Best of Philly 2008: The Best Philadelphian is Mary Seton Corboy
Greensgrow isn’t all Mary, of course — there are 11 employees, a seven-member board, and Blanche du Cat, the farm’s mascot. But in the neighborhood and the city’s food circles, Mary’s name and her enthusiasm are shorthand for the farm and its role as a rallying point for those committed to improving the city’s food supply. Which is why, for almost a year and a half of the 10 years that Mary has run Greensgrow, the farm staff politely and insistently told people who asked for Mary — and nearly everyone does — “She’s just running an errand.”
It was a believable lie; Mary, in constant motion, is often hard to find. But the unstoppable force behind this improbable farm wasn’t running an errand. She was in a hospital bed at the University of Pennsylvania, fighting endometrial cancer and then its ravaging cure, which left her unable to eat without a feeding tube. Doctors gave Mary four months to live. Mary dealt with her disease in the same blunt and determined way she deals with the farm: “I took myself off the feeding tube. I said, ‘I’m going down to Mr. Mancuso’s for cheese. I want pepperoni.’” Her cancer is now in remission.
“‘OH, I DON’T know about that, Mare,’” Mary repeats. She’s talking through her latest project, a community kitchen on the first floor of nearby St. Michael’s. The parish has only 150 remaining members, and the kitchen, once the site of potlucks and spaghetti suppers, sits unused. Mary envisions a commercial kitchen where Greensgrow can bake pies or make jam with past-its-prime produce, to sell at the farm, where local chefs can do cooking demonstrations with local ingredients, where would-be entrepreneurs can begin producing artisanal food products. It’s a long way from lettuce, but step by step, Greensgrow has worked to fill each hole it sees in the neighborhood and the city’s food system.
Ever modest, she pauses: “It almost scares me to think that we’ll actually become successful with all of this, and it will take me away from here.” Because, above all, Mary’s just a farmer, mixing soil for another idea.
