It’s hard to catch Linda Seyler. You might find her hunched over pulling clovers to make room for the opo squash she’ll be planting soon. Moments later, she could be greeting farmers with “namaste,” making sure that they have the seeds they need or that their kids are all right.

 

Linda Seyler is the founder of Global Garden Refugee Training Farm, where she and 100 refugee families spend their springs to falls growing a plethora of crops. Situated on a small block in the Albany Park of Chicago, they use plots of land to grow everything from leeks, radishes, water spinach and more.

 

Since 2012, Global Garden has provided food security and accessibility to healthy crops to newly arrived refugees. Seyler started the program for refugees whom she calls "displaced farmers” due to their previous experience in farming. She says it allows them to create a new sense of home while allowing them go back to their farming roots.

 

“[These refugees] are coming from rural communities and they’re plopped in the middle of Chicago,” Seyler says. “It’s very disorienting and the farm is a place where they can revisit the positive parts of their previous life and get their hands in the dirt.”

 

Growing up, Seyler wasn’t given much of an opportunity to get her hands in the dirt. She was surrounded by farms in Niagara County in upstate New York, and she wanted to get out into the fields but got pushback because she was a girl.

 

“People assumed I wouldn’t be a farmer. I wanted to take shop class when I was in junior high, but nice girls don’t do that,” Seyler says.

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Her brother ended up purchasing a farm where she could work and that’s when her passion soared. She got her bachelor of science in planet sciences and her master’s degree in plant protection and integrated pest management at Cornell University. Dipping her toes into the activism she always wanted to get involved in, she joined the Peace Corps in Thailand for two years, where she did educational outreach.

 

She began teaching vocational education, and recalls the lack of formal education many of the adults had, most only going to school until third or fourth grade. There was not a shred of reading material in the villages, and many of the adults were illiterate. Seyler taught how to repair small engines, along with building accessible trains for the community.

 

Seyler felt connected to activism, but her body did not. Being overseas made her to be sick, so she came back to the U.S.

 

“I’ve always been a rabble-rouser,” Seyler says. “I came back [from the Peace Corps] and kind of floundered, working for a cooperative extension for a while, but my heart wasn’t it in.”

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Her love for farming and drive for activism intertwined when she was working at the Coalition of Limited English Speaking Elderly. She was in charge of writing the proposal for a refugee agricultural partnership program. Her proposal, now Global Garden, ended up getting funding from the Heartland Alliance’s Refugee program and after three years when the funds ran out, she decided to run it as an independent operation.

 

“[Global Garden] was definitely what she was born to do; she just really wants to be in the dirt,” says Brienne Ahearn, the education coordinator of the North River Commission, a nonprofit community and economic development organization for the northwest side of Chicago, who partners with Global Garden.

 

Ahearn sets up initiatives to get Chicago Public Schools on the northwest side involved in communities across Chicago. Students will go to different community organizations, such as Global Garden, to volunteer and learn.

 

Ahearn also was an English teacher with the resettlement agency RefugeeOne, where some of her Burmese and Bhutanese clients worked with Seyler.

 

When Ahearn was teaching classes to refugees at RefugeeOne, she would see people’s frustration due to culture shock. Some refugees also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder related to past trauma in their home countries and the resettlement process. Ahearn sees Global Garden as a place of solace for refugees during resettlement.

 

Due to language barriers, it was difficult for refugees to relay their struggles and feelings to Ahearn. However, she says, she could tell through their jubilant expressions that the farm was boosting their moods. They would come to classes with garbage bags full of different types of lettuces for their peers. Home-cooked meals also started pouring in, creating a new-found sense of community and catharsis.

 

For Buddhi and Danka, husband and wife, the process of getting to Chicago was traumatic. Originally from Bhutan, they spent 17 years in Nepal during their migration. They ended up in the United States nine years ago and have been with Global Garden since its beginning.

 

Global Garden allows them to feel comfortable through farming, they say. The couple, who farmed in Bhutan, say the garden prompts them to get involved with a community of other refugee farmers while growing food for themselves.

 

“The greenery and flowers, especially the leeks, make me feel relieved and [I] forget the stress and trauma of the past,” Buddhi says.

 

For the population of refugees that are not farmers, it can be more difficult to find jobs in fields they studied. Some refugees might have been philosophy teachers or doctors in the home countries, but the licenses aren’t the same here, causing some to take menial jobs. This leads to some refugees having to go back to school.

 

“Some come in with absolutely no English or haven’t been to school ever,” Ahearn says. “I had students who had never held a pencil.”

 

When the farm was being built, refugees from the community approached Seyler and asked if they could participate. What started as one acre of mushroom compost grew to be 100 plots of diverse crops for different families. Now, the farm operates from the spring to the fall seasons.

 

Manderjee, a farmer who has coming to the farm since this past winter, has been undergoing serious health issues, suffering from cancer and a recent knee surgery. At home it’s stressful for her. While people are going to work, she rests at home and feels isolated from the community. Since coming to the farm, she has met others and has formed friendships while being able to get accessible, nutritious food.

 

Farmers grow a variety of greens and melons that are difficult to find at local grocery stores, such as bitter melon or opo squash. Seyler says the ability to grow familiar and nutritional foods is beneficial for people who are surrounded by sugary and processed foods.

 

“When they walk into the grocery store, it’s all fat and sugar that’s heavily promoted and that’s what they see and they want to integrate,” Seyler says. “They’re at risk for getting sucked into eating a diet that’s skewed toward unhealthy junk food.”

 

The community also gets a taste of their work. Ahearn says they used to sell their food at the Horner Park Farmers Market which helped refugees to meet more people in the city.

 

“You know the cultures exist in your community, but when you see people out there you become more curious,” Ahearn says. “Neighbors want to learn about their food.”

 

Seyler says they started out with the vision of helping displaced refugee farmers become beginning farmers in the U.S. Now, with the farmland stretched to 100 families, she is unsure about where the future is. However, what’s to come could be outside of the farm, and in the education field. Last year Global Garden finished writing a curriculum plan for illiterate, non-English speaking, displaced farmers who need to learn about farming in the U.S.

 

With funding from the Refugee Agricultural Partnership Program, Seyler and other activists have helped create accessible ways to get farmers get back on their feet through the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project. For Seyler’s part of the program, she takes crucial information about the U.S. agricultural system and makes it available for refugees who do not speak English or cannot read.

 

When reflecting on the necessity of Global Garden in the community, Seyler recalls a refugee who was selling produce the first year the organization had started. While the man was sitting at the gate of the garden, eagerly waiting for a customer, another man approached and bought produce from him. The look on the refugee’s face stuck with Seyler. He had produced something that others valued enough to pay him for, and realized that he was part of the community, Seyler says.

“To see the look on his face,” Seyler says. “That’s what we’re about: remaking home”