Can a Family Live in a City and Not Buy Food at the Grocery Store for a Year?

Video about Rachel Hoff and Tom Ferguson’s “Dog Island Farm”. No. 3 in Whole Foods “Grow” series.

No groceries for a year – Vallejo couple tries it

By Lauren Reed-Guy
San Francisco Chronicle
September 4, 2011

Excerpts:

The dogs are the first to greet you as you enter Rachel Hoff and Tom Ferguson’s yard, a wagging welcome committee to the couple’s quarter-acre garden, aptly nicknamed Dog Island Farm.

Brimming with everything from cornstalks to honeybees, the garden has been the couple’s primary source of food for the past year, as they decided to forgo grocery stores in favor of the bounty of their Vallejo backyard.

“It’s about knowing where the food is coming from,” Hoff said. “Was that pork ethically slaughtered? Most of the vegetables aren’t even from the U.S. anymore. How old is that tomato when it gets to us?”

In addition to the lengthy vegetable beds they’ve tended since they moved in three years ago, Hoff and Ferguson’s lot now accommodates an array of animals – goats, chickens, turkeys, rabbits and bees – from which they get eggs, honey and meat.

Complete story here.

See “A Year Without Groceries” here.