In Washington, D.C., the farm went up instead of out. FreshMinistries designed aquaponics farms for the rooftops and cellar of Jubilee Housing, whose Adams Morgan homes welcome returning citizens.
One project, two addresses.
Jubilee Housing set out to transform two properties: the former King Emmanuel Baptist Church at 1721 Kalorama Road NW, and Ontario Place at 2400 Ontario Road NW. Ontario Place broke ground in September 2023 with 52 deeply affordable apartments, half of them sized for families. The plan pairs those homes with a commercial kitchen-training program, powered by a commercial aquaponics farm built into the buildings themselves.
Food and work, under one roof.
The farm powers the kitchen, and the kitchen trains the residents. The system is expected to yield 13,000 plants and more each month: basil, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, and root vegetables.
FreshMinistries designed and implemented the farm, and partner OneWorld Fresh built the growing systems, the same vertical-tower hardware behind the farms in Jacksonville, St. Croix, and South Africa. Jubilee Housing owns and operates it. That is the model working as intended: local hands running a system built to last.
The Aztecs fed their entire civilization on floating islands.
Bobby Lee, FreshMinistries Director of Aquaponics
Why rooftops and cellars.
Aquaponics grows on land nobody else can farm: rooftops, cellars, vacant city lots. At Jubilee that means a 1,750 square foot rooftop greenhouse, a second rooftop house, a penthouse grow room, and a 2,000 square foot cellar farm, all inside a working residence.
The operation now grows under its own name, Jubilee Farms, with farm tours, volunteer days, and a CSA on the way. Washington is proof the model fits a dense city block as well as an open field. See how the work connects around the world on the global work page.