Wearing a Carhartt work jacket zipped all the way up, Kim High passed out pitchforks and stirrup hoes to a group of volunteers standing in the Saturday...
High, 59, prefers to live in the future. When 7724 Carbondale St. was an abandoned lot of tangled tree roots, she saw a farm. Less than two years later, she sees a solution to the chronic diseases that have plagued generations of Joppa residents.
If High gets her way, the farm will be more than just a desperately needed source of nutrients for the southeast Dallas neighborhood. It’ll be an education center where residents, disproportionately affected by diabetes and heart disease, can learn about the power of diet in controlling chronic illness.You plant sunflowers down the middle of the cucumber row so the stems create a natural trellis for the cucumber vines and the flowers shade the vegetables from the Texas sun.
No one called Annie Collins Horn by her legal name. Instead they called her Joppy Momma, spelled J-O-P-P-Y, not J-O-P-P-A like the town’s name, High said. The neighborhood matriarch was calm and meek, the antithesis of High’s energetic and passionate nature. Despite the generations between them, Joppy Momma and her great-granddaughter felt deeply connected for the few years they shared on Earth.“She was never sick,” said Kendall Briscoe, 35, High’s youngest son.
Diabetes seems like a High family curse, a Joppa curse, a living-south-of-I-30 curse. But the disease that wreaks havoc on Black, brown and low-income families in Dallas has more down-to-Earth causes. Residents live closer to an asphalt plant than they do a grocery store. The nearby Shell station, one of the only walkable food options, sells chips, ramen and not much else. It’s clear to anyone who lives here that Joppa’s health is a product of its environment.Though she liked to avoid it, Temeckia Derrough, 44, would sometimes send her kids across the railroad tracks to the Shell station for last-minute ingredients. Getting to the Cash Saver on E.
Twantanisha enrolled in a diabetes clinic at Children’s Health that included nutritional counseling and diabetes education. It helped that the Derrough family had health insurance. Nearly 26% of people in Joppa’s ZIP code don’t. High also made drastic changes in response to her diabetes diagnosis. She quit her job and volunteered atHigh, who said she never missed a hair or nail appointment, fell in love with working in the dirt. The people High farmed with, at Bonton and later at Paul Quinn College, saw she’s a natural at helping things grow.
High put a tall table to the side of the farm’s 10 rows so visitors have space to learn how to farm. Not every Joppa resident will want or be able to make their own garden so they have access to fresh produce, but hopefully some will be inspired. Already, High has set up a community composting service to help create a collective source of free soil.
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