Raleigh City Farm's 13th Annual Bearthday!

This past Saturday, in a delightful display of reciprocity, Mother Earth showed up for Raleigh City Farm and Raleigh City Farm showed up for Mother Earth. She kept the rain away and gave us warm temps and a nice little cloud cover, while we brought our community together to talk, share, and take action for our planet in honor of Earth Day.

Oh, and we ate a lot of cupcakes, too. Because this past Saturday was not only Earth Day but also our Farm’s 13th birthday! We celebrated with our annual “Bearthday” celebration, as we like to call it, and boy, was it a good time. There was so much to do and see, from kids crafts using recycled materials to plein air artists, to live music, to demonstrations from our varied earth-friendly vendors, plus (of course) good food and drink. And we are proud to walk the walk: Honoring the official worldwide Earth Day 2024 theme of “Planet vs. Plastics,” all food packaging at the event was either compostable or recyclable. What’s more, any cans collected were donated to our friends at The Great Raleigh Clean-up, which will monetize the collection to support their nonprofit. We are pleased to report that after a 4-hour event, barely a third of a garbage can had been filled with trash. What an Earth Day win!

Bearthday also provided us with an opportunity to share some exciting news: Our Farm is growing! With the launch of our Future Farms Plan & Fund, we were thrilled to announce that RCF is acquiring additional acreage adjacent to our current site bordering Delway Street. Furthermore, we are in talks to expand our nonprofit to a fully separate plot of land in downtown Raleigh. We hope you’ll stay tuned for more announcements regarding this exciting growth opportunity!

Thanks are in order to our restaurant partner, Raleigh newcomer (and hotspot) Figulina, which provided incredible meals featuring produce sourced from the Farm. We couldn’t be happier for Chef David Ellis, an RCF volunteer who contributed to the building of some important infrastructure projects on our site. And the love is reciprocal: Chef David has been thrilled to see how far our little Farm has come these past few years.

Thanks are also due to our Presenting Sponsors, Murphy’s Naturals and North Hills Innovation District, as well as our Host Sponsor, Bona Furtura. A big thank you to our other sponsors, Capitol Grange, Ensemble Properties, Hub RTP, Leaf & Limb, Smith Anderson, and Wyrick Robbins. Your financial support is crucial and enables us to engage our community in meaningful gatherings like this.

Grateful thanks to our Event Partners: Figulina, 321 Coffee, CompostNow, Good Dirt, Goodness, Hobby Properties, Once in a Blue Moon Bakery & Cafe, Standard Beer + Food, Tribucha Kombucha, and Wine Authorities. Thank you to Spoonflower for donating beautiful tea towels designed by Figulina’s own Samantha Taylor.

Thank you to Stevan Jackson and Friends for flooding the farm with music, and plein air artists Brenda Behr, Heidi-Lee Peach, Galina Stockstill, and Robyn Spence. We are so appreciative of RCF Artist in Residence Julia Einstein, who is constantly imagining new ways to engage our art loving visitors. Thank you to LeAnna Cargman of Nomadic Roots Herbals, Mary Mckinney of Hello Yellow Art Studio, Rosalie Bouck, Half-A-Barn Farm, and Toward Zero Waste for the super fun and engaging activities and demonstrations you brought to this event.

And of course, thank you so much to our amazing group of tireless volunteers. We absolutely could not pull this off without you.

Thank you to our community for celebrating with us! We look forward to seeing you on the Farm again soon.