Kickstarter Love: El Poblano Farm

Each week in Kickstarter Love, Feed52 will feature a Kickstarter project that focuses on food and the community. Basically, it’s about cool people doing cool things with food. This week, a new farm growing a bounty of rare Mexican produce.

The herbs pipiche, papalo and epazote might not sound familiar to you, but enterprising farmer Gudelio Garcia is bringing these Mexican flavors to New Yorkers with his new venture, El Poblano Farm. He grows all sorts of Mexican herbs and vegetables not otherwise available this far north - and New Yorkers are catching on. You can catch his produce at local restaurants and farmers' markets, or sign up for a home delivery (which can be paid for using food stamps). 

Garcia started his farm on a one-acre plot on Staten Island in 2010, and the popularity of his herbs and produce at New York farmers' markets and among restaurant chefs allowed him to expand his operation to a ten-acre farm in New Jersey. That's where you come in! Garcia still needs to finish planting his New Jersey farm for the late summer and fall season, and start a seed bank for next year's crop. He's raising money to get his larger farm into full gear, where he'll be growing more than 60 varities of herbs and produce. 

Which is all good news to us, considering we can't wait to use his herbs and vegetables in everything from guacamole (which he tells us is traditionally prepared using the Mexican herb papalo instead of cilantro) to taco toppings!