Jennifer Garner Co-Founds Once Upon A Farm, Supporting Gangsta Gardener Ron Finley

On Saturday, July 14, actor Jennifer Garner celebrated Once Upon a Farm, the new “farm-to-family” food company with a strong focus on babies and children that she co-founded with Cassandra Curtis. The event at Amber Waves Farm in Amagansett invited guests from the Hamptons crowd such as Rachel Zoe, Molly Sims, Jessica Capshaw, Estee Stanley, and their little ones to pick fresh produce, listen to live music and plant fruits and vegetables with Ron Finley, the Gangsta Gardener of the Ron Finley Project. Once Upon a Farm later donated the gardening plot from the event, along with $10,000 to NYC’s Edible Schoolyard.

Gangsta gardner Ron Finley and Jennifer Garner.

Paper Magazine profiled Finley in Aug. 2017. The food justice revolutionary decided to get his hands dirty back in 2010 over the lack of healthy, organic food options in his LA South Central food desert neighborhood. 

"Being in South Central, the food is food-ish stuff," he explains. "We can walk five minutes in any direction and get liquor, but we can walk ten miles in any direction, and we aren't gonna get an organic banana." Finley came to the realization that cities were designed for the interests of commerce, not people: "If cities were designed for people, they would look more like forests, and be lush and beautiful, and the air would be clean." He looked at the green grass parkway he'd been dutifully maintaining outside of his home, and decided, "If they're not putting beauty in my neighborhood, I'll do it myself." The answer was radical in its simplicity: he would grow his own food. He dug up the grass, and planted flowers, herbs, and all the fruits and vegetables he'd previously had to drive miles to buy.

Jill Biden (left), Joe Biden and Jennifer Garner pose with Save the Children beneficiary Anna Marie

Researching for more info about Garner, AOC learned that she has a long association with Save the Children, the world-renowned organization that is working with poor children in America, as well as children in refugee camps and other locations of extreme poverty. In October 2017, Garner joined fellow ambassadors Olivia Wilde and Dakota Fanning at the Save the Children Illumination Gala, along with board chair of the organization, Dr. Jill Biden. 

A child in rural America has about a 1-in-4 chance of living in poverty, according to a recent  "End of Childhood Report" from Save the Children. Jennifer Garner relates to the plight of children living in the eight out of 10 Southeeastern states where  low income, high infant mortality rates, food insecurity and teen pregnancy keep many kids from thriving.

Although Garner was raised in a middle-class family in Charleston, West Virginia, she recalls that "I grew up one generation and one holler removed from poverty."

Actor Jennifer Garner visits with school children who are participants of a Save the Children reading program at LBJ Elementary School in, Ky. Photo by David Stephenson