After years of addiction, this Lorain man is fighting food insecurity through urban farming
“In Lorain, which is a pretty down and out city, the combination of food, farming and community space just makes sense,” he said. “Food, farming and gardening is this wonderful avenue to get to know each other.”
By Stephen Langel
Ideastream Public Media
Aug 28, 2024
Excerpt:
Jim Goforth has been racked by pain for most of his life due to spinal stenosis, a narrowing of the spine, and from surgeries related to a back injury.
Goforth, who manages Solidarity Urban Farms in Lorain, said this chronic pain led him to drug addiction that lasted for more than a decade, from 1999 to 2013.
“Once my pain started getting worse, I started seeing doctors, getting prescribed Vicodin and then I had friends who are getting OxyContin. First it was popping pills and then snorting some OxyContin,” he said.
But Goforth said his life turned around when he discovered home growing and gardening, beginning with growing his own marijuana, which he used instead of hard drugs to soothe his pain.
“Marijuana got me sober,” he said. “Gardening keeps me sober, you know what I mean? Gardening saved my life, and so it holds a really special place in my heart.”
At first, Goforth said he used this new hobby to grow and sell produce at farmer’s markets, but he wanted something more.
“I always wanted to have more of a mission behind what I did,” he said. “Prices (at farmer’s markets) just seemed high and inaccessible to people with lower incomes, and that always kind of didn’t sit well with me.”
This desire for more purpose led him to found Solidarity Urban Farms in 2020 with Rev. Alex Barton of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Lorain.
Read the complete article here.
Source: https://cityfarmer.info/after-years-of-addiction-this-lorain-man-is-fighting-food-insecurity-through-urban-farming/
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