Just west of the Stanley Marketplace in Northwest Aurora, you’ll find a small plot of land lush and overflowing with greenery. Look closer and you’ll see potatoes, eggplant, kale, squash, tomatoes, sunflowers, peppers, and so much more. Welcome to the Village Farms at Stanley.
Alexander Rios, one of the farmers at the Village Farms, points to a garden bed.
“On this bed we are growing green peppers,” says Rios. “Normally these are the peppers that we find at a restaurant, but the difference is that these peppers have our heart and our care in it, and they are 100 percent organic.”
You can feel Rios’ passion spill out of him with every word he speaks. He sees the plants at this small farm as his children. He came to Aurora from Venezuela about 10 months ago and had no prior farming experience. He heard about the Village Farms at Stanley project through another organization and was eager to jump in. Rios wanted to work outside with his hands instead of being inside an office all day.