Situated on the reclaimed - and cleaned up - site of a former steel-galvanizing factory in Kensington, the nonprofit organic farm grows a wide variety of produce, including heirloom lettuces, peppers and tomatoes, and also acts as a crop clearinghouse for small farmers from South Jersey to Lancaster County.

"I want to ensure the supply line between rural producers and urban consumers," said "chief farm hand" Mary Seton Corboy.

Greensgrow was co-founded 10 years ago by Corboy, a former chef with a master's degree in political science who had little agricultural experience but definite ideas about the good an urban farm could accomplish: The enterprise aims both to shorten the distance from farm to city table and to educate the public on the importance of buying fresh and local.

"People should be able to see where their peas are growing," Corboy said.

The square-block property, despite being ringed by a barbed-wire fence, brings a welcoming touch of green to this neighborhood of rowhouses, chain-store strip malls and fast-food joints.

Behind the fence are neat rows of high-yield hydroponic vegetable and lettuce plants, and a slightly ragtag collection of greenhouses and sheds full of all kinds of flowering annuals, perennials and evergreens. There's also a small market that's open on Thursdays and Saturdays to sell whatever's in season.

This week's racks should be overflowing with blueberries, raspberries and peaches, as well as beets, zucchini and yellow squash. Also available are milk, cheese and dairy products, along with the farm's own Honey From the Hood, produced by its resident bee colony.

Prices at this and other city-grown farm stands vary, with some items priced at or below supermarket standards. Generally, though, locally grown, freshly harvested organic produce doesn't come cheap.

Greensgrow also distributes its wares through its Community Supported Agriculture membership program, which currently serves some 300 households that pick up their shares either weekly or biweekly. (This year's program, which runs through November, is fully subscribed.)

"People are learning things about sustainability and don't even realize they're learning about it," Corboy said of the farm's impact.

Greensgrow isn't the only farm in town, either.

Others include Mill Creek, a half-acre nonprofit entity at 49th and Brown streets that sells its crops mainly at a weekly farmer's market and its own farm stand, and Weaver's Way Farm, an acre site at the Awbury Arboretum that grows produce mainly for the long-established Mount Airy food co-op. Weaver's Way Farm also operates a booth at the Sunday farmer's market at Headhouse Square.

At Mill Creek, co-founders Johanna Rosen and Jade Walker supervise a crew of several hundred community volunteers, as well as high school and college interns, who help harvest more than 50 crops from May through late November.

Their plot, which shares space with a 30-year-old community garden, is marking its third growing season. The current output includes lots of collards and other greens, squash and blueberries. Tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, and the most popular item - okra - will debut by mid- to late July.

Mill Creek, similar to Greensgrow, wants to make fresh produce the rule rather than the exception for residents.

"It's definitely hard to get fresh produce in the neighborhood," said co-director Rosen. "At the farmer's market, we've noticed people are excited to have the choice to buy things that are grown right in the neighborhood."

At Weaver's Way, its health-conscious members may be more accustomed to having the pick of organic crops, but gaining a selection of some 85 kinds of produce harvested just blocks away has proven a resounding hit.

Under full-time horticulturist Dave Zelov, the field has grown from a demonstration garden to the co-op's main supplier of herbs, lettuces, greens, tomatoes, turnips and other seasonal produce in spring, summer and fall.

"People love it," said spokesman Jonathan McGoran. "It's astonishing. [The produce] literally is an hour and a half out of the ground."

Such farms could be a more frequent sight within city limits, under an initiative being championed by the Philadelphia Water Department and the nonprofit group Institute for Innovations in Local Farming.

The two entities, having completed a successful four-year demonstration project at a site in the Northeast, believe there is sufficient market support to attract "entrepreneurial" farmers to the city, according to Roxanne Christensen, the institute's president.

The Somerton Tanks Farm used the so-called SPIN-Farming method, which its proponents claim makes it possible to squeeze $50,000 in annual income from a half-acre, vs. $3,000 an acre from conventional techniques.

"In the whole discussion of the re-localization of food, one thing that's not been mentioned is, you'll need a lot of local farmers to provide it," Christensen said.

The final report from the project calls for the development of four commercial farms in the city by 2010, and another six such parcels by 2013. For now, the farms exist only on paper, pending the formation of a coalition of local, state and federal agencies whose support would be necessary before the first soil could be tilled.

"The big subsidy [needed] is finding land for them," Christensen said. "As with farmers in the country, they can't afford the land."

In the meantime, Greensgrow and its urban cousins offer models for how farms can flourish from the Schuylkill to the Delaware.

Greensgrow, which employs a staff of 11 full- and part-time workers, this year is projected to reap a profit of 5 percent on sales of $650,000. The smaller-scale Mill Creek operates on an $80,000 annual budget that comes from a mix of educational grants, individual donations and the sale of its crops.

With energy costs soaring - and prices rising for products brought in from outside the region - sustainable never looked so good.

"The 'Buy Local' thing has struck a nerve," Corboy said. "The high price of gas has lent credence to the message we've been putting out for 10 years." *