Grow Ogden Farm Is a place where people facing the hardest times of their lives can learn to grow food while planting the seeds for a successful future. 

Tucked behind the Ogden First Presbyterian Church on 28th Street is a little garden where miracles grow.

The Grow Ogden Farm, run by Karl and Rita Ebeling, offers those facing homelessness a job that is far more than some work a few hours a week. The program run by “Farmer Karl” offers a place where people facing the hardest times of their lives can learn to grow food while planting the seeds for a successful future. 

In addition to tomatoes, squash, and other vegetables, Grow Ogden’s crops include confidence, a sense of belonging, and skills that help people prioritize and organize their lives in ways that help them find jobs and get back on their feet.

“We’re offering a job to people where they get to work with a group that is dignified, and where everybody is equal,” Karl Ebeling said. “Here, the plants are the boss. They tell us what to do. It’s a lesson of what life is really about.”

When people spend time in the garden, he said, it helps boost their optimism and confidence. Suddenly, they belong in a community, and they are doing real work.

“As we learn more about nature, we bring joy, stability, and peace into our life,” Ebeling said. “It’s a job-training program in the context of a farm.”

The Grow Ogden Farm’s pilot season was March to July this year. Two clients “graduated” and went on to find work, he said. The idea this year was to create the farm and its programming, so that additional funding could be sought and the program could be expanded to more participants.

Much of the pilot season was spent creating the garden from what had been an overgrown mess of an old play area for a preschool that used to be housed in the adjacent building that belongs to the First Presbyterian Church. The building provides storage for tools on the first floor and a classroom and kitchen for cooking a weekly meal for the workers on the second floor.

The church reached out to Ebeling and offered use of the one-eighth acre after reading an April 2023 news story about him looking for a spot to start the program. He acquired the garden spot in July 2023.

Grow Ogden is a project under Eden Streets, a nonprofit Ebeling created in 2018 in Philadelphia, where the couple lived at the time. The organization’s first program, Grow Life, was done in partnership with Northern Children’s Services, which according to the Eden Streets website was an “institution focused on promoting the healthy development of children. ‘Farmer Karl’ saw first-hand how foster children experienced the benefits of interacting with nature in the garden in this after-school program.”​

After learning more about the connection between garden work and healthy human development, Ebeling left his six-figure corporate job and entered the University of Montana’s environmental studies graduate program. He wanted to learn how to create a sustainable farming program that also offered a social mission available in any community.

They moved to Utah soon after, and Ebeling went to work in the Green Phoenix Farm run by Wasatch Community Gardens in Salt Lake City. There, he said, he saw the potential for helping those facing homelessness transition to a working life and better future.

The 1.4-acre Green Phoenix Farm offers women facing homelessness the opportunity to work a paid farm position while working toward stable housing and employment. After working alongside the Green Phoenix team, Ebeling was sold. That is the model for Grow Ogden.

In its pilot season, Grow Ogden’s participants worked 2.5 hours a day, four days a week, earning $12 an hour. They start each shift with meditation and yoga and then get to work. Each shift also includes training on setting priorities, creating a resume, interviewing, and other life skills. 

Every week, they have a “farmily” dinner using food from the garden, Ebeling said, and much of the garden’s output is donated to Catholic Community Services. This little eighth-of-an-acre spot churned out 1,000 pounds of fresh produce for CCS this summer, he said.

Ebeling hopes to increase the number of clients and output next season and attract more funding so he can adequately pay more participants. This Saturday, Oct. 19, they are hosting a family farm fair from 5:30-730 p.m. in the parking lot next to the garden where the community can learn more about the program. It is open to the public, and the more, the merrier.

“We’re on a microbudget, but we’re in it for the long haul,” Ebeling said. “We are giving a hand up, not a hand out.”

Susan Snyder is an artist, freelance writer, and educator, with 25 years newspaper and magazine writing experience, and 16 years as an environmental educator. She spent the bulk of her writing career working as an investigative journalist and columnist for newspapers in Florida, Utah, and Nevada. She also has written for such publications as Utah Life magazine, Utah CEO magazine, and Green Teacher magazine. In the last years of her newspaper career, Susan was an editorial writer for The Las Vegas Sun, focusing on the environmental issues of the West. From 2006 to 2023, Susan taught environmental education at Ogden Nature Center, a 152-acre nonprofit nature preserve in Ogden, UT. She was honored with statewide and national environmental education awards for her work in teaching children and adults about natural sciences and the environment before retiring to paint full-time and run Sage Art at The Monarch, a business she co-owns with artist Kate Bruce. She lives in Ogden, Utah, with her husband and one very spoiled tuxedo cat.