Where Food Justice Meets Hip-Hop: Inside Seattle's Cherry Street Farm
Keith Tucker, founder of Hip Hop is Green, shows off a wasabi mustard green inside the Cherry Street Farm.(Photo: Alex Garland)
A hydroponic farm in a shipping container on Cherry Street is feeding families and shaping future leaders.
May 19, 2025
Nestled on a small hill between the vibrantly colored houses of East Cherry Street is a farm capable of producing two-and-a-half acres' worth of crops, all in a metal freight container the size of a school bus.
To any passersby, Cherry Street Farm looks no different from a misplaced shipping unit. Indeed, the hydroponics setup, which grows plants in a controlled climate using a nutrient-enhanced water drip, is built within a converted shipping container by Freight Farms based in Boston, and it's Seattle's first Freight Farms hydroponics lab.
Stepping into the container is like walking into a completely new biome. First, the humid air hits the nose with the fragrance of fresh earth. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the intense glare of the red and blue LED lights before I could focus on the grow operation: four floor-to-ceiling sliding plant walls. Currently, only two walls are growing plants, but the entire farm can accommodate up to 280 vertical channels, which can each fit 15 to 20 plants. Keith Tucker, founder of Hip Hop is Green, plans to expand the farm to full operation in a month.
"Right now, it's really a hot, sunny 70-degree day in here," Tucker says. He explains that the LEDs match the spectrum of sunlight ideal for growing plants. At night, the lights turn dark blue. The heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system strictly controls the climate for its botanical residents.
The growth cycle for these plants begins in the container's nursery, where hundreds of seedlings in humidified trays sprout in spongy peat moss. Then, each seedling's soil chunk gets tucked into foam on the wall, where they soak up recycled drip water packed full of nutrients. Overall, drip watering means the farm consumes only 6 gallons of water a day.
The glow of LED lights casts a purple hue on the radishes, lettuce, and mustard greens growing on the wall.(Photo: Alex Garland)
Currently, the easternmost wall contains butter lettuce, turnips, and wasabi collard greens, among other crops. But thanks to the controlled climate, 500 plant species are open to propagation — even root vegetables, like potatoes. "I can grow peppers literally in the dead of winter," Tucker mentions with a smile. He intends on cultivating "exotic plants" that are otherwise ungrowable in Seattle, like hibiscus.
Right now, the 45-by-9-foot container rests on packed dug-up earth enclosed by metal fences. However, Tucker explains this isn't the final form of Cherry Street Farm. Right beside the farm, a community kitchen is under construction; soon to replace the packed soil are garden beds or aerial plant columns, and a terrace for foldable chairs and tables.
The $500,000 "Zen" kitchen, as he calls it, is currently being built with students from Sawhorse Revolution, an organization focused on educating youth on construction.
Once it's completed, Tucker plans on hosting music and live performances. To fully utilize every inch of the buildings, he also plans to install trellises on the exterior walls for plants. The roof will be a bee sanctuary full of flowers.
To further merge the theme of sustainability with art, the farm will install solar panels that will be infused with a mural from Sweden — the first of its kind in the Northwest, he adds.
Keith Tucker holds a sign outside the future kitchen area of the Cherry Street Farm.(Photo: Alex Garland)
The ambitious planning is all part of spreading Hip Hop is Green's mission to educate youth on wellness and environmental justice. The movement began in Seattle in 2009 with community plant-based dinners after Tucker noticed that a lack of access to healthy foods led to an increase in heart attacks, diabetes, and strokes in his neighborhood. In 2015, he toured the nation with "Hip-Hop Green Dinners," serving over 20,000 free meals to families in need. Now, its national campaign still continues to provide vegan meals from Portland to Atlanta.
"I would have kids that came to my dinners, and in two hours, the kids would be like, 'I'm going vegan,'" explains Tucker. "I would hear from a grandma or a mom or a dad, 'Hey, Keith, I took my kid to your event five years ago and they're still vegan.' If we can do that in two hours, imagine what we can do in 10 weeks."
The idea for the Cherry Street Farm began five years ago on one of Tucker's green dinner tours. His networking with many other vegan hip-hoppers led him to various organic farmers and, eventually, their hydroponic farms. Tucker also sees the farm as an opportunity to educate youth while providing fresh food for the community — so far, Max Fontes, one of two employees maintaining the farm, noted that their first few harvests since December 2024 collectively fed "close to a thousand households."
Collard greens are shown growing in the growth medium, fed by nutrient-dense water that drips from above.(Photo: Alex Garland)
The freight farm first arrived two years ago and cost around $160,000. One of Tucker's previous jobs as an accountant taught him to construct a plan for money — thus came intensive grant applications and donor searching. After a year, Tucker finally scraped together enough money for the unit.
Getting the freight container across the country was the easy part; getting it up a hill was not. In addition to the hefty $15,000 shipping fee, he faced additional costs, including hiring a crane to hoist the unit over homes and trees.
The extra fees were worth it, he says. The land Tucker grows food on is his family's land. Right across the street, his grandmother taught him how to garden. In fact, after she passed away, he moved into her house to revive her dying garden.
The stars aligned when grant funding rolled in for exactly the amount needed to cover the extra shipping costs.
Tucker's long-run vision for Cherry Street Farm is to create a curriculum based around youth. The land his new farm is on was previously a P-Patch garden prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sunflowers, artichokes, and potatoes would sprout from the beds. Children would first learn about growing food, and then learn how to cook their harvests at Yesler Community Center.
Now, Tucker runs an expanded 10-week-long program called the Youth Excellence Program focused on climate change and food justice. Activities include plant-based cooking, tree planting, and habitat restoration. When the farm opens, he hopes to utilize it for the program.
Even though Cherry Street Farm is still in early operation, it's already serving its community. After its first harvest a couple of months ago, it donated 68 pounds of greens to Byrd Barr Place's food bank, which is located about a block away from the farm.
Tucker has also been growing wasabi collard greens, which are used in Central Cafe's unique wasabi banh mis, which were "created on accident," he explains. "The lady that runs Central Cafe was one of the first chefs I brought up here. She was like, 'When you get your product, just bring it down.' And everybody in the restaurant was blown away."
Of course, the plants also depend on Fontes and his co-worker Julianna Bernardo — officially the farm's "plant life cultivators."
Fontes and Bernardo individually work 12 to 15 hours a week handling tasks, from fixing breaking units to harvesting plants. However, Fontes adds that since the farm isn't at its full capacity yet, more of his work is spent at the computer ordering supplies and securing sales contracts. The duo notes they synergize well, sprucing up an otherwise solitary job when they're together during roughly half of their shifts.
All in all, the many hours the three farmhands spend on the farm go beyond the harvests and into the educational realm.
"We bring young kids in here and we lift their imaginations of what they can do in life. And then we connect them back into something that's not TikTok or a game," Tucker says. "It's connecting back to living, growing things."
This project is funded in part by the City of Seattle's Environmental Justice Fund.