Freeman Family Farm keeps growing despite gentrification and loss of federal grants

Lisa Freeman says that Freeman Family Farm & Greenhouse, a Manchester-based urban farm and grocery store, exists to make sure people are taken care of. Sometimes that means granting community members access to the solar-powered public charging station, but most of the time, Freeman’s time is occupied running a grocery store where the price tag on all the fruits and vegetables inside is whatever the customers think they should pay.

Although, as one might imagine, some of the store’s members live within the neighborhood, Freeman tells Pittsburgh City Paper that, from Tuesday to Saturday, she gets her share of visitors from all over the county, hailing from places such as Penn Hills, Wilkinsburg, the South Side, and the West End. Still, Freeman has resolved to never let ZIP Code or income deter her from feeding the people who seek out the Freeman Family Farm.

“We have 19 communities that make up the North Side, but we don’t turn anybody away. So people come here and meet. No one leaves hungry, physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually [because] we nurture them entirely,” Freeman says.

While Freeman Family Farm has only been open since March 2025, Freeman explains that the mission of Freeman Family Farm began in 2009 when she and her family moved to Manchester. Back then, Freeman, a social worker by trade, was a PTA member tasked with starting a garden for the neighborhood kids. What would become the Manchester Growing Together Farm became beloved by children and adults alike, so much so that it gained the praise of then-Mayor Luke Ravenstahl. Unfortunately, Freeman says, as time went on and demographics changed around the North Side community, members took from the garden without giving back.

“We ended it after five years, because the community began to gentrify, and they came in with an assumed right to come and take from the Children’s Garden and let their dogs pee in the beds with no respect or knowledge of what the garden represented for the community,” Freeman says. “They had no involvement and did not want as neighbors to participate in the garden. They only wanted the things that the herbs that the garden provided, not a relationship with the community.”

Still, even after the end of the garden, Freeman’s desire to garden remained, and as far as she’s concerned, became a lifeline in 2014 when her late husband, Wallace Sapp, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. During that time, Freeman was attending Manchester’s Bidwell Training Center to learn to cook the produce she’d continued growing on her own. Initially, doctors weren’t optimistic about Sapp’s diagnosis, but Freeman says clean eating, the practice of eating primarily unprocessed and unrefined foods, improved his health and gave him more time. Although her husband has since passed away, she still believes strongly in the benefits of clean eating, which is why customers can find apples, tomatoes, and strawberries among the supplies in her store, but never any candy or junk food.

“Eating clean can give you a better quality of life,” Freeman says. “Everybody should have the right to have clean, fresh produce, especially when you’re living in a food desert. That’s how we came up with that model. We want our residents to live longer and healthier lives.”

In the time that Freeman Family Farm has been open, Freeman says she’s gotten an extremely positive response from the community, but her journey hasn’t been without its struggles. Freeman’s decision to purchase the warehouse on Juniata Street in Manchester led to tension between her and the Manchester Citizens Corporation, which had different ideas for the property, culminating in a lengthy court battle and Freeman penning a book named after an exchange between herself and a board member titled We Don’t Want a F*cking Farm on Our Street.

Looking back on the experience, Freeman feels that the neighborhood needs fresh food more than Ferris wheels and laments that local elected officials appear more beholden to the desires of developers than the needs of their constituents.

“It’s been going on for too long, and our public politicians are forgetting who they really work for,” Freeman says. “They’re giving all their time and interest and things to developers, instead of listening and channeling the needs of their constituents, there’s no balance between affordable housing and the right to feed people who are poor.”

Another recent struggle has come in the form of the current presidential administration. While Freeman Family Farm collaborates with the likes of Chatham University and other urban farms, in terms of funding, it relies on grants from Neighborhood Allies, along with the federal and local governments. Previously, Freeman was relying on a USDA grant to enable her to hire employees, but DOGE cuts have paused those plans indefinitely.

“We had a $100,000 grant to offer employment to residents in this community, but that funding was frozen,” Freeman says. “Typically, funding that has been frozen just disappears, unless that’s challenged in court … I’m not really hopeful that we’ll see that return.”

Despite living in uncertain times, Freeman says, the goal moving forward is to continue caring for the community.

“Freeman Family Farm is here to make sure the residents, the most vulnerable residents in our community, are taken care of. That includes the elderly people with cancer, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and [the] pregnant mommies,” Freeman says. “We want all residents from everywhere to live healthy and long lives.”

This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2025.