Amanda Musilli didn’t set out to build something that had never existed before in Georgia. But when Whole Foods Market and the Whole Kids Foundation offered the City of Alpharetta an unusual gift a greenhouse, a classroom, tools, equipment, and a vision for a community farm someone had to say yes.
As Community Agriculture and Sustainability Services Manager for the City of Alpharetta Recreation, Parks and Cultural Services, Musilli now oversees Old Rucker Farm, a 1.1-acre organic operation tucked into a city park that functions like nothing else in the state: a working farm run by municipal employees, powered by over 1,200 volunteers annually, and dedicated to feeding the community.
The farm produces thousands of pounds of fresh, organic produce each year 90% of which goes directly to the North Fulton Community Charities Food Bank. The remaining harvest supports education programs, student-run businesses, and community workshops that connect residents to the land beneath their feet.
Musilli leads a small team managing partnerships with 15 local schools, coordinating with faith communities and food pantries, and overseeing everything from beekeeping to summer camps to tractor training.
A Farm Where You’d Expect a Baseball Field
Old Rucker Farm exists because the City of Alpharetta was willing to try something unconventional.
“It’s very common that you would see in a park a baseball field or a pool,” Musilli explains. “You don’t see an organic farm. So it’s a really unique endeavor that the city was willing to say, ‘You know what, we don’t know how to do that, but sure, let’s give it a try.'”
The gamble paid off. Since opening in 2017, the farm has become the city’s most volunteer-rich program drawing more volunteers than all other city departments combined.
“People connect with what’s happening here,” Musilli says. “Everybody eats. This is not something that just some people do. And who can argue with feeding people healthy food?”
The work is tangible in a way that other volunteer opportunities aren’t.
“Coming here and actually putting your hands on food or flowers or herbs that are going to go to someone who might be your neighbor it’s a really special feeling.”
Three Pillars: Education, Volunteerism, Production
The farm operates on three interconnected priorities: education, volunteerism, and production. Each feeds the others.
Education includes six to ten workshops monthly covering everything from seed starting and backyard growing to wreath making and flower drying. The farm partners with 15 local schools, hosting students five days a week during the school year.
Elementary and middle schools receive hundreds of seedlings and seed packets annually, along with consultation on crop planning that works with the academic calendar planting in August for harvest through May, the opposite of typical home gardening.
High school partnerships run deeper. Alpharetta High School students learn food preservation by canning the farm’s summer fruit peaches, apples, blackberries into jam and salsa verde. Cambridge High School’s agriculture track treats the farm as an outdoor classroom, with students on site daily.
“Their ag business students are here every day,” Musilli says. “They’re learning everything from logo development, marketing, online sales, seed starting, transplanting, harvesting, packaging, washing. They’re essentially running a small micro farm.”
The students operate AGAretta Box, a student-led micro business that sells honey harvested from the farm’s approximately 1,000 honeybees. They set up vendor booths at the Alpharetta Farmers Market and Taste of Alpharetta not as field trips, but as working vendors.
“They’re getting the sense of what it feels like to run a small market farm,” Musilli says. “Running a small business is hard work.”
The Grow-A-Row Revolution
The farm’s most innovative program was born from crisis.
During COVID-19, demand at the food pantry quadrupled overnight. Musilli and her colleague Emily stood by the greenhouse with a military veteran volunteer, wrestling with the question: how do we grow more food with no additional staff and no additional money?
“He said, ‘I’ll figure out how to get this field operational, and you figure out the labor part,'” Musilli recalls. “That’s how Grow-A-Row was born.”
The concept was simple: community members adopt a row of the farm, receive a crop plan and all necessary seedlings or seeds, and commit to planting, tending, and weeding their row throughout the season. On Fridays, everything harvested goes to the community nothing is kept for personal use.
“The beautiful thing about that program is that people are doing a lot of work to give it all away,” Musilli says. “It’s not for self, it’s for community.”
She and Emily hoped for five or six adopters. Sixty people signed up.
“We had 12 spots. We cut the rows into fours. We accepted everyone into the program and said, ‘Okay, you don’t get 40 feet, you get 10 feet.’ We were the only program that grew during COVID.”
Homegrown Harvest: Taking the Farm Citywide
With the farm operating at maximum capacity “I’m bumping into things with the gators trying to drive through here,” Musilli laughs the team needed a new approach to meet growing demand.
Working with faith community leaders and North Fulton Community Charities, they developed Homegrown Harvest, launched in summer 2026.
“Do you have an extra eight-by-four space at home?” Musilli asks. “If so, would you be willing to grow seedlings that we give you and donate the harvest to the food bank?”
The program provides seedlings, seeds, compost, and consultation. Participants provide the growing space whether a backyard plot or an apartment patio.
“If someone has a patio, I would consult them to say, ‘Okay, you’re going to grow jalapenos, because one jalapeno plant will probably yield 30 jalapenos a week,'” Musilli explains. “Everybody can participate. It’s just, what’s your crop based on the space you have?”
Churches agreed to spread the word to their congregations, extending the farm’s reach far beyond what social media alone could achieve.
Closing the Loop
Everything at Old Rucker Farm connects to everything else.
The chicken coop was designed to integrate rabbits in a “penthouse” above. Their droppings fall into the chicken area as pre-compost. As chickens scratch through weeds tossed in by volunteers, the material breaks down further and lands in wheelbarrows ready for the compost bins that feed the soil that grows the vegetables.
A greywater recycling system captures sink water, pumps it onto the classroom roof, and channels it through gutters into two 500-gallon collection tanks for irrigation.
Even the farm’s structures tell a story of reuse. The butterfly-shaped classroom and produce display came from the old Harry’s Farmers Market. The scale, the sink, the bulk barrels all rescued from the beloved grocery store before it closed.
“Sometimes people look at it and say, ‘Oh my god, that looks so familiar,'” Musilli says.
Heritage Seeds and Three Sisters
The farm serves as a living laboratory for sustainable agriculture techniques.
A Three Sisters demonstration plot corn, pole beans, and squash grown together in the traditional Indigenous method includes Chahta Isito squash seeds brought by a Choctaw tribal member who lives across the street.
“He asked us to grow them for him,” Musilli says. “We’re growing some of these heirloom, historic, saved-over-generations seeds.”
The partnership with Georgia Native Plant Society maintains a pollinator garden that supports vegetable production by providing food and habitat for bees nine months out of the year.
Heritage apple and peach trees that have thrived on the property for decades are being grafted to preserve their genetics. Musilli points to the difference between a 30-year-old heritage apple tree trunk clean and healthy and a newly planted nursery tree already covered in algae and fungus.
“This one is acclimated to this climate. It’s been growing here for generations. It’s resistant to these threats,” she explains. “We want more of these. We don’t want to buy them from wherever, because they can handle the climate they’re super fit.”
Summer Camp and the Joy of Rain
The farm’s summer camp for ages seven through twelve runs half-days full days will come once a planned community center is built.
“By the time it’s 11 o’clock, it’s so hot,” Musilli notes. “Nobody wants to be out. The plants don’t want to be bothered with either.”
Campers learn nature, sustainability, and agriculture through hands-on experience. They sprout seeds to take home, harvest vegetables, meet guest speakers from UGA Extension, and explore a quarter-mile trail through the woods.
The program runs in all weather except lightning. And the counselors report that rainy days are when kids have the most fun.
“I really think it’s because if we treat rain with reverence, the kids do too,” Musilli reflects. “That’s when it’s time to play.”
What’s Next
The farm is preparing for significant expansion. The rest of the park enters construction next month as part of the city’s bond projects, which will bring permanent restrooms and eventually a renovated farmhouse.
“We want to turn it into a community education space for regenerative agriculture and sustainability,” Musilli says. The vision includes a teaching kitchen where campers can cook what they harvest sautéing tomatoes and greens rather than just eating them raw.
“I’d love to have our campers in there in the afternoon, eating what they’re seeing out here. That’s one thing we can’t do right now.”
The farm also delivers 35 cut flower arrangements to the food bank each week throughout summer, and offers U-pick flower classes taught by Emily, who previously ran her own flower farm.
Workshops range from free to $50, with about 25% kept accessible at no cost or minimal fees. The wreath-making class with Christy Greiner the wreath maker for Crate & Barrel represents the premium end.
The Miracle of Growing
When Musilli talks about why this work matters, she returns to fundamentals.
“Agriculture is a field of unlimited possibility,” she says. “It’s the largest industry in Georgia for a reason. Everything we’re wearing is agriculture. Everything we eat. So much of what we do starts in the ground.”
She recalls early years when children asked when the bunnies would lay eggs Cadbury commercials creating confusion about basic biology.
“It’s a place to get real information,” she says.
The farm germinates 31,000 seedlings annually in a room beneath the farmhouse, distributing them to schools, community growers, and the production beds that feed the food bank.
“All you need is soil, water, and sun,” Musilli reflects. “You can take a tiny seed and you can feed thousands of people. It’s miraculous, really.”
At home, she practices what she preaches. Her family counts how many items make it into their nightly salad.
“Last night I stopped counting at 23. Flower petals, everything.”
Amanda Musilli is the Community Agriculture and Sustainability Services Manager for the City of Alpharetta Recreation, Parks and Cultural Services. Learn more about Old Rucker Farm and register for programs at alpharetta-community-agriculture-program.square.site.
