Farm Lot 59, an urban farm next to Willow Springs Park, is asking for help recovering from an arson fire that burned their compost bin, hand-painted signs and bee boxes.
The May 1 blaze is the latest incident of vandalism that has plagued the farm off California Avenue for years. According to staff, past damage has included graffiti on signs, holes cut in fences and tools stolen from a work truck that the farm ended up selling to avoid future thefts.
Luna Gaia, who manages flower production, said she thinks they were recently targeted in retaliation after unhoused people were cleared from an encampment in the adjacent Willow Springs Park. Gaia said farm staff did not report the encampment and had nothing to do with it being cleared from the area.
Part of Gaia’s daily routine includes checking the perimeter fence to make sure nobody breached it overnight to steal supplies or use the farm’s water for a shower.
She’s worked here for a little more than a year, but in that time, she has seen locks broken and tossed aside by overnight intruders looking in garden sheds and stolen copper piping taken from a water grate.
Atty Granado, who runs the flower stand at the farm, said she’s found unhoused people sleeping under the table outside the farm stand when she opens up in the morning. Once, a man started yelling and threw a few plants when she asked him to leave.
Calls to police have not been fruitful, said Kathy Miranda, the farm’s marketing director.
Staff call police “regularly” to report the break-ins, but “are often told there isn’t much [police] can do after a crime has been committed,” according to Miranda.
Neighboring spaces like Long Beach Community Compost and the Long Beach Office of Climate & Sustainability have also been vandalized in the past, she said.
In September 2017, an arson fire destroyed a historic Long Beach train depot that was first erected in 1907 and was moved to Willow Springs Park 19 months before the blaze.
Sasha Kanno, the farm’s owner, started work on the lot in 2010, when she received a $25,000 grant from the Long Beach Community Foundation and began tilling the soil on the remnants of an illegal dump. The farm’s first seeds were planted in spring 2012.
Farm Lot 59 sells its produce to local restaurants and donates what it can’t sell to Food Finders, a local nonprofit that delivers to pantries, shelters, youth programs and senior centers.
Flowers grown on the farm are sold in bouquets, or guests can pay a fee to pick their own bouquet every other Saturday. The proceeds help fund a tight operating budget.
Fixing holes in fences or replacing cut locks are “part of our operating cost at this point,” Miranda said.
Farm staff usually take the break-ins in stride, Miranda said, but the fire in May was “a huge wakeup call in terms of how vulnerable all of our components are.”
It was also a reminder of how much community support they have, Miranda said.
Volunteers from a local church took down all the damaged signs and removed the burned wood and materials. Guests have offered to paint new signs for the compost bin and bee boxes.
The farm is hoping to raise $12,000 to repair the section of fence that was burned, rebuild the compost system, install new bee boxes and replace damaged signs. Donations can be made here.
More than a month after the fire, the farm hosted its 15th anniversary celebration, complete with food from neighborhood vendors like Baryo, Panxta Cocina and Colossus Bread.
“Together, we’re keeping this little farm alive and growing,” Kanno wrote in a post about the fire.