Common Roots Urban Farm (CRUF) BiHi is a unique urban farm in that its 100-plot community garden is situated in an off-grid public park without access to municipal water or electricity. One of the major challenges on the farm is the lack of cold storage on site for both farm and community gardener use, resulting in wasted produce. In an ongoing partnership, OSO and CRUF have set out to build a full-scale cold storage prototype. The prototype is built with locally available materials and uses thoughtful details to create a robust thermal envelope. It features a custom cooling system and is powered by a solar array. Adjacent covered exterior spaces make the cold storage unit a community hub to gather, learn, and eat around.

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With on-site cold storage, CRUF BiHi will be able to offer more consistent access to free, fresh, local and culturally appropriate food through multiple channels, including the farm’s free food pantry, programming partnerships, and on-farm celebrations and events. Beyond CRUF’s immediate community, the project aimed to advance food sovereignty by supporting community-led and collaborative approaches to food infrastructure. By documenting the full process–from engagement and design through construction and open-source dissemination–the project seeks to strengthen knowledge sharing and mutual support within community food networks.

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This project was made possible with support from the 2024 Halifax Climate Action Challenge, the 2024 Feed Nova Scotia Innovation and Learning Grant, and Nova Scotia Department of Energy’s The Low Carbon Communities (LCC) grant program.