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WEST VALLEY CITY — Siddiq Ismail worked all night as a janitor at a local hospital. But there he was the next morning, in the searing summer sun, picking weeds — and he seemed pretty content.
"Yeah, I feel good when I come here," he said. "I feel good like, one hours, two hours, three hours."
Ismail was tending to 26 plots at the New Roots Farm, two acres devoted to helping local refugees grow food for their families and, like Ismail, crops they can take to market.
It goes deeper than the economy. It's the soul that they grew up with.
–Ze Min Xiao, refugee liaison
"Refugees bring with them a lot of assets to a community, and oftentimes those assets are overlooked," said Ze Min Xiao, Salt Lake County Refugee Services liaison. "One of those assets is agriculture."
Ismail grew up on a farm in Darfur in western Sudan. When he was 13, his family gave him a piece of land of his own. He went to school to study agriculture, but six months before the end of his studies his life was shattered by civil war.
Government forces, Ismail said, burned his village, killed his mother, and threw him in jail. He eventually escaped to Egypt and then, two years ago, was resettled in Utah by the International Rescue Committee.
He lost his country and he lost his land.
And then New Roots, an effort by Salt Lake County, the International Rescue Committee and the Utah Refugee Coalition, offered Ismail, who lives in an apartment, a piece of his old life back. They gave him land to farm.
Here, he grows Utah garden staples like tomatoes, peppers, potatoes and beans, as well as more exotic vegetables like Egyptian spinach and okra from the Middle East.
The farm just off busy Redwood Road is the largest of six sites devoted to the project. The idea is to give market farmers like Ismail the skills to grow and sell produce, in the hope that they might one day become independent growers.
"It goes deeper than the economy," Xiao said. "It's the soul that they grew up with."
"There's no better way to help them start a new life than seeing things grow from the ground up," she added.
New Roots farmers sell their produce at the following locations:
- New Roots Farm Stand, Horizonte High School, Saturdays 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
- People's Market, International Peace Gardens, 1000 South 900 West, Salt Lake City, Sundays 1 p.m. 4 p.m.
- South East Market, 422 East 900 South, Salt Lake City
Email: prosen@ksl.com
