Springfield residents have a new place to buy fresh fruits and vegetables.

Gardening the Community, a Springfield base food justice and youth development organization, celebrated the opening of a new farm stand on Walnut Street in Springfield.

The stand has been under construction for more than a year. It will be a place where people can buy fresh produce, grown nearby at the organization’s Walnut Street farm.

22News spoke to the chairwoman of Gardening the Community about why they decided to open up the farm stand.

“There’s something that happens when you heal the soil, you heal yourself, you heal your neighbors,” said Liz Wills-O’Gilvie. “I think we’ll continue to do more of that and to become, we are good stewards, really strong stewards, this doesn’t just belong to us, it belongs to the whole community.”

The farm stand is going green in more ways than one.

The stand includes solar panels that provide enough energy to meet most of the farm’s electrical needs.