A Few More Things About Oak Hill Community Park & Forest
What's even more encouraging about these conservation efforts is the emphasis on lowering barriers for historically marginalized people.
MORGANTON, North Carolina—I recently wrote an article for The Paper, a hyper-local newspaper launched earlier this month, about Oak Hill Community Park and Forest (OHCPF).
However, there are a few things I wanted to write further with regards to this new 652-acre nature park that should be open to the public by the end of 2023.
An effort led the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Foothills Nature Conservancy of North Carolina (FC), OHCPF will provide ample benefits to our region. Not just for outdoor recreation and land and water conservation, this new park plans on contributing to a few causes that will be of particular interest to Common Appalachian readers and other communitarian-minded folks.
Prioritizing Marginalized & Disadvantaged Agricultural Workers
In addition to all the new hiking and biking trails and environmental education opportunities we’ll have, I’m especially thrilled about Foothills Conservancy’s efforts to bolster local agriculture, and in particular, access for traditionally marginalized and disadvantaged workers eager to contribute to our local community.
Stewardship Director Ryan Sparks says Foothills Conservancy is taking this year to develop their “formal community agriculture program, discussing the possibility of an incubator farm situation. We’re also working with socially disadvantaged farmers, people of color, and young folks who are facing obstacles in becoming agricultural producers. So that's pretty exciting.”
This incubator is fashioned after a farmland program established by another conservation nonprofit in our region, Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy.
“We're putting together an advisory committee to try to develop what this program is going to look like,” Sparks says. “Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy has had a really productive and successful incubator farm program. We started talking to them and we’re trying to pull from some of their ideas.”
An estimated 40 acres of OHCPF will be set apart for local agriculture.
“It will produce crops and vegetables that could be used to not only feed the community,” Sparks said, “but support these socially disadvantaged farmers and help them gain a foothold and provide for themselves.”
Foothills Conservancy Executive Director Andrew Kota says they hope to launch “it in 2024 with a few local farmers and then see how it grows and evolves from that point. We're taking this year to do the planning on all of that.”
Conservation + Social Justice in Southern Appalachia
It’s wonderful to see so much conservation work in the foothills of Southern Appalachia, but it’s even more encouraging to see an emphasis on lowering barriers for historically marginalized people in our community.
Given how common it is for marginalized workers to be exploited and abused in agricultural industries, this incubator program is a welcome development.
To me, this demonstrates a more forward-looking social posture than is not seen often enough in the Foothills Region, and even resisted, at times. It shows members of our community are aware of past and continued injustices, and are eager to address them, to make Burke County a much more egalitarian place.
We know the park has community support based on a number of knowledge-gathering events Foothills Conservancy held to survey residents about whether they wanted the park and how they hoped it would be used.
“During our due diligence part of this acquisition, we went out to the community and asked people if this was something that they want for this community” Kota explains.
”We didn’t just say, ‘We’re going to protect this land and we’re going to turn it into a park and it’s all us. Y’all just hang back. We’re going to do this. You’re going to love it. Trust us.’ We actually went out to the Oak Hill Community and invited hundreds of people to come and give us their feedback: ‘If we do this, if we’re able to acquire the property, protect it, and open it up for public use, is that something that you’re interested in?’”
He says the response “was overwhelming in terms of having community support to do it.”
Now, it’s unclear how much of a priority this particular social justice-oriented, incubator farm program is for Oak Hill neighbors, or for Foothills Conservancy, for that matter, but clearly people are planting seeds for a more egalitarian version of the Blue Ridge. And with 652 public acres just several minutes west of Downtown Morganton, there should be plenty of fertile soil in which those kernels can grow among our expanding population of Southern Appalachians.