Each year, the Albert & Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design selects an Orleans Parish-based non-profit to provide design & build services to. In May 2021, SRF staff was honored to be the recipient of this incredible partnership with Tulane School of Architecture (TuSA). Our proposal was to build a Community Kitchen Pavilion. We are incredibly thankful for this experience. Working with TuSA has been nothing short of amazing, and they have made our dreams for a kitchen structure, washing station, and gathering space come true.

Sugar Roots Farm currently provides programming to encourage our community grow food and plant medicine. The kitchen classroom provides a space for the community to learn and share how to prepare food and plant medicine. This kitchen is the final piece needed to bring our farm-fork curriculum “full circle”. Full circle farming is the practice of creating community-sustained food systems: community members and businesses donate compostable waste products, which Sugar Roots uses--along with animal manure from the farm--to make nourishing compost. This improves soil and allows us to grow food and plant medicine, which is then returned to our livestock and community members.  We believe this process builds food sovereignty, enhances biodiversity, diverts community waste, and nurtures, rather than harms, our ecosystem. This is the foundation of our curriculum and vision. 

We are honored to offer this land as a gathering space for education and community building. Our farm invites our community members to share space, ideas, resources, and a commonly held vision for the future. It is a place that can feed those in need, where people can reconnect with nature, and where ideas, resources, and traditions can be shared. Please email us at sugarrootsfarm@gmail.com if you are interested in using this space for educational classes, cooking workshops, or any other inquiries! If you are a New Orleans based cook, chef, medicine-maker, historian, advocate, or activist, please reach out! We would love to have you host a class!