City dwellers dig urban farming – Horizon Air Magazine

Clockwise from the top of the facing page: Seattle homeowner Eric Lucas raises hens, and grows pie cherries, fava beans and corn on his city lot. The Northwest is a leader in the urban farming movement. Photos by Nancy O.

They want to grow tomatoes and can them

By Eric Lucas
Horizon Air Magazine
August 2010
See pages 10 – 20

Excerpt:

That proud heritage is what spurred University of Idaho Extension Educator Ariel Agenbroad to choose “Victory Gardens” as the name of the six-week evening course she introduced last year in the Greater Boise area. Agenboard, who works for the Extension’s Canyon County office, based in the city of Caldwell, west of Boise, reports a huge swell of interest in urban farming.

“Our course demand is huge: Last year we filled the class at 50 participants,” she says. “This year we have 50 participants again, and a wait list of 50 again. And when we asked last year’s participants if they were operating their gardens this year, the response was 10p percent, ‘Yes.’ ”

She says she’s seen a big increase in calls on topics such as, “How can I raise chickens in my yard?” and “What kinds of onions grow best here?”

“Many of my callers are young women with kids who have an intense desire to recapture something they’ve heard of — relying on your own ground and the work of your own hands for the food you eat — but never experienced themselves,” she says. “They want to grow tomatoes and can them; cook eggs for breakfast that they plucked from the coop out back that very morning; bake a Thanksgiving pie with a pumpkin that grew in their own patch.”

See the complete article here.
See pages 10 – 20.