{"id":3366,"date":"2014-12-02T15:10:37","date_gmt":"2014-12-02T15:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2021\/06\/08\/mill-village-farms-grows-community\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T15:32:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T19:32:32","slug":"mill-village-farms-grows-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/mill-village-farms-grows-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing food, cultivating community"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dan Weidenbenner<\/a> \u201911 doesn\u2019t exactly fit the typical farmer profile. He\u2019s a psychology major who wears narrow, dark-rimmed glasses and plays tennis in his spare time. The plaid shirts for which he has a penchant might be the only hint of his chosen profession as director of Mill Village Farms<\/a>, a 501c3 organization aimed at growing food and jobs in rural and abandoned urban spaces in the Greenville, S.C. area.<\/p>\n

What started as mission work with local Grace Church and Long Branch Baptist Church, MVF now manages more than 120 acres of farmland, and last year launched a mobile food market, \u201cGood to Go,\u201d<\/a> which delivers food to areas where fresh, local food isn\u2019t available, or \u201cfood deserts.\u201d And this year, MVF planted South Carolina\u2019s first ever rooftop garden, a.k.a. the Rooftop Farm Initiative. About a half-acre atop the former Windstream building in downtown Greenville is home to 12 (with dozens more to come) space-saving aeroponic towers that can grow fresh and healthy vegetables in just 24 days.<\/p>\n

The Florida native will be the first to tell you that it\u2019s not all about the food. The farm model serves as a platform for mentoring youth by teaching basic job skills, sustainable agriculture, and entrepreneurship. \u201cI\u2019m more concerned about growing a successful teen than I am about growing food. But we obviously have to do both to make it happen,\u201d says Weidenbenner.<\/p>\n

The nonprofit provides at-risk youth first-time jobs and the opportunity to harvest the requisite skills\u2014working under authority, establishing\u00a0a strong work ethic, managing money, and working as a team. And through MVF\u2019s 10-week Youth Entrepreneurship Program, kids tour businesses and learn the fundamentals of starting a venture, then create a proposal for launching their own enterprise.<\/p>\n

Since 2012 when MVF was created, the nonprofit has employed 25 at-risk young men and women, also known as \u201cyouth partners.\u201d At least four of those teens are or have been successfully employed at restaurants like local Tupelo Honey Caf\u00e9 (headquartered in Asheville, N.C.), which buys produce from MVF and other regional sources. Sixteen youth have been involved in the process of crafting business plans, and courtesy of the mobile\u00a0market, all have delivered and sold fresh-off-the-vine produce like melons, beans, cukes, tomatoes, and squash to nearly 3,000 customers.<\/p>\n

Weidenbenner\u2019s foray into the world of produce actually started at Furman University during research he and others conducted with psychology professor Michelle Horhota, Ph.D. \u201cWe brought older adults in from The Woodlands and Scott Towers communities to the Shi Center farm and studied the cognitive benefits of gardening and farming, including attentional capacity and other variables,\u201d says Weidenbenner.<\/p>\n

The experience was a sort of epiphany for the then 21-year-old psych student. With the help of Long Branch Baptist Church and Grace Church, Weidenbenner planted that same idea in lower income areas and applied it to a much younger set that works gardens at the Mills Mill Farm and Sullivan Street Farm\u2014acreage left behind in the wake of the textile industry collapse. \u201cTo be able to move into an under-resourced area here in Greenville that is culturally very different from my background, and to learn from that\u00a0culture and work alongside that community through something as simple as farming has been very challenging and enriching,\u201d says Weidenbenner. MVF youth partners are also employed in gardens on the rooftop downtown, Serenity Farm in Easley, and the Farm at Rabon Creek in Fountain Inn.<\/p>\n

In the space before MVF was formed, Grace Church had been doing outreach work with Long Branch Baptist, a dynamic, mostly African American congregation with 1,200 members near downtown Greenville. Pastor Sean Dogan of Long Branch provided much of the impetus for the project which would become Mill Village Farms. Says Weidenbenner, \u201cLong Branch was already in the community and owned five acres of vacant land that could be used for farming . . . and the idea really fit in well with their culture of healthy living.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weidenbenner says, \u201cLong Branch is a vibrant church\u2014Pastor Sean Dogan is dedicated to healthy lifestyles. We have fitness and cooking classes, experts who come into our worship services to talk about eating and living well. He\u2019s been a huge catalyst for our project, for his enthusiasm and because he\u2019s so well connected in the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides the support from local churches, Weidenbenner is struck by the generosity of businesses and individuals in Greenville. The support has enabled him to hire a full-time farm director, Noah Tassie, and a part-time market director, Tisha Barnes who manages the Good to Go Mobile Farmers Market. And through MVF\u2019s partnership with Swamp Rabbit Caf\u00e9, Good to Go brings not only fresh veggies and fruits, but also baked specialty items to food desert locations and to suburban communities.<\/p>\n

Weidenbenner says Greenville is ripe for a venture such as his. \u201cPeople in Greenville are passionate about local food and supporting youth\u2014it\u2019s been a nice mesh because people here are very generous.\u201d<\/p>\n

You could say the roots of MVF are firmly planted in the Greenville community\u2014so much that teens who\u2019ve worked with MVF are circling back. Twins Marcellus and Morrell Stokes, who worked at MVF in their late teens, are now servers at Tupelo Honey Caf\u00e9 and both are looking to go to college. Weidenbenner, who\u2019s proud of the fact that the young men make more money than he does some days, says, \u201cThey\u2019ve been active in giving back to the community, which has been amazing for me to see\u2014that was an unexpected thing\u2014to see them volunteering with us, the youth program and at our church. That\u2019s what we want\u2014we want people to stay here and invest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weidenbenner won\u2019t take all the credit for the positive changes in the lives of young men and women. Inspired by witnessing youth giving back to their communities, neighbors and friends come alongside and invest in the teens. Perhaps neighbors and friends lend support because they are motivated by what they\u00a0don\u2019t<\/i>\u00a0see growing in the urban spaces\u2014a tangle of weeds like crime, homelessness, and drug activity. Whatever their motivation, the neighborhood outpouring has boosted support for MVF, says Weidenbenner, who also recognizes Long Branch Baptist and other mentors for having a \u201chuge\u201d impact in the lives of young people in general, and Marcellus and Morrell, in particular.<\/p>\n

As for the future of the enterprise, Weidenbenner\u2019s goals are lofty. Years from now, he says, \u201cI would hope that we have teenagers who come back and help lead the organization. I would love for us to impact even more youth across our community, and to grow even more food\u2014not only for our community, but the city and restaurants. I\u2019d like people to look back at this and see it as a community-based initiative and not me starting all this\u2014it was our neighborhood, our city coming together to see teens thrive and people eating healthier.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Weidenbenner has a lot to be happy about<\/a>.\u00a0After all, there\u2019s a lot more growing at MVF than kale, collards, mustard and other greens. There are future business owners, community leaders, executives, and mentors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dan Weidenbenner \u201911 doesn\u2019t exactly fit the typical farmer profile. He\u2019s a psychology major who wears narrow, dark-rimmed glasses and plays tennis in his spare time. The plaid shirts for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":3367,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,26,34,3,48,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-administrative","category-admission","category-alumni","category-psychology","category-the-furman-advantage"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3366"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41696,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3366\/revisions\/41696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}