Strawberry Mansion Community Garden, North Philadelphia, 2008. All photos courtesy of The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society

From Community Gardening To Community Food Security

by Michael Nairn and Domenic Vitiello
Harvard Design Magazine 31,
Fall/Winter 2009/10

Excerpt:

Tomatoes always seem to taste better when you are acquainted with the person who grew them, especially when that person is you. Many Americans have never tasted a “real” tomato, vine ripened no more than a day or two before being eaten. Corn tastes best when you get the water boiling minutes before you pick it. The joys of fresh produce, along with those of saving money and building community, help explain the recent growth of farmers’ markets and of the fascination with urban agriculture.

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Forthcoming May 2010

By: Lorraine Johnson
Greystone Books
Forthcoming May 2010
(Note: This book is not about our organization, “City Farmer”.)

City Farmer celebrates the new ways that urban dwellers are getting closer to their food. Not only are backyard vegetable plots popping up in places long reserved for lawns, but some renegades are even planting their front yards with food. People in apartments are filling their balconies with pots of tomatoes, beans, and basil, while others are gazing skyward and “greening” their rooftops with food plants. Still others are colonizing public spaces, staking out territory in parks for community gardens and orchards, or convincing school boards to turn asphalt school grounds into “growing” grounds.

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Farming Heritage Project -‘Digging our Roots

Wellington-clad visitors to Heeley City Farm this weekend (Sunday 21 February 2010) can muck-in to help with the final stages of a long-running archaeology project in partnership with the University of Sheffield.

University of Sheffield´s Media Centre
19 February 2010

The Iron Age Roundhouse activity day will take place from 11am to 4pm and people will be encouraged to roll-up their sleeves and use a mixture of clay and straw to help finish the walls of the farm´s constructed Iron Age Roundhouse – a very early form of housing in Britain.

The reconstruction of the Iron Age Roundhouse forms part of a partnership with the University of Sheffield´s Department of Archaeology and the University´s Archaeology Society. Academics and students have offered advice throughout the project and will be on hand to give assistance, information and work on the Roundhouse.

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