Sean McKay
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Christa Hein: Welcome back to the Farm Educators Roadmap, today I'm excited to welcome someone who has taken an unconventional path into urban agriculture and community farming.
Sean McKay. Sean's story is one of transformation and impact. He grew up on a sheet farm in Ohio, but initially didn't feel connected to the farming lifestyle. Instead, he earned a degree in music education. But after taking a plant biology class at Columbus State Community College, he discovered a passion for plants that changed everything.
He went on to earn degrees in horticultural science, sustainable plant system, and landscape design from both Columbus State and the Ohio State University. Since then, Sean has built a career dedicated to urban farming, landscape design, and community education and service. He turned part of his own backyard into a thriving urban farm, producing over 700 pounds [00:02:00] of food in his very first season.
He later founded the Garden District Cooperative, a 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit that connects home and community gardens, provides fresh produce to food pantries, and donates cut flowers to nursing homes. In addition to managing eight urban gardens in Columbus, Sean also teaches plant science as an adjunct professor at Columbus State Community College coming full circle to inspire students just as he was inspired by that first class years ago.
Sean, welcome to the podcast.
Sean McKay: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited.
Christa Hein: Awesome. Now to let listeners know, I met Sean last month while attending the Offa Conference. We were in the same workshop and ended up in a working group together, and as soon as I started to hear about Sean's work and what he was doing in Columbus, Ohio, I knew I needed to have him on the podcast.
I'm so excited to learn more of his story. So Sean, you grew up on a sheep farm, but have shared that at the time you didn't really [00:03:00] feel a call to work in farming. So looking back, were there aspects of your farm upbringing that influenced your journey?
Sean McKay: Good question. I think that, our farm was sort of intergenerational, so it was my grandparents, my uncle, , my brothers, and my mom was a single mom at the time. And, , so my grandmother sort of raised me in, early childhood. And so I spent a lot of time with her, inside the house, of the farm.
And then my brothers and cousins would all be outside with my uncle, helping. You know, the sheep and everything. And so we connected through music. And, I wasn't ever really invited to the outside portion of the farm. So I think that's maybe where the disconnect started but it was, it was, allowing myself to, realize that I am much more than, I have many more interests than just music.
That when I took that plant science class, it really sort of opened my eyes into other interests that I have that I would've never seen. If I didn't take that [00:04:00] class.
Christa Hein: Nice. So you initially pursued a degree in music education, so that was a pretty drastic career shift from music into plants. So talk about how, that shift happened for you.
Academics was never really my strong suit, but my passion and my drive to learn more about music really sort of pushed me, to get that, music education degree. But as I found out going to college only 17, 18, I wasn't ready, emotionally so I was not ready to take that step, so mm-hmm.
Sean McKay: I tried taking a lot of my general education classes and some of the outside of what the curriculum of the music education curriculum said, and that's when I learned, other interests that I had.
Christa Hein: So what was it about that plant biology class that sparked your passion for plants and agriculture?
Sean McKay: Think it was actually observing [00:05:00] how cool and how unique plants are. When I never made those observations and looked at them in a detailed way that that class really allowed me to do.
Christa Hein: Mm, nice. So seeing them grow or just like the features of the different plants.
Sean McKay: I think seeing them grow is, is always a very exciting thing.
But, understanding how plants are growing and understanding their anatomy and how plants can differ by family to family on such a, a diverse way. Nice. Just, it really made me, super interested in it.
Christa Hein: So after that class, you went on to study horticulture, sustainable plant systems and landscape architecture.
What drove you to explore those fields so deeply by getting a degree in those? What did you do with that?
Sean McKay: I started in landscape design and management, and I was able to use that creativity that I have with music. And then, incorporate my love and interest in plants in a [00:06:00] really, cool way. So landscape design really sort of hit both marks for me in that.
And then I got my associate's degree in landscape design and management and then went to OSU for landscape architecture. And there it was very theoretical and very, very cool and interesting high level concepts. But I really liked the science of plant biology. So, I finished with agriculture and a specialization in horticulture because I had already taken so many design classes.
I got a minor in landscape architecture, but that's when I really got to hone in on my love for trees and shrubs, woody plants. And then I sort of fell into food and I thought that was a really cool transition for me.
Christa Hein: Yeah. You know, you mentioned how it kind of played into the creative side that was fulfilling in your music, and I think that that's something that people who haven't worked with plants [00:07:00] may not recognize right away how creative gardening can be, and how that can really feed that side of you with laying out the plants and designing them and making a space that's not only functional, but beautiful.
Sean McKay: Just because you put all your designs on paper, that doesn't mean that the design actually works out the very end. Right? True. It's a constant, true, uh, challenge that you have to overcome as you actually are doing it in real life. Yeah. Which becomes super exciting and fun in itself.
Christa Hein: Uhhuh. Absolutely. So, lots of people dabble in gardening, but transforming a third of your backyard into a productive farm is a big leap.
So what inspired you to take that step? It's such a big space.
Sean McKay: I think I learned during Covid that our food system was, to a scale that it's not able to keep up with itself. And by able to, by people being able to grow their own food, we become resilient. Mm-hmm. And we're able not to rely on that system [00:08:00] that is not made to set up for success for so many people. And when we're able to grow our own food, whether that's a little pot, a container with some herbs, you know, on your patio or just in a small space that we can make those smaller steps to sort of fight that large scale system and be more resilient and, grow our own food.
Christa Hein: Yeah, and those small steps are sometimes like so key in empowering somebody to show them, what they're capable of doing.
Sean McKay: Then from that I grew, I considered our backyard a community garden because I was able to feed not only just myself and my husband, but I am able to feed so many other people.
And so then I really got into community gardens. I. And that was my focus for a while. And then I sort of really liked the idea of business and, farming on a larger scale. Not like super large, but it, I'm able to feed more people and get fresh food and access to that food [00:09:00] where, we struggle with that in urban environments like Columbus here.
Christa Hein: Yeah. You had mentioned that you had grown about 700 pounds of food your first season and that you donated much of that to your community. When you started that garden, was that giving component a part of the vision, or did it just evolve as you were gardening?
Sean McKay: Definitely evolved. You know, if I told my husband that, Hey, I'm gonna, build a farm in our backyard, there would've been an immediate nope.
But, you know, I told him, I'm just gonna do one bed. I have this whole design layout and I just had so much fun doing it, and I did it so quickly that I'm like, oh, I can build these other beds and this is not an issue. And, uh, it started just. I was growing so much food, I'm thinking, what the heck am I gonna do with this?
But why not share it?
Christa Hein: So at what point did you realize that you really wanted to scale it up and bring more people into urban farming?
Sean McKay: I think the more I [00:10:00] started to learn and get to meet other farmers and other urban farmers and community gardeners. That's when I got more and more interested When there were other like-minded people like myself sometimes, you get so into the work itself and you sort of feel isolated.
Mm-hmm. But when you go to like an offa conference, I felt surrounded by people that thought the same way that I did, that understand the complexity of our food system, that understand how difficult it is to, you know. Get the food to our plate and so many plates throughout the country and the world.
Yeah. And it's all connected.
Christa Hein: Yep. So you founded the Garden District Cooperative, which is a nonprofit that empowers people to grow their own food. Could you tell us more about its mission and impact and how you came to start that?
Sean McKay: The motto, take care of yourself and someone else if you can. Mm-hmm.
Really sort of, has driven that mission. Our real mission is, community. Community-based [00:11:00] agriculture. So community, growing the food and giving it back to the community. That's, I think if I had to, break it down to the nuts and bolts, I think that's really what it comes down to because there is such a large disconnect between people and food.
And once we can build that connection and realize that agriculture is in every part of our lives, and if we didn't have it, we wouldn't be able to, you know, build technology because we'd be busy trying to get food. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so building that connection is super important for me.
Christa Hein: So how does the cooperative connect home gardeners and community gardens and food pantries together?
Sean McKay: We, do it by the diversity of the gardens in which we include. So we built a school garden so I'm there every Friday morning. I got a hydroponic system inside of the cafeteria and I'm able to work with series of classes. Today was third grade classes, and, we get to understand the meaning of what is hydroponics.
Hydro meaning [00:12:00] water phonics is a Greek word for working. So, working water, replicating soil science. It's, these kinds of full circle educational moments that can reconnect kids and adults back to their food. When you see, lettuce growing hydroponics inside of a cafeteria, when some kids might be eating lettuce, yeah.
They might be able to connect those dots.
Christa Hein: Oh, that's amazing. Now you mentioned all ages, kids and adults. You've also donated cut flowers to nursing homes. What inspired that initiative?
Sean McKay: I installed a perennial cut flower garden attached to our farm, at our house. And, I dedicated that to my grandmother who helped me raise me on the farm.
Uh, beautiful. And, so we lived seven houses away from a nursing home. And what's really cool is the first couple years it was just me coming and bringing bunches of flowers over there. But then, I got to. Collaborate with some of the administrators and found out that there was actually a [00:13:00] rooftop garden in their hospice center that had gone abandoned because one of the hospice patients had passed away and they were 103.
Wow. And that was like their, activity and enjoyment and they had no one to take care of the space. So I immediately said, how can I help? How can we help? So we've grown to that space now. So that's an accessible space for the hospice patients to have that last sort of connection to nature before they move on.
That's amazing. So, it's like the diversity of, who we are bringing into our spaces, , I think has really, been able to hit at different levels, whether it's kiddos, aging folk, or like we have an abandoned farm that was attached to a church. I would drive past it every day. I finally, called the church.
I said, who's maintaining that space? It had a high tunnel and everything. And they're like, actually, we're gonna demolish it. Oh. And I said. Can I please bring it back to life? And they're like, we would love [00:14:00] that. So then, once a month later on in the season, we would do a free farm stand for the congregation.
'cause they would charge us $10, a year for just to have the space. I'm thinking I wanna give back to that congregation who's paying for that water. Yeah. So, once a month we would do a free farm stand and we get to meet everyone. And this year, I'm actually partnering with the Vacation Bible School and we're gonna get those kiddos inside of the farm and have them incorporate, their programming inside of there.
Christa Hein: Oh, perfect. Yeah. So you manage eight different gardens around Columbus. What does that look like on a daily or seasonal basis for you? That's amazing. That is so much.
Sean McKay: Yeah. I'm learning that I, I take on a little bit too much, but what this has allowed me to do is build leadership development, by allowing people to become a garden cultivator.
So there's a one garden cultivator per space. So they get to take the leadership and [00:15:00] decide what to grow, how they're gonna grow it, but then they don't have to worry about writing grants or trying to find money or, you know, volunteer coordination. 'cause I can do all the backend stuff. Mm-hmm. And I'm really good at that.
And then on top of that, we do, every weekday we're at a different garden. So we also bring that extra support and extra hands and then my expertise that they can rely on if they have any questions throughout. So it's not just me anymore. It's really a collection of many people that are thinking alike and wanna take care of others.
Christa Hein: Oh, that's fantastic. So what's been the biggest challenge in maintaining and growing the spaces, and how have you overcome that?
Sean McKay: Oh, I mean, there are lots of challenges. Mm-hmm. With, I think at any farm, and I think the challenge is maybe that they're not all in one space. Mm-hmm. And, you know, if I have to think about, okay, I'm gonna stop at three of the farms today, I have to make sure that I have all my [00:16:00] tools for each one.
And I. Don't tend to be the most organized 'cause I'm just so excited that I leave something when I have to drive back and forth. So I think because our farm is not just on one piece of land, that is our biggest challenge. Mm-hmm.
Christa Hein: So are they all inside city limits in the Columbus area?
Sean McKay: Good question. Five of them are actually within a mile and a half of each other. Nice. And it's sort of interesting. On our website we have a map of the locations and it looks , like a string of pearls. They're all in sort of a line, which is really nice and convenient for me. But then we have three that are on the south side of Columbus that are sort of clustered together.
We just got a fruit park, which I was super excited about, and a land bank parcel. It has 90 fruit trees. Wow. And then, we helped build a community garden, community farm, directly attached to one of the food pantries that we partner with LSS food [00:17:00] pantry. And, we grow 1300 pounds that go straight into that pantry.
I would talk about hyperlocal and fresh food. It cannot get fresher. Absolutely. And then we just acquired an abandoned urban farm on three city lots that are all connected. It has water and it has fencing, which are two infrastructure things that are really, challenges for urban ag.
Mm-hmm. And urban farmers. So, that's really exciting too because there's a little community garden space, which 20 community garden plots. , there's a little research plot. We have some mushroom production, and then I created a program called Become a Farmer. Where it removes a lot of the barriers, land access, the expensive, , infrastructure that's needed to try to get into farming.
And you get a 35 foot by 45 foot plot of land in ground and you can grow for sale, you can grow for your own conception, you can grow to donate whatever you want and it allows to build that capacity [00:18:00] for people. Yeah, so they can try their ideas out and absolutely see those. And then they have me, for mentorship, if they have questions along the way.
And I don't have all the answers by any means, but I do have a well connected network of people that I rely on and I can draw them in to help as well.
Christa Hein: Wow. With your background in landscape design, I'm sure that has come in a lot with being able to put these spaces together and make them actually work.
How have you found , that the landscape design has benefited you in that regard?
Sean McKay: I think it's the fact that I can take a very small little lot, whether it's my third of my backyard or you know, a big three city parcel lot and really make efficient each little bit of space that we possibly can.
And I think I'm able to do that through the design methods that I've learned.
Christa Hein: It's really amazing how much you can grow in a small space and to teach people [00:19:00] in an urban environment that you don't need giant amount of space or acres and acres that you can make a big difference in your family budget, in the experience your kids get in, just, you know, even a small backyard.
Sean McKay: Absolutely, and for me, it's a form of play. So every morning before I go to work, I get three hours of play, which, as adults we're not, we're not a lot of play anymore. Right. But I think it's important for our mental health to incorporate that in my sense of play as farming.
Mm-hmm. And I get to do that with other people too. So that, that sense of community is also what has been so impactful to me. For example, we did some free farm stands at the school garden after school would let out, and we'd have all these tomatoes and zucchinis that we were handing out. And, this was every week for eight weeks.
And, there was a neighbor that came back and made us tomato sauce with the tomatoes that we gave [00:20:00] them. One neighbor made zucchini bread for all the people that were working the farm stand as a thank you for the zucchinis that we gave them the week before. So it's, it's those really impactful moments that just pushes me to keep going and even more and more and more and more.
Christa Hein: So, yeah, absolutely. Where, you're not just teaching people how to grow food, but you're connecting them to their food. You're creating community, the mental health, you mentioned the creativity, the play, like there is so much that goes into this and the education is just happening because of all these experiences.
But then it sounds like you're doing the formal education through schools as well. There's so many different levels to what you're working on and what you're creating. It's fantastic.
Sean McKay: And I think for schools specifically . The school year is not during the high part of the growing season.
Yeah. So there's a disconnect with maintenance during that summertime. And so [00:21:00] by bringing a community organization in the space to help with that space and the community garden that we build at the school, is a mixed use space. So the kiddos get the the large bed in the middle. Then around that is a communal space.
Whatever food we grow there is either donated or at the free farm stand. And then around there are little plots that people can rent out for $5. And have a little space that they can grow whatever they'd like to do. So you're, you're maximizing the amount of hands in the space as we know. More hands equal less work.
Yeah. And so it really, and it builds that community aspect to it as well.
Christa Hein: Well, so now you've come full circle and you teach plant science as an adjunct professor at Columbus State Community College, and it's that same school where your journey began. What does it feel like to come full circle and be able to inspire new students now?
Sean McKay: It's one of those moments in life where like I'm just full of joy. And, I can help give my [00:22:00] joy and my passion to other people and maybe spark that passion in them. And, I've never felt a sense of security before and this, my life is full of that and I just wanna help anyone else that I can.
Christa Hein: That's beautiful. So for someone who is interested in starting an urban farm or a community garden, what advice would you give them as they are thinking about starting?
Sean McKay: That is a very good question, and this happens so often because we get so excited. Especially it happens in the wintertime, and I used to be that person where people would go to, if they wanted to start something and I would let them know that there are so many things and so many gardens and farms already get involved first with those.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And when you do that, you can see the things that you like and what the challenges might be. You start meeting the people that are already in this space, which then connect you with other people that then when it's meant to be, things just will fall into [00:23:00] place. Don't start something and get so tunnel vision that realizing there are so many other people already doing similar things.
So by working with them, you can help support them. Learn in the process, meet everybody, and then you can create your space. That's really what I would recommend.
Christa Hein: Yeah. That's fantastic advice to let it really form organically based on the needs that you're seeing that are coming up, in the space,
Sean McKay: and look at it holistically.
Hmm. And I, I think, uh, really getting in there and getting involved, that's step one. Getting involved is absolutely step one, you know. Where are their gardens already by you? Well there's a map that's already out there that will tell you all the, urban gardens in Franklin County.
So go from there and then start speaking and get involved and meet people.
Christa Hein: Nice. Well, so Sean, where can listeners connect with you [00:24:00] and learn more about your work or get involved in the community gardens that you're working on?
Sean McKay: We have a website, gardendistrictcorp.org. You can email me, you can apply to be a part of our community Gardens if you wanna be a farmer.
We still have two plots open if you wanna experience some extra growing space and learn along with us. You can find us on Facebook, at Garden District Columbus, Ohio. Just send me an email. I'm the kind of person that I gladly meet up with you for coffee, talk and help support anyone in any way that I can.
Christa Hein: Fantastic. Sean, this has been such an inspiring conversation. Your journey from growing up on a sheep farm, to studying music, to discovering a love for plants, and then turning that passion into a career in urban agriculture and education. It's just a testament to the power of following your passion.
That makes a real impact in your community. And then through the Garden District Cooperative and your teaching at Columbus State, you're not only [00:25:00] growing food, you're growing opportunities, connections, and a deeper appreciation for sustainable urban farming. Thank you so much for sharing your story and insights with us today.
I know our listeners will take away so much inspiration from your journey.
Sean McKay: Absolutely. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Christa Hein: You are so welcome. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning into the Farm Educators Roadmap. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who might be inspired by Sean's work.
Until next time, keep growing, keep teaching, and keep building a future where everyone has access to fresh, local food. See you next time.
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