Lidia Celebrates America

Morning. Hi, Tony. How are you? All right, Nevaeh. Hi, Nevaeh, how are you doing. Am good. Welcome to our farm. Well, thank you for inviting me. This is so amazing. (chicken clucking) I was in business. Life was great. 2010, the financial crisis caught up with me like millions of others and I started losing business and started getting depressed.

My wife would go to work at like 6

30 in the morning. I'd be on the couch playing video games. She'd get home at seven o'clock at night, I was still on the couch in my pajamas playing video games. And she said, "Dude, you gotta do something." -

Interviewer

My wife would go to work at like 6

He decided to volunteer in a school as a lunch monitor. How did you get this idea, Tony? It was a kinda convoluted thing. I started working in the school across the street and you can see firsthand a lot of the challenges of a community such as this especially, when it comes to food and nutrition. And so the idea of growing vegetable, how did that get? This was abandoned community garden and the kids across the street all referred to this as the haunted garden. When I was little we used to call this haunted garden because of the junk in the garden. And like before that, we didn't really have no me and my friends didn't really have no place to play in. So after weeks and weeks of cleaning it out, we had a suggestion from some little girl. (Interviewer laughs) Why don't we plant something? She was little, 10 years ago. How old are you now? 14. 14, so four or five, huh? I think what instigated Tony's idea was this little girl Nevaeh and she planted the idea by telling Tony "Why don't we plant a seed?" And the seed was planted. This is where it first started. So this is the first -- Well, this is the first corner? This is first corner because the soil was contaminated so we got a load of organic soil and dumped it right here. Look at that thick butternut squash It's butternut squash. That will make enough of delicious soup, a big pot of soup, enough to feed 10 people there. Yeah, here we only have squash, we have cucumbers, we have our tomatoes and peas. We have sage, rosemary. So much lemon balm and mint. So much of it. (soft piano music) -

Interviewer

My wife would go to work at like 6

Tony realized that a gardener was just what the school and the community needed. (soft piano music) You see the habit, you see the dietary choices, you see what I never saw before 'cause in addition to the 14 homeless shelters in a four block radius of here, we have 55 fast food restaurants in a three block radius, coupled with 29 pharmacies and not one affordable food option. (soft piano music) The majority of our children are living on food stamps. So where do you eat healthy? (soft piano music)