Volunteers renovate farmhouse into education center

And we are switching gears now. Volunteers and Lowe's associates rolling up their sleeves in Alpharetta. They are about to get to work. And they're restoring the old Rucker Farmhouse, transforming it into a community education center. So our Eli Jordan is joining us out there with a look at what's happening. And, of course, who's doing it, too. Hey, Eli. Hey, good morning, Alicia. I mean, the Lowe's got out here about 30 volunteers in their community impact program. And they came out here to the Rucker Farm, and they got so busy and fast, they wrapped it up pretty quick. But still, this is a very interesting story because Lowe's, the community impact program, they're donating about $1.5 million here in the Georgia area to uplift certain projects. You know, they decided certain projects, and one of them was the old Rucker Farm here in Alpharetta. And the farm got about $300,000 for upgrades. But the farm is really cool. They're a community farm, and they donate year-round to local community food banks. And they also have this house here where a lot of that $300,000 is going to go into renovating. And with me now is Amanda Massilli. You are the Community Agriculture Sustainability Manager here at Old Rucker Farm, right? I sure am. And so how exciting is it? What are you going to do with that $300,000? Oh, my gosh. We are so excited about the generous grant from the Lowe's Community Impact Program. And we are going to convert this house that was built in the early 1980s. This is an old residential house. It's an old residential house, classic brick ranch. We are going to convert it into a community education center. Now, we're on about, what, 10 1⁄2 acres of land? We are. And we've got the farm up there and then the old residential house. We'll take a look. with all you guys have ahead of you. So you're going to convert this to an education center? Yes, yes we are. We're going to convert this into a space that we can do workshops and classes on everything from sourdough bread making to wreath making, garden planning, and seed starting. So this will transform from a three-bedroom, two-bath into an awesome place to open to the public and then come in here and learn a whole lot about farming and gardening, right? Exactly, yes. We plan to blow out the walls and make this a large classroom space. We will have a kitchen space so that we can do workshops on food preservation, really how to use the bounty that the garden creates, how we can save it for the winter and enjoy it with our families. And those got in here real early this morning, ripped out like all the kitchen here. You can see a lot of it. A lot of labor they put in this morning. They got done quick. They pulled out all the cabinets and stuff that you guys need to get removed and all that. And a lot of good help. but this is all about the farm though isn't it correct and so tell me i mean a little just real briefly about how much you know food do you guys provide to the local community food banks and uh you know sure people can contribute if they want to absolutely so we grow a lot of different annual vegetables here we also have some perennial fruits and herbs and lots of flowers and we harvest in these fields uh 50 fridays out of the year so people sign up on our volunteer page to help us harvest the um the food and we take it over to the north fulton community charities food pantry where it is um dispersed back out to our neighbors and this isn't a 501c3 this is an actual entity of the city of Alpharetta correct that's correct this is a city park We are a city program, one of very few city-run organic farm programs in the country. So it's a really unique program that we have here in the city of Alpharetta. Well, awesome. Here at the old Rucker Farm, and there's the farmhouse they're going to renovate, rip out the inside to make it an educational center for the farm here. People come up here, have classes, community outreach, educational outreach. and then also later on this afternoon we're going to check out this farm up here and show what all they provide service to the community here in alpharetta here at the old rucker farm at least i'll get back to you very nice when you talk about a three hundred thousand dollar investment that can certainly go a long way and make a big difference so eli thanks for for sharing with us very very nice to hear