Best of Philly 2008: The Best Philadelphian is Mary Seton Corboy

Lettuce, that was the plan, but a small-scale wholesale business wasn’t the perfect fit for this fledging farm. “I don’t want to overuse the word, but it happened organically,” Mary explains. Lettuce led to spinach, planted in raised beds filled with soil from New Jersey. Spinach segued into a CSA, a membership-driven community-supported agriculture program that collects products from 50 farms throughout the region and makes them available to hungry buyers. The CSA, now 240 households strong, with participants throughout the city, spawned a farm market to sell the excess produce. The success of the May-to-November farm market, serving a thousand customers a week, supported a springtime nursery stocked with heirloom vegetable plants, which sold out this year.

The bees were an experiment; now their annual 80 pounds of honey, dubbed “Honey from the ’Hood,” is a farm-market staple. Worm composting just made sense. The project to recycle plastic plant pots was a side effect of the booming nursery business. The soil beds without adequate drainage, which turned into mud puddles at the slightest rain — well, that might not have been the best idea Mary’s ever had.

“‘Oh, I don’t know about that, Mare,’” Mary says, quoting Tom, who still pitches in at the farm. She imitates him, dropping her head into her hands in dismay, just as he does every time she proposes another impossible plan: We’ll build a green roof. We’ll make biodiesel. We’ll … It’s just the way she works: “I get so tired of meetings. So tired of ‘Let’s talk about our food systems.’ Why don’t we just do some shit?”

And so there’s a green roof on the farm’s refrigeration unit, saving hundreds of dollars a month in energy costs. And there’s a biodiesel system, converting the oil used to fry Standard Tap’s delicious french fries and waffle chips into fuel for less than $2 a gallon. It’s a farmer’s dream: The biodiesel fills the “Yellow Monster” truck for its deliveries to the Tap, where it picks up more fryer oil. Little cost, even less waste, and the glycerin that’s a by-product of the process is compostable. Or — Farmer Mary again — it could be made into soap!

By itself, none of this will change the world. But it provides an example that could change Philadelphia. “I just want people to see that something can really happen,” Mary says.

WHEN GREENSGROW BEGAN in 1998, the idea of urban farming was mostly urban myth, a fanciful idea that was as far from the mainstream as the notion that Wal-Mart would sell organic produce. Now the project, started with a $25,000 investment, is turning a profit, with hopes of using this year’s revenue to expand the farm and CSA portions to other urban locations in the region. Subaru is a corporate sponsor, and Mary stars in a commercial for the car company. Philadelphia has three urban farms, and Greensgrow’s dedication to a local food system has found company in Kensington.

As the farm has grown, Mary has watched the neighborhood grow to include production facilities for Metropolitan Bakery, Capogiro Gelato and Philadelphia Brewing Company. In nearby Northern Liberties and Fishtown, Standard Tap, Johnny Brenda’s, Ida Mae’s, Honey’s and the Memphis Taproom are active in their support of neighborhood enterprises. Greensgrow-delivered produce and PBC’s Kensington brew are on the menus; the restaurateurs, bakers, brewers and farmers have a Quizzo team at a neighborhood bar.