Community Corner

University City Urban Farm Aims to Plant Seeds in St. Louis

The Villarreal Family Farm is raising money to expand its farming operations to a vacant lot in the city of St. Louis.

What started out as a family garden for one University City couple blossomed into a working urban farm.

Now Jeri and Carlos Villarreal plan to expand their backyard farming operation into a commercial farm in St. Louis City.

A small start

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The couple started their backyard farm at their with the goal of growing enough to feed their family and sell.

The farm features a dozen vegetable beds, dwarf orchard trees and a compost bin, as well as chickens which provide eggs year-round.

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The Villarreal Family sees Farm a vacant St. Louis city-owned lot at 4539 Delmar Boulevard as prime real estate for a commercial farm. The Villarreals said they need more space to meet the needs of current customers and a growing restaurant clientle.

"Revitalizing a once vacant city lot is the perfection solution for our sustainability-focused farm,” said Jeri Villarreal.

A big dream

To fund the expansion the Villarreal Family Farm has launched a Kickstarter campaign.

The project requires pledges of $20,000 by Dec 6 at 3:55 p.m. local time. As of Friday afternoon pledges amounted to nearly $1,200.

“Just as our efforts started with a few chicks, a packet of seeds and a small patch of land, we know it doesn’t take much to accomplish great things”, said Jeri Villarreal. “Our customers live in St. Louis City and County, it just doesn’t make much sense for us to farm land out in the country just to truck our products back into the city."

In addition to office and farm space the new location will include:

  • a retail store
  • outdoor learning facility
  • hen house
  • miniature orchard
  • vertical hydroponic growing area
  • and community garden rental space


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