Khadija Haynes wants me to tell you this story is not about her. She is only partly right.
It is impossible to tell the story of the Urban Farm at Stapleton and leave her out. It was her vision. Besides, she was the one who took me on a tour, and made me pet Miss Pickles, the farm’s hog.
I know the woman a little, so I know the phone call she made to me was one of the hardest things she has done. But she loves the Urban Farm, and it is now in danger of closing.
It is a remarkable place. Some 4,000 urban kids go there every year to tend or just see the cows, pigs, donkeys, llamas, goats, sheep, horses and a duck or two.
It is home to the state’s largest 4-H Club, with 327 members, 33 of whom qualified and showed at the Adams County Fair. Five showed at this year’s National Western Stock Show.
Also, the farm runs the science program for two schools in Denver.
Tucked in the shadows of the Denver Central Jail on 23 acres off Smith Road and Havana Way, the Urban Farm is the outgrowth of a program, Embracing Horses, that Haynes and her partner, Donna Garnett, 59, began in 1993.
“I was mentoring this kid from Kennedy High, who was in your typical bad situation at home and at school. He was a cowboy, and the school called because they knew I rode horses, and they didn’t know what to do with this black cowboy,” Haynes recalled.
So she took him most days to the barn where she boarded her horses. He fell in love with it.
Eventually, she and Garnett got him to Lamar Community College on a basketball scholarship.
“He came home on the winter break and told me he couldn’t find any of his old friends,” Haynes said. “It wasn’t because they had moved, but because they were either dead or in jail. It turned out differently for him because he was always at the barn with me.
“I told myself if I could affect one kid, well, I had more room in the car for others.”
In 1998, she and Garnett secured a 25-year, $1-a-year lease from the Stapleton Development Corp. to open the farm to provide inner-city kids an agricultural and environmental education.
“It is a way to work them up to our ultimate goal, which is to give them a real connection to the land, the environment and the natural world,” Haynes said.
Most of the children who regularly visit the farm are poor. They are almost equally split — a third white, a third black and a third Latino.
Since its inception, the Urban Farm has subsisted solely on donations from corporations and individuals. The annual cost for hay alone totals $60,000.
This year, donations fell $75,000. The farm is down to two full-time employees, neither of whom has been paid for months.
“They do it for the love of the program and for the kids,” Haynes said.
The Urban Farm will close at the start of the year if its appeal for donations does not raise the $75,000 shortfall, Garnett said.
I told the two women that the most I could do is write about their plight and pass along their address — 10200 Smith Road, Denver, CO 80239 — and their e-mail, info@theurbanfarm.org.
I asked what would happen should they fall short. They looked at me for a long time.
“How do you let down so many kids?” Haynes finally said. “Is there a way for us or for this community to say no?”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
