old outfield fences.
Asian Services in Action partnered with the farm in 2021 to host a weekly farmer’s market that started in 2015 to help fill employment needs in the immigrant community, Program Specialist Malissa Xiong said.
“A lot of the refugee couldn’t find jobs because of language barriers and lack of work history, so a lot of them were growing up in the countryside where they were gardening," she said. "So a lot of them wanted to garden.”
About a dozen of the gardeners at Akron Cooperative Farms sell their produce at the market, Wurtz said.
"First year, it was pretty slow," Xiong said. "But then towards the end of the market, the market start increasing, the traffic start increasing."
The market has exploded in popularity since then. Last year, it averaged 700 people per week, Wurtz said. Though Xiong can’t pinpoint an exact reason why, she knows it’s become a staple for the community during the market season.
“These are fresh-picked. That’s why a lot of them wait for Wednesdays," she said. "Because they can get their own kinds of vegetables from their cultures to cook their culture food fresh.”
It's not just the produce that's bringing people back week after week, Xiong said.
"We do hear a lot from the customer. They're telling us that they like this, because it does bring the family out. A lot of the seniors, they get to come and just hang out," she said.
Wurtz has big ideas for the future, including adding more greenhouses to grow crops year-round. He also wants to build an accessible garden and expand a partnership with nearby North High School.
“We want to have young people out here," he said. "We want to be able to help young people see the value, taste the value, participate in the value of what gardens are all about.”
Because for Wurtz, serving the community is just as important as tending to the farm.
“We’re just as much about growing people as we are growing food," he said.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.
