When Lee Harper joined Solid Ground’s forebear, the Fremont Public Association (FPA), in early 1998, Marra Farm was a 4-acre tangle of weeds in South Park. The formerly lush truck farm, once owned by a founder of the Pike Place Market, was hidden in plain sight.

So how did we help turn it back into a working farm that provides 10,000 pounds of organic produce a year to neighborhood food banks, programs, and health clinics? Community engagement. 

“I love what this farm has become,” Lee said on a recent visit to our Giving Garden at Marra Farm. “I love how much Solid Ground has learned over time about how to be in community, serve community, be farmers, you know. And it’s just beautiful what happens here and how much food is grown and how many people are involved.”

Lee, a former coordinator of Solid Ground’s old Lettuce Link program, was a key member of the team that envisioned and revitalized the farm to become the flourishing community food hub it is today. In addition to our Giving Garden, Marra Farm is now home to Young Women Empowered’s Y-We Grow, Salsa de la Vida, Mien Community Garden, Flowers Sow Urban, Casa Surya Healing, Marra Farm Chicken Co-op, a P-Patch Community Garden, and a daylighted portion of Hamm Creek. 

A training ground for community-building leadership 

“One of the reasons I applied for and was super excited to work at FPA was that everything about it was about building community, and building community was my personal mission,” said Lee. “I had been a tax accountant for years and spent all of my volunteer time helping to build P-Patches and just really being engaged in my community. 

“I learned so much from all of my colleagues at FPA/Solid Ground and from people in the P-Patch world about how to be a good leader. You know when you drive 11 miles south and come to Marra Farm, this is not my community, right? And it’s like, ‘What is my role here?’ And I think I went from joining the organization with [an attitude of] ‘I’m here to help you,’ to when I left the organization it was like, ‘I’m here to serve you,’ and ‘How can we work together to make this the best place possible?’ 

“So I walked in and not only was it about building community, but it was this amazing opportunity to build my leadership over time as well,” Lee said. 

Lee went on to get a master’s degree in Nonprofit Leadership, and eventually, she moved into the role of Assistant Director at FPA. One of her biggest projects was leading a broad-based strategic planning process in 2006 that included input from over 200 staff members and community stakeholders.  

She left Solid Ground in 2007 to become executive director at the North Shore Senior Center in Bothell. Subsequently, she served as ED at the Phinney Neighborhood Center, on the faculty of Seattle University and University of Washington, and in other positions leading, consulting, and coaching nonprofit organizations. 

“I took all of the skills from Solid Ground and transferred them up,” she said. “When I joined FPA, I had worked as a volunteer. I had supervised volunteers as a volunteer, but I’d never supervised them as a staff and worked in collaboration with volunteers. I’d also never supervised any staff either. It was it was my first introduction to DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] and working on anti-racism principles,” Lee said. 

Actualizing a lifelong avocation 

“When I think about who I am and my role in this world, I go back to my first volunteering I did in life,” Lee said. “I was five and I helped deliver the Toys for Tots presents from our classroom to the office. And my parents were all about community service. And so I started thinking about, ‘What do I want?’ 

“It’s about us growing together, and me learning from you, and learning how to serve you better, and learning how to be served by my own community.”

~Lee Harper, former FPA Assistant Director

“I want to build community. I want to work in my neighborhood. I want to be outdoors.  

I want to learn. So that’s when I landed at FPA. And when I think about all of the jobs I’ve had and all of the work I’ve done in this world since then, it just really all connects. Every single thing is about building community. It just looks different, you know?” 

During her tenure at the Phinney Neighborhood Association, the adjacent Greenwood community suffered a tremendous gas explosion that destroyed businesses and buildings in the heart of its business district. 

“We were able to take a really important role in helping the community recover, raising funds and getting people the services they needed,” Lee said. “We’d never done that before and we just stepped in and worked with the city. It was great to be a part of the solution to that terrible tragedy.” 

In addition to launching Marra Farm, Lee’s work at FPA included collaborating with the City of Seattle’s P-Patch program to involve backyard gardeners in growing food for people who need it. In that role, she helped reshape how people talked about food bank gardens. 

“We went from, ‘Hey, I’m growing food for low-income people in this food bank garden,’ to ‘Hey, we’re growing food in the Giving Garden, and we’re contributing to a healthy society,” Lee said. “It’s really different to think about service in that way as a collaborative partnership with others. 

“When I joined the organization, I really had this somewhat naïve view of how to serve the community – and it was ‘I am here to help you, I’m here to give you seeds, I’m here to grow food for you.’ And I learned a lot over the years about how to be in community with people.  

“And not only was I serving, but I was getting served – and we grew so much stronger together. It’s about us growing together, and me learning from you, and learning how to serve you better, and learning how to be served by my own community.” 

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Image at top: Lee with her pup reminiscing about the early days of Solid Ground’s Giving Garden at Marra Farm (image still from a video by Timothy Hamp).