Fox Chase Farm volunteers disband after more than 30 years following conflict with Philly school district
Locals formed Friends of Fox Chase Farm in 1990 to support Philly's largest farm. The group has now disbanded after members say the school district became too difficult to work with.
A volunteer group at Fox Chase Farm has dissolved after more than 30 years, members announced on social media this month. The group says dwindling volunteers plus new fees and restrictions from the Philadelphia School District made their work at the city-owned farm too difficult to continue.
“We finally folded,” said Karen Eble, former president of the group, Friends of Fox Chase Farm. “The farm is administered by the Philadelphia School District and they were, I guess, not very open to us being there.”
Friends of Fox Chase Farm formed in 1990 to support the 112-acre property that straddles Philadelphia and Abington Township and is owned by the city.
At its peak, the group drew over 400 local families, who grew thousands of pounds of produce for food banks annually and also functioned as a parent teacher association of sorts for a 4-H program, which some members’ children participated in. The group bought equipment, loaned the program money, and attended farm shows with the kids.
The Fox Chase 4-H allowed more than a dozen youth, including many who live in Philly, to raise animals on the city farm — rare for a program that typically attracts kids whose families own agricultural land.
“We’d compete with the kids that grew up on farms,” said Jim Kates, a longtime leader of Friends of Fox Chase Farm.
The farm’s 4-H was suspended in 2022 after the school district began charging fees for services it used to provide the program for free, such as housing the animals.
4-H had long covered food and veterinary care for the animals and split feeding duties with the resident farmer, members said, but the school district used to board the animals for free.
“It would’ve cost us $15,000 to have these kids keep their animals there,” Kates said.
The district said at the time that the 4-H was not complying with new policies and procedures.
“Fox Chase Farm is an educational facility operated by the School District of Philadelphia and is not in the business of boarding privately owned animals,” a spokesperson said this week.
Officials did not directly respond to the volunteers’ assertion that they were made unwelcome by the school district, but a spokesperson said this week the farm saw 10,000 “community visitors” in the past year.
There is an active 4-H program on the farm, a district spokesperson said, but did not immediately respond to questions about how much access the participants have to the livestock.
The volunteers also held two fundraisers per year that raised thousands of dollars for the farm, group members said.
The Philadelphia School District rents the farm for $1 from the city. The district is currently renegotiating that 30-year lease, said Mandy Fellouzis, who runs the district’s programs there.
In recent years, the Friends group shrank as volunteers aged and the school district placed new restrictions on their activities, members said. By this past March, there were only a handful of active members, Kates said, and they decided to fold.
One of the issues the school district raised about the Friends’ events, Kates said, was liability: A volunteer group at Pennypack Park disbanded in 2020 after being named in lawsuits that some considered frivolous.
“We still had an insurance policy,” Kates said, but with the group dwindling anyway, “we decided it wasn’t worth it.”
Inquirer Greater Abington
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