Lake City Farm – Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

These backyard veggies can wind up on the menus of local restaurants

By Lizzie Hill
Spacing Atlantic
Sept. 24, 2010

Excerpt:

DARTMOUTH – When I meet Jean Snow, she’s gardening behind a group home near downtown Dartmouth. She sits in her garden, snipping off green mizuna leaves to put in the weekly vegetable boxes she gives her Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members. The greens are an ideal crop for an urban farmer with limited space, as they grow quickly and can be harvested every week, explains Snow.

One of the biggest challenges facing urban farmers like Snow, who co-owns Dartmouth’s Lake City Farm with her husband Bob Kropla, is a lack of space. Like many city farmers, Snow has overcome this obstacle by embracing Small Plot Intensive Farming (SPIN) methods, which include farming in backyards around the city and planting strategically.

After reading about exchanging land for food on the internet, Snow decided to give it a try. It’s her third year growing chemical and herbicide free produce in Dartmouth and she says it was easy to find people willing to let her plant food in their backyards. “Everyone who is part of this has come to me and asked to be part of it,” she says. “They hear about it and they get it. They think it’s a fabulous idea and they seek me out.” She and a small team work the land in private homes on Hawthorne St., Slater St., in Waverly and Cole Harbour and at Snow’s own home on Murray Hill Dr.

Read the complete article here.

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