Editor’s note: This story is part of an ongoing “Sowing Change” series about urban farming.
On a Saturday morning in late summer, I visited the KC Farm School at Gibbs Road in Kansas City, Kan. Wanting to purchase several pounds of tomatoes for canning, I’d learned that the farm was hosting an end-of-season “u-pick” event where tomatoes that were normally sold for $4 per pound at their market were available for $1 per pound if picked by the consumer.
An educational farm, its intent was obvious as soon as I’d parked in a small lot next to the farm’s service van. Set next to a mound of compost, a vendor from Missouri Organic Recycling educated visitors about organic matter and how it nourishes the soil. Staff and volunteers were on hand to explain the u-pick process, to discuss the plants for sale, give plant care advice and sustainability tips and discuss what urban farming can look like in the process.
The KC Farm School at Gibbs Road sits atop 14.5 acres of high ground in southeastern Wyandotte County, Kan., land that has sustained human life for thousands of years.
More than 2,000 years ago, this area marked the western edge of the vast Hopewell Exchange, where Indigenous peoples established permanent villages, traded across regions and tended to the land’s bounty. Later, tribes such as the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kansas, Kiowa, Osage, Pawnee and Wichita lived on this land until colonization forced them west. In acknowledging this history, the farm honors the deep legacy and ancestors who stewarded the land long before it became a contemporary farm.
In December 2018, educators and community leaders, Alicia Ellingsworth and Jennifer Thomase signed a lease on the historic Gibbs Road Ram, formed a nonprofit and began a fresh mission: to empower individuals of all ages, ancestries and abilities through hands-on, on-farm educational experiences. After starting with volunteers and school field trips in early 2019, KC Farm School has grown into a hub of farming, learning, community and hope.
Sharing hope and harnessing opportunity are at the core of KC Farm School’s mission, says Ellingsworth, executive director and co-founder of KC Farm School at Gibbs Road.
“The most important thing … is that we are sharing hope and harnessing opportunity — the possibility of everything,” she says.
Unlike a traditional urban farm, KC Farm School integrates education into every task.
“Anytime any crew member is working with a farmer, they’re learning,” Ellingsworth says. “Even farmers who have been farming for 20 years are always learning … [which is] so important on a farm.”
That emphasis on teaching extends beyond techniques in the field, Ellingsworth says, adding that lessons also include strength-building, collaboration and sustainability. Sustainability is modeled in creative ways, even at community events. Instead of disposables, the farm provides dishwashing stations.
“We have never, not even one time, had disposable or even compostable [plates and utensils], because we don’t believe it’s needed.”
As a nonprofit, KC Farm School also sees itself as a place for experimentation and leadership in pushing boundaries.
“We’re spreading hope in the community, but also testing these things that haven’t been tried before — can we wash our plates, can we interrupt the whole deal with perennial beds, can we bring more diversity into the field?”
Education happens across all ages and abilities. Ellingsworth says one memorable example involved first graders learning to weed a lettuce bed. The small seedlings required care, but with guidance, the children succeeded.
“By the time the kids were gone in half an hour, they had the whole bed weeded … it’s the idea of many hands but also believing that first graders can weed lettuce,” Ellingsworth says.
This philosophy extends to accessibility as well, with raised beds at varying heights, flat walking surfaces and an ADA-adapted greenhouse and tools so that people of all abilities can participate.
Being an urban farm, relationships beyond the farm’s borders are equally vital, and Ellingsworth emphasizes the importance of caring for neighbors, from parking considerations to respectful event behavior.
“We must take care of relationships with neighbors … making those connections, not waiting until things are so much out of control that then we have to solve problems,” Ellingsworth says.
In all these ways, KC Farm School at Gibbs Road embodies its mission of cultivating not just crops, but community resilience, sustainability and shared opportunity. By blending education, farming and inclusivity, the farm offers a vision of what it means to live more fully connected — to food, to neighbors and to each other.
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