Manatawna Farm Site

Philadelphia’s Department of Parks and Recreation, Request for Information, to identify city farmers to manage small plot commercial, chemical–free farms at Manatawna Farm.

Excerpts:

The Program at Manatawna Farm offers emerging or established farmers the opportunity to explore the advantages of commercial, chemical-free urban farming by providing farmers more land than is traditionally available in the City for growing crops. The Program removes many of the start-up barriers farmers typically encounter, including, but not limited to, access to land, capital improvements, equipment and utilities, and isolation. The site is zoned and primed for agricultural use and will be prepared for commercial farming through identified grant funds. The site will be operated as a commercial farming venture and in turn support entrepreneurial farming initiatives.

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UM-Dearborn and Crain’s Detroit Business present a discussion

April 7, 2010
Dearborn, Michigan

Panelists:

Patty Cantrell
Senior Policy Specialist, Entrepreneurial Agriculture, Michigan Land Use Institute. Patty Cantrell is a senior policy specialist at the Michigan Land Use Institute, where she has led development of northwest Michigan’s nationally recognized Taste the Local Difference program. The program includes local food marketing, farm-to-school facilitation, and farm business development.

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Bobby Johnson, Laurie Florio and Jaye Wright construct a chicken coop Saturday at the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture’s workshop. The coop was built with wood from an old deck and scrap metal that was found on Paris Road. Photo by Valerie Mosley

Building a chicken coop in class

By Jessica Stephens
Missourian
March 28, 2010

Excerpt:

COLUMBIA — As Jaye Wright and Laurie Florio walked up the driveway to the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture, Billy Froescher asked them, “You here to get dirty?”

“Oh yeah!” Wright answered.

Both Wright and Florio were building a chicken coop for the first time, but so was Froescher, who led the Saturday workshop on building coops for urban hens. Froescher was no stranger to construction, but he had not built a coop before.

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