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Happy New Year, all! Wishing you all a happy and energizing start to 2026.

Apple fruit growing on a tree at Phoenix Farms

As the new year begins, we are thinking of our organization’s resolutions for the new year. Our top resolution is to grow this wonderful community! To that end, feel free to share our website with anyone who may be interested.

We also hope to grow our community through educational and social events hosted at our food forest once it’s a little warmer out. More to come on that, and please let us know if you have any suggestions.

Cheers to 2026!

If you’re new here…

Welcome! We are Phoenix Farms, a small nonprofit organization that maintains a food forest in Woodlawn. We’ve been operating for a few years now on God’s Little Acre, a lot on 64th and Kimbark, in partnership with First Presbyterian Church.

Phoenix Farms seeks to promote access to fresh, sustainably-grown fruits and vegetables for our local community. Our food forest is open to the public, and we encourage everyone to pick and eat our produce completely free and at any time. Produce not picked by our community is donated to First Presbyterian’s Free Food Market. More about the folks running the organization can be found on our about page.

Food Forest Updates

We are thrilled to introduce our winter intern, Grace! Grace will be joining us for the next ten weeks to work on community engagement and fundraising. We’ve asked her to share a little about herself below.

Hello! I’m Grace Donavan Lafuente, a final year Chemistry student at UChicago. I’ve loved gardening all my life, and after becoming fascinated by microbiology in college, I am thrilled to support Phoenix Farms as a current Metcalf intern. In my free time, I enjoy cooking, dancing, and working on my skills at the Southside Jiujitsu Club.

Volunteer Corner

Because the ground is frozen and covered in snow, our Volunteer Corner is quiet this month!

Community News & Happenings

The Free Food Market at our neighbor First Presbyterian is open on Thursdays from 10am-12pm.

Midway Plaisance ice skating rink is hosting a free Under the Sea ice skating party on January 23rd at 6pm. The rink will be transformed into an ocean-themed party, fun for all ages.

The Julia Keefe Indigenous Jazz Ensemble is playing at Logan Arts Center on January 30th at 7:30pm. Drawing from deep-rooted Indigenous musical traditions and the untold legacy of Native jazz pioneers, the ensemble transforms traditional songs and rhythms into bold new works infused with the language of jazz.