CommonWealth Urban Farms
Words by Chelsey Simpson / Photos by Rachel Maucieri
Driving through the area around 32nd and Olie in Oklahoma City, it is clear that you are somewhere, in the midst of something. The coordination is evident, but not complete. In place of lawns, several modest houses have the same mix of waist-tall larkspurs and winecups moving in the breeze. In fact, things are growing everywhere—in vacant lots, along the sidewalks, in pots, and in greenhouses. It is orchestrated but also untamed.
This is CommonWealth Urban Farms; exactly what CommonWealth is has been an evolving question over the past 15 years. It totals about one-third of an acre, but it is hard to say exactly how many lots there are because the growing space is pieced together—empty lots merge with backyards, and the vegetation flows right down to the street. There are vegetables, but also flowers and native perennial seedlings, and there’s a rather large compost operation tucked into a shady lot with a thick layer of wood chips underfoot.
At the center of it all are Elia Woods and Allen Parleir, although even their centeredness is evolving and reluctant. Lia (as her friends call her) and Allen bought their first house on the block in 1984, as the savings and loan collapse escalated, a long recession arrived, and the bottom dropped out of the OKC housing market.
“We bought our first house for, I think, $10,000, and there was no competition,” Lia says. “It was just ridiculous.” Allen is from Oklahoma City, but Lia grew up in the Chicago area.
“I joined a volunteer service program and ended up in Oklahoma City. I really liked it,” she says. “It must have mostly been the people, but partly it was the open space. It just feels like the prairie is part of what defines the city. It's still there, even though we've paved over most of it.”
After buying their first house, they bought several others, all of them nearby and all of them in need of work. Renovation was new to the couple, but they slowly chipped away at it. The purchases were made possible by the incredibly low housing prices, and also by some money that Lia inherited from her parents.
“I'm keenly aware of the privilege in this,” she says. “As well as good fortune and hard work and all that, but a lot of privilege.”
Allen was in seminary when they met, and has primarily spent his career in youth development and environmental education. For more than 20 years, Lia was a fiber artist who also taught classes on weaving and other techniques at City Arts Center and elsewhere. In her spare time, she began gardening. Like many people, she started with a humbling level of inexperience.
“My first garden was in a backyard where I lived with friends, and it was mostly shady with hard-packed clay soil,” she says. “I don't think the seeds even germinated. Then I met Allen, and we bought our house. He had some experience gardening, so he actively coached me. I remember planting spinach at some point and saying, ‘Those spinach seeds haven't even sprouted,’ and he was like, ‘Well, did you water them? You're supposed to water things.’”
Over the years, her skills improved, and slowly, the world of food and gardening worked its way into her art as well.
“My artwork became increasingly plant-themed, garden-themed, until the two became almost inseparable,” Lia says. Then there came a day when she didn’t want to make art at all; she just wanted to be outside, growing things.
“I love making art, but I didn't feel like I was contributing to the greater good in the way that I wanted. So I just gave it up without really a plan for the future,” she says. She walked away from weaving with a warp still on her loom, and 10 years later it is still unfinished. “Walking away was a first for me, and it was kind of unnerving—but then kind of freeing, too, to have no plan.”
The plan that slowly developed was CommonWealth. Lia’s first concept was an urban teaching farm, but she knew that she and Allen couldn’t do it alone, so she reached out to her neighbors, David and Sara Braden, who lived a few blocks away with their four children. After some consideration, the word came back: “We’re all-in.” The Bradens are still all-in, 15 years later, but the farm’s network, and its impact, have grown exponentially.
From the beginning, people from their own neighborhood and the wider community were involved in the planning and the farming at CommonWealth. Driving through the area today, it is hard to tell where the farm stops and the “regular” neighborhood begins—the farm’s presence has attracted like-minded neighbors, who have turned their front yards into plots for growing food or perennial pollinator gardens. Lia and Allen are also able to curate their neighbors a bit, since they own several houses and rent them out. CommonWealth is woven in with other other organizations, like Closer to Earth, a non-profit youth group that Allen runs. For a while, kids from Closer to Earth grew gardens in the medians along Shartel, deepening the impression that the farm was everywhere, even though CommonWealth wasn’t technically involved.
The farm is also now a home for other farms. About five years ago, Lia realized that her burnout level was reaching “crispy” status; the pressure to make the farm financially viable and pay workers a livable wage was too great. “We came right to the edge of shutting down before we decided to shift to a partner model,” Lia says. “Now all of the actual farming is done by our partner farmers.”
Every year CommonWealth accepts would-be farmers through an application process, with the hope of connecting experienced growers with the farm’s great soil and other resources. Lia has her own farm-within-the-farm, Lia’s Garden, which is a perennial seedling business. CommonWealth is also still focused heavily on education, and there are frequent workshops and community events. Looking toward the future, Lia and Allen are exploring the possibility of a land trust to preserve the farm and its mission of serving the community.
Lia speaks with a voice that’s soft but steady. Listening to her, one is tempted to lean in and hold still. There’s a sense that this stillness creates space, like the elms that shade her garden. All around her, the farm hums. On a weekday morning in May, a group of young people turn compost while Allen directs college students who are prepping new beds. A farm cat, Bear, approaches Lia for a snuggle, and a neighbor stops by looking for lisianthus plants (Lia is sold out.) Sara Braden is on hand as well, clearing weeds from a small area that has gone slightly wild.
“We started CommonWealth, and we built it, then CommonWealth built us,” Lia says. “It became its own thing. And never, ever did I dream that it would become what it is now. I thought I had a pretty lofty idea, and it's far more than what I imagined. And in some ways, it’s not what I imagined. We'll see what it becomes next.”
