Man in Overalls

On January 22, 2026, nearly two years after first applying, Overalls Farm Three secured its Certificate of Use from the City of Jacksonville to operate legally as a neighborhood farm.

Winning a certificate of use granting us permission to grow took 2 years, 3 citations, 4 meetings with city officials, the backing of 5 operational non-profit partners, 11 letters of support from neighborhood business leaders, 13 Greens & Beans community meals, 15 American Gothic inspired community posts, 125 neighborhood uPick Farm Members, 500+ families on our farm member wait list, over 1350 signers on the Petition for Permission to Grow (including 350 immediate neighbors), and over $50,000 in lost revenue – not to mention: having our USDA farm serial number & state level Green Belt exemption, three Florida state-level legal preemptions against local governments “limiting” the operations of bonafide farms, being honored as the Outstanding Agriculturalist at Farm City Luncheon, a story about the saga on TV, a radio interview, untold private calls of advocacy made by folks like you, and ultimately a legal request for dismissal of the citation issued for operating without a certificate of use.

Thank you for the support you offered to help us win the battle. We won, but it still isn’t over. Why?

The fight for permission to grow food with and for our neighbors goes way beyond Farm Three.

For example, our journey took half as long as that of Clara White Mission to secure a certificate of use for Eartha’s Farm and Market back in 2014. They began growing food for the community as a market garden in 2010.

If we step back even further, the IFAS Ag Extension community garden has been providing gardening plots for members of the Jacksonville Community since 1977. It does not and never has had legal permission to operate under Jacksonville’s zoning code.

If our neighborhood farm and these two community pillars struggled to operate legally under the current zoning, imagine the difficulty faced by our startup urban farm entrepreneurs and rag-tag civic groups hoping to start community gardens.

As the Petition for Permission to Grow says, “It shouldn’t be this hard to grow food with and for our neighbors.”

That’s why, three years ago, Duval Food Policy Council in partnership with Duval Ag Council, and Blue Zones - with advice from IFAS Ag Extension and support from others - began laying the groundwork for a comprehensive urban ag policy. We researched best practices across the state and around the country. We gathered market and community gardeners for listening sessions; we dug into the Comp Plan, which, come to find out, says, “The City of Jacksonville shall encourage community gardens.” We also learned, which came as no surprise, that the zoning code does not define market or community gardens nor list them as permissible whatsoever. Out of this research grew the Free to Garden Act, a proposed zoning ordinance that would make market and community gardens permissible by right in Jacksonville. The (thus far) final draft was revised by the President of Springfield Preservation and Revitalization Council to ensure the legislation protected the interests of neighborhoods.

We are now in the market for city council co-sponsors and supporters. We are specifically aiming for 10 co-sponsors, so that by the time the Free to Garden Act hits the floor, its passage is a foregone conclusion.

To that end, we are running a public comment campaign at city council to prepare the soil by introducing ourselves as a (gentle) force to be reckoned with. Our strategy is simple: we are doubling our presence at City Council chambers at every meeting to expedite support and passage of the Free to Garden Act. We began with one speaker on April 28th. Then there were two of us, then four. In the coming months, we will fill the chamber with constituencies from across Jacksonville who support the Free to Garden Act: “Slow at first, and then all at once.”

We need one more speaker on June 9th, 10 more speakers on June 23rd, and even more at the meetings to follow.

As a long-time supporter-encourager of ours and as an advocate of the healthy-living, urban ag, local food space more generally, would you join us at City Council to offer a public comment in support of the Free to Garden Act? Click here to learn more & sign up.

Meetings are (more or less) every other Tuesday at 5pm; we’ll gather at 4:45pm to submit our public comment cards. You can choose the meeting date(s) that works best for you. Once you sign up, we’ll send you talking points & other info.

See you at City Council.

PS - If you want tangible insight into how Overalls Farm was able to weather the 2 year storm, it was rooted in the thinking contained in the below “Mapping Reciprocal Relationships” graphic from the American Community Gardening Association’s “Growing Communities” curriculum.

The idea is that one should embed their community ag project in relationships of mutual benefit with as many partners as possible. Your project gains, and the partners gain. Applying this idea, Overalls Farm grew beyond being a “good idea” into a contributing member of our community such that literally hundreds of people & dozens of partners had a vested interest in supporting us through the lack of urban ag friendly policy. Yes, we think Overalls Farm is a good idea, and we had our paperwork in order, but we never could have made it through without community.

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If you're ready to grow your groceries... Please, click here to see our services & book a consultation, so we can assess your site; we'll discuss design, answer your questions, talk #s, and get your project lined up. We offer turn-key raised bed food garden support services. Or, if you've already growing your groceries, but need a little seasonal support, click here. If you’d like regular guidance & good soil, learn more about our Overalls.Community. If you just need a quick DIY gardening question answered, try our Overalls Chat Bot. Then again, since this post is closely related to our neighborhood uPick Overalls Farm, click here to join our wait list or follow the Overalls Farm story on FB, IG, or TikTok.

If you'd like to support me… in freely sharing urban ag stories & expertise, please consider passing along this article to a friend or sharing on social media. Each of my updates take at least a couple hours of resource gathering, writing, and editing, so I want to make sure they don't just sit on the digital shelf.

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Nathan, Man in Overalls

Founding Farmer in Overalls

904.240.9592

ManInOveralls@Overalls.Life

ManInOveralls on FB & IG

www.Overalls.Life

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Man in Overalls - Free to Garden Act

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