A celebration with an impact

Last Saturday Common Roots Farm held its first event since COVID-19 temporarily brought an end to large gatherings, and we definitely made up for lost time! The 10 O’Clock Lunch Band rocked the farm and got many of us out on the dance floor! Our plein air painters were fascinating to watch as they captured the farm in full bloom. The kids seemed to have a great time playing games, too! Over 350 people gathered together in support of broadening opportunities for those living with intellectual/developmental disabilities. Wow!

This was a collaborative fundraising event for Common Roots Farm and our sister farm, Erick’s Home and Farm, in Arusha, Tanzania. Erick’s Home and Farm are projects of Building for Generations, a non-profit working to improve life for people with disabilities here in Santa Cruz, in Peru, and in Tanzania. View interviews with their Founder, Cory Ybarra here.

Heartfelt thanks go out to Hallcrest Vineyards, Woodhouse Blending & Brewing, and S. Martinelli and Co. for their delicious product donations. Thank you, all!

We also thank our exceptional volunteers who did a ton to make our event work. We could not have done it without each of you! Our bakers prepared an amazing array of tasty homemade treats. Special thanks to Ed and Julie Lucero, Erik Schofield, and the team from Catholic Community at Stanford who really helped us prepare the farm to receive our guests.

There were beautiful handcrafted goods for sale in our Seed to Salad garden and proceeds went directly to help build Erick’s Home and Farm in Arusha, Tanzania. Guests were also able to buy Farm favorites like our jams, hot sauces, and cocktail mixes, as well as try a few new items like our Berry Sunset hot sauce, Lavender syrup and even Lavender soaps.

On behalf of Common Roots Farm and Building for Generations, thanks to all who bought tickets, attended, or donated. You have directly helped broaden opportunities for people with disabilities both here and in Tanzania, and we thank you for your generosity.

Happy Fall!

From Grace comes inspiration

by Heidi Cartan, Executive Director

It’s been my experience that fellow parents who are raising a child with special needs find a connection pretty effortlessly. I am confident when I meet another mom raising a young adult with a disability that she already knows a lot about my life. She also knows my biggest fear. And I know hers. The fear that haunts us all: What will happen when we are no longer here to support our children?

Several years ago I met Grace Lymo through Cory Ybarra, founder of Building for Generations, here in Santa Cruz. Grace was visiting Santa Cruz to tell her story about raising Erick, one of her three sons, in their home country of Tanzania. Erick is a young adult with autism and that diagnosis alone is enough to threaten his life.

Grace visits my son, Noah, in his home.

Disability can be a very isolating experience, both for the person with a disability and for their family. Great strides have been made in the U.S. thanks to many who have advocated for the rights of people with disabilities to live in their own communities. In Tanzania, this is a far-off dream. The young adults Grace now works with through her organization, Connect Autism Tanzania, have often been abandoned by parents because parents face an impossible choice: Leave a disabled child alone at home, or lose a job necessary to support the family.

Grace works tirelessly to change the circumstances these youth encounter every day. She welcomes people to her Life Skills Center who live with any number of developmental and physical challenges. Her work provides some hope to parents who are stretched beyond my ability to even imagine. The team Grace has assembled offers these youth not only a sense of belonging, but practical life skills, and perhaps most importantly, a chance to live with the same sense of purpose we all need.

Grace inspires me. She has the same goals as the parents I know, but her photos illustrate the additional hardships of parenting a child with special needs in her home country.

Under construction: Erick’s Home and Farm.	Grace delivers sheep to the new farm.

Thanks to generous attendees, our Harvest Fest helped raise $10,000 to complete the plumbing on a new home Grace and Cory are building for 16 young people in Arusha, Tanzania. The next challenge is to finish the electrical work so the walls can be closed up and the home’s interior completed. This house, adjacent to a several acre farm, will provide a home for these young people while they learn to grow food, cook meals, tend animals and build a life of meaning and well-being.

If you are able to help Grace complete Erick’s Home and Farm, please donate here. Any amount, I can assure you, will be deeply appreciated by Grace, Cory, and all the youth who will directly benefit from your generosity. Thank you.

Learning food prep at Skills Center.	Visiting Erick's Farm.	Future residents visiting Erick’s Home.

CSA customer offers a happy surprise

by Lindsay Dye, Board Member

This week’s Farmer Feature is highlighting our favorite small-batch coffee roaster and volunteer, Lizzy Toth. Lizzy first discovered Common Roots Farm through a volunteer gig with her employer, Salesforce. She instantly felt connected to the Farm’s vision and knew she wanted to be part of the magic.

Lizzy moved to Santa Cruz recently from Sunol with her husband, Mike and her dog, Harri. Among her many interests, Lizzy is an avid hiker, yogi, and coffee roaster.

Moving to Santa Cruz provided Lizzy both the opportunity to volunteer and participate in our CSA. And with every CSA pickup, she grew more and more connected to this incredible community and felt a desire to further give back. Here’s where Lizzy’s coffee comes in!

Lizzy’s been sharing her freshly roasted coffee with Santa Cruz CSA cohorts, as a special treat. The mission of her coffee company, Lizzy Long Legs, is to be “a small part of a human beans journey.” She hopes that by sharing her coffee with this community, she can reflect her appreciation and admiration for Common Roots Farm and the community it has fostered.

Thank you for sharing your coffee with us, Lizzy. You embody the spirit of Common Roots and all that we aspire to here. It’s been so fun getting to know you and your roasts! We appreciate you so much!