The farm-to-fork produce at De Rose Garden in Southeast Portland adds a twist to the typical Northwest harvest. There are dozens of sour leaf plants for adding tang to soups, dark slender leaves of Chinese spinach for mashing into a side dish and long, skinny peppers - a ghostly pale green - ready to make a curry pop. The soaring stalks of African corn don’t grow sweet ears. But to the immigrants who garden here, Roseline Vakkai says, the flavor of the sticky kernels tastes like home.
Vakkai is executive director of De Rose Community Bridge and Holistic Wellness, which is using a three-year, $1 million grant from the Portland Clean Energy Community Benefits Fund (PCEF) to build and operate a small farm. Its four locations include this long unused lot in an outer Southeast Portland neighborhood, where African and Asian immigrant and refugee women cultivate food and relationships with their new country. The inaugural 2024 class includes 16 women who are originally from Congo, Liberia, Somalia, Ethiopia, Burma, Guinea Bissau and Sierra Leone.
Before the pandemic, Vakkai had noticed that many traumatized immigrants and refugees – especially those not fluent in English – were often reluctant to leave their homes, instead focusing on news of war and other troubles from their homelands. She envisioned the garden as a reason for them to meet new friends, grow healthy food and experience the calm of nature, touching the soil and feeling healed.
This fall, the first class of 16 gardeners celebrated months of hard work and a successful harvest; in January, a new group of gardeners begins its turn.
“We meet together, have fun together, eat together,” said Isatu Kargbo, who reunited with her family in the United States after they were separated by conflict in Sierra Leone. Kargbo harvests tomatoes and cabbage from her parcel to make a soup her husband likes. “I’m so happy that I meet with different people.”
Healing the soil to heal the climate
Regenerative agriculture and green infrastructure are an important part of PCEF’s mission. These projects increase a local supply of healthy food and sequester carbon in the ground, rather than releasing it into the atmosphere where it contributes to global warming. They also promote a connection with the natural world – a connection that Vakkai was sure would help immigrant women.
De Rose is a community health organization serving immigrant and refugee women and youth. There are community food drives and a culturally specific food pantry; homeless outreach and employment; afterschool, mentoring and career advising programs for students; and mental health care and education programs for women. Many at De Rose affectionately and respectfully call Vakkai “Mama” - or as Kargbo puts it, “When Mama calls, we all come together.”
It’s a mirror of the feeling that Vakkai has for those De Rose serves.
“If there is a sense of community, people will be happier,” she said. “To see a community that is thriving and happier - that is my goal.”
Creating a local food supply
Finding land for a small farm within the Portland city limits was almost impossible. For months, Vakkai searched through neighborhoods every night after work, trying to find a viable home for the farm. After one prospect fell through, a church friend introduced her to the owners of the southeast Portland lot.
The owners agreed to rent the land. The city put in connections for water. When De Rose arrived onsite in May, they worked day and night to prepare the soil, removing grass and stone to ready it for the first farmers. Neighbors and other nonprofits helped too, offering tools, lights and materials. De Rose built a small shelter with chairs for farming classes and meetings. And the farmers – some experienced, some newbies – arrived.
The weather didn’t cooperate – some early crops failed in a record-breaking July heatwave. But the farmers replanted and succeeded, harvesting enough food for their families and to give away. Most stopped showing up to DeRose’s food pantry, because they had grown enough food of their own. Some were also able to sell produce through a local international market. At the end of the season, many farmers told Vakkai they had frozen much of their harvest, with hopes it would last until next year.
A new land yields familiar foods
Juwairiyah Rashidahmed and her siblings were born in a refugee camp in Thailand, where tens of thousands of people have fled conflicts and killing in their native Burma.
The family resettled in Portland when Rashidahmed, now a nurse, was 15 years old. The move was especially isolating for her mother, Mathanaye; when everyone else left for school or work in the morning, Mathanaye was home alone, her daughter said. Becoming a grandmother to Rashidahmed’s two young daughters helped.
Now, her mother arrives every morning at a garden filled with familiar foods, along with her grandchildren and their other grandmother. Toddler Haadiyah Fahim helps pick tomatoes, while farming friends coo at baby Hana Fahim and compete to hold her.
Most of the DeRose farmers don’t want to leave in December, but so many newcomers want to be part of the farm’s second year that Vakkai has a waiting list for the 2025 program. She has a dream to find more land with room for more people – perhaps land outside the city limits or with a waiver allowing farmers to tend chickens and goats.
“This program has not only helped feed families but is also teaching them how to be self-sufficient,” Vakkai said. “Imagine what it would mean if they had the opportunity to continue growing their food for two to three more years, and on a larger scale. Many of them would thrive and contribute better to society.”
In the meantime, De Rose workers have leveled ground for a new greenhouse to nurture plants over the winter. They are also working on an improved fence and gate.
“We can come to this gate and look at it and say, ‘Wow, this is no longer a dream. It is a reality,’” Vakkai said. “I say don’t thank me, thank PCEF. No matter how much I wanted it to be done, without them, I couldn’t.”