“The importance of the city-farming agitation cannot be overestimated.”

Popular Mechanics Magazine
May 1917

“People in the cities are feeling the pressure of unprecedented prices. To combat actual want, it is imperative that they modify their system of living and become producers. Back yards, vacant lots, and unoccupied tracts of land in outlying districts are available for cultivation. National security demands that they be developed.”

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By Mrs. Elizabeth Turner
from The Daisy; or, Cautionary Stories in Verse
1807

Poisonous Fruit

As Tommy and his sister Jane
Were walking down a shady lane,
They saw some berries, bright and red,
That hung around and over head;

And soon the bough they bended down,
To make the scarlet fruit their own;
And part they ate, and part, in play,
They threw about, and flung away.

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Photo from the Kansas City Star. Bad Seed Farm is an urban farm and a Crossroads District farmers market run by husband and wife team Daniel Heryer and Brooke Salvaggio. Above, Salvaggio fertilizes a bed with turkey manure before seeding.

‘Bad Seed’ Urban Farm

By Lee Hill Kavanaugh
September 1, 2009
The Kansas City Star

Brooke Salvaggio’s arms are strong. Muscled. Her hair, swooped up in two tiny pigtails wrapped with a scarf she bought in Vietnam. Dirt under her fingernails. Dirty jeans. Dirty sky-blue garden Crocs on her feet. And a rising welt from a mosquito bite above her eyes just minutes ago.

But she’s found her piece of heaven. She and her husband, Dan Heryer, both 27, are happiest when they’re here in south Kansas City, playing in the dirt in this place they named “Bad Seed Farm.”

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