By Kailey Aiken
The morning sun sparkles off the neat rows of freshly watered, lush, leafy crops. The green plants drench the farm in such vibrant color that it almost looks fake. A wide-brimmed hat shields a farmer from the heat as he kneels in the dirt, hand-plucking beets from the ground. Another farmer stomps by in working boots, pushing a small mountain of vegetables in a wheelbarrow, and another washes crops in the shed.
The new chicks, just two months old, peck around and chirp in their coop behind the young peach and banana trees. Under the greenhouse’s canopy, seedlings begin sprouting their first leaves, waiting to be transported to the fields.
Farmer Joe Dalessio watches over it all, stepping onto the field in a baseball cap and sunglasses, with a farm dog and three cats trailing behind him. The whole scene comes together like some tropical-rural fairytale.
Looking up through the trees, a cluster of skyscrapers comes into view.
Lo and behold, the farm is actually in downtown Tampa.
Dalessio, a Tampa native, co-founded the city’s little slice of farm paradise, Meacham Urban Farm, in 2020 with fellow independent farmer Travis Malloy.
Dalessio and Malloy, a chicken farmer, met through local farmers’ markets. Malloy learned of the opportunity for the project and immediately thought of Dalessio.
Malloy said he thought Dalessio was the right man for the job and that he should submit a proposal for the project. But it was a big job, so Dalessio asked Malloy if he would be his partner on the project, and he agreed.
After winning the grant for the space, they transformed the vacant two-acre lot into a thriving green space as part of the ENCORE! redevelopment project, a mixed-income initiative, with the support of the Tampa Housing Authority and Hillsborough County School District.
Dalessio developed an affection for gardening and the idea of growing his food at a young age.
“I just caught the bug,” he said. When he was a kid, Dalessio’s grandfather was a big gardener who made his tomato sauce from homegrown tomatoes, singing in Italian as he canned his sauces. He introduced Dalessio to gardening and inspired him to pursue farming.
As a teen, Dalessio worked at a pizza shop and saved up his money to put towards building a garden.
“I put all of my money into it and worked so hard,” said Dalessio. “I was out there one day in the garden, just looking at it, and something just came over me. I knew I was going to do this for the rest of my life.”
And so far, that’s exactly what he’s done. While studying environmental microbiology at the University of South Florida (USF), Dalessio still couldn’t stop thinking about gardening and agriculture. When he graduated from USF, he dropped everything else and immediately went into Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farming.
As a CSA farmer, Dalessio ran two farms in the Tampa Bay area, right up until he opened Meacham Urban Farm.
It wasn’t until he opened Meacham that Dalessio realized there was one other integral value in farming that fulfilled him more than any amount of self-grown produce: the community that came with it.
While working in the farm store one afternoon, Dalessio looked up from the register and saw the line for his farm store stretched all the way out of the door and into the parking lot.
Seeing the sheer number of people humbled Dalessio. Some of them had become his best friends. Others had been shopping with him every week for the past eight years. Even if he didn’t know others personally, he still recognized some of their faces or remembered their names.
“I just had this mindset shift,” said Dalessio.
The intention of feeding his community always existed, but much of his work had been driven by personal passion and personal interest until this point. As the farm grew and evolved and people gathered around it, Dalessio found himself in the middle of a whole new circle he never anticipated. Best friends, employees, donors, sponsors, and everything in between, Meacham Farm has reeled them all in.
“Seeing that other people were sharing my passion and their dedication to this farm … it was like, ok, this is a lot bigger than just ‘my thing’ now,” said Dalessio.
“He gets tipped by customers for helping carry groceries to their cars,” said Dalessio. “The first time he made money here, he was just so pumped up — so excited. It was awesome.”
During strawberry season, Dalessio brought a young girl into the field to see the strawberry bushes. She had never seen a strawberry growing before and was happy just to look at it. When he had her pick a strawberry right off the vine and eat it in the field, it blew her mind. She was completely amazed.
“To see their eyes light up like that … That is exactly why we do this,” said Dalessio.
None of this social impact is possible without Meacham Farm’s food production, though. Compared to other community-based farms that may rely on consistent grants or local funding, Meacham operates solely on the revenue it earns from selling its food.
“The education, the community coming together, the events that we do … none of that’s actually possible without the food, so we’re heavily focused on the food-growing side of things,” said Dalessio.
As Meacham Urban Farm continues to grow — both in crops and community — Dalessio said they plan to extend outreach programs and get more neighborhood kids involved at the farm.
“We really want to expand the education aspect of what we’re doing,” said Dalessio. He and his team have spent the past few years heavily focused on building the farm, which has been no easy feat, but they have finally settled in. Now, they’re aiming to bring in more kids, educate more people about locally grown food, and expand events like their Sunday farm-to-table dinners.
“Basically we want to keep doing what we’re doing now but just get better at it and add more to it,” said Dalessio.
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Photos courtesy of Meachum Urban Farm.