- April 17, 2024
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Josh Taylor, who founded the Do Good Farm situated on Marshall Farms Road five years ago, has big plans for the farm.
Winter Garden residents Glenn and Bette Barkley purchased fresh produce during the farm store’s grand opening.
Noah, Abby and Wendi Williams, Cameron Taylor and Sandy Mummaw spend time in side the goat enclosure to pet one of the live farm animals.
Amy and Dave Vanz enjoy the live music provided by the Josh Gilbert band.
From left: Lynette fields John and Cindy Fitzgibbon partake in the food and refreshments provided courtesy of Do Good Farm.
Jennifer Gilbert and her two daughters Indigo and Amethyst Gilbert relax on some rocking chairs after taking a tour of the farm.
From left: Becky Mayberry, Camille Wilson and Kelly Taylor, wife of Do Good Farm founder Josh Taylor, assist customers looking to purchase fresh produce and goods at the new farm store.
The interior of the farm store. In addition to produce, the store sells different types of honey and handmade goods made by families in Burundi, Africa.
The highly anticipated farm store sells produce straight from the food gardens, including cucumbers, eggplant, tomatoes, parsley, papaya, , strawberries, peppers and collards, to name a few.
Christian acoustic rock band Josh Gilbert played live music for the event. Pictured is Josh Gilbert, Keagan Fowler and Alex McCulloch.
The Do Good Farm is now open for business at 12423 Marshall Farms Road, Winter Garden, and will be manned by volunteers.
Do Good Farm founder Josh Taylor points out the variety of edible flora grown in the food forest, including mangoes, passion fruit, mulberry, chayote squash, papaya, katuk, cranberry hibiscus, edible cactus and African basil.
Do Good Farm founder Josh Taylor explains how the farm does not use chemical fertilizers to grow its produce during a tour of the farm’s food forest.
WINTER GARDEN – Do Good Farm, the family farm located at 12423 Marshall Farms Road behind Florida’s Turnpike, held a grand opening event Dec. 9 for its latest addition: a farm store.
The store, housed in a retrofitted storage shed, will be manned by volunteers and have produce rotated on a seasonal basis.
All the produce comes from a sustainable farm founded by Josh Taylor and his wife, Kelly. It has been five years in the making and hosts a self-sustaining aquaponics greenhouse and a permaculture food forest with an abundance of edible plants, including mangoes, passion fruit, mulberry trees, moringa trees, chayote squash, papaya, cranberry hibiscus, edible cactus, African basil and amaranth.
The one-acre farm is now undergoing an expansion of its greenhouse. Once completed, the greenhouse will have roughly 11,000 holes to plant in — a significant increase from its current 5,000. The expansion will result in an output of anywhere between 300 to 400 heads of lettuce per day, Josh Taylor said.
But growing food is not the only goal. The aim of Do Good Farm and its outreach projects, as Josh Taylor informed a tour group at the farm store’s grand opening, is to teach communities how to grow a lot of food in different ways in a small amount of space, which may be a necessity for some schools and orphanages that typically lack acres upon acres of farmable land.
“We’re still developing (the farm), but it will be a production as well as a training center for people (who) are passionate about ending hunger and malnutrition,” Josh Taylor said.
Do Good Farm has since opened a small aquaponics farm at an orphanage in Honduras, with another soon to come at a school in the capital of Burundi, Africa. In March, Josh Taylor plans to visit Burundi to see the site for himself and work out the logistics of the upcoming project.
The main objective is to give the school the ability to grow nutritious food for the students and sell surplus food at a market to help fund their school and improve the local economy, he said.
The Burundi project is similar to a pilot project the nonprofit is working on with Hope Charter and Legacy High School in Ocoee.
“We’re working on partnering with Hope Charter/Legacy High School and putting a farm-to-table cafeteria there, because the challenge that we have in our school system is that, for example, in Orange County, they have a budget of $3 per child per meal,” he said. “So it’s very difficult for them to buy nutritious ingredients for them.”
The idea of the farm sprouted from a desire to learn how to garden, which developed into a vision to combat the issue of hunger and malnutrition in communities with fewer resources, Kelly Taylor said.
“It was all just Josh feeling God’s call,” she said. “He’s a cannon-baller; he’s not a toe-dipper. He just jumps in, so when he wanted to learn about gardening, I came home and found he had tilled up the entire backyard. Normal people start with a couple of pots and plants, but he tilled up the entire backyard and drew out exactly what he would plant and irrigated it to have zones, and we just started growing all kinds of food right away, pesticide-free. So it’s both his personality and God’s call on his life where he feels that this is what God wanted him to do. And he’s done it.”
