Posts from — September 2011

Small portion of 17th Century Pictorial Map of Galway. See full map image here.

Shantalla scheme will make up to 30 garden plots available

By Dara Bradley
The Connacht Sentinel
September 13, 2011

Excerpts:

Plans for city garden allotments are beginning to bear fruit.

For years garden allotments were an aspiration for Galway City Council but at last concrete proposals have emerged that could see between 25 and 30 plots available for public use later this year.

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“Provide opportunities to experience working farm landscapes in appropriate park sites through the establishment of an active farm program and academy for sustainable food production and the development of policies to fit agriculture within regional park settings. Promote education, demonstration and observation of farm activities where appropriate.”

By Kelly Sinoski
Vancouver Sun
September 12, 2011

Excerpts:

Metro Vancouver continues to pitch the idea of a “sustainable agriculture academy” at Colony Farm, despite concern from environmentalists that it will lead to more farming at other regional parks.

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Detroit public school teacher and urban farmer Paul Weertz with his working 50 year-old Ford tractor in the back of his house on Farnsworth Street.

Weertz has been buying up abandoned homes and vacant parcels of land in his neighborhood for years.

By Jon Kalish
Make Magazine
September, 2011

Excerpt:

I’ve seen terrible urban ghettos in my time, but nothing prepared me for the shock of driving through Detroit neighborhoods where so many houses were crumbling, boarded up or missing altogether. In the midst of that depressing landscape I met Paul Weertz, who lives alone in the Farnsworth neighborhood.

Well, not totally alone. The 58 year-old public school teacher has a dozen chickens and ten beehives that belong to a neighborhood “honey co-op.” He has about an acre of fruit trees and veggies growing on ten vacant lots behind his house. The day I came by, his working 1960 Ford tractor was parked a few paces away from a huge pungent patch of basil. Weertz’s sister was about to go pick peaches. The slim urban farmer walked over to his tractor and looked at a gauge that reported more than 2,000 hours of use since Weertz bought it 20 years ago.

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“ Like to see community plots grow large enough to supply a family with most of their food, and maybe even become capable of large-scale commercial production.”

By Emily Garnett
Missourian
September 12, 2011

Excerpt:

Hendrickson said her team will survey urban agriculture issues such as zoning policies and food and sale ordinances. The result will be an online database that will allow cities to search and access information about urban agriculture.

“We want to get a better feel for what’s out there,” Hendrickson said. “That way, if a city somewhere gets a request to do backyard chickens, they can find cities that have done it.”

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An urban garden located on the site of a demolished building with an array of graffiti as a backdrop.

Stadsboeren maken gemeenschappelijke, mobiele moes-, fruit- en bloementuinen in een stedelijke omgeving. Deze paradijstuinen voldoen allemaal aan de volgende voorwaarden:

• De tuinen worden gebouwd op braakliggende binnenstedelijke bouwterreinen (woonbuurten).

• De tuinen hebben een mobiele constructie en zijn verplaatsbaar naar andere locaties.

• De paradijstuinen zijn open voor het publiek om te bezoeken en te tuinieren.

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Wally and Gail Satzewich.

“It’s a trend that’s being revitalized these days. And that’s probably good because there’s a lot of land in the city that’s not being utilized.”

By Charles Hamilton
The StarPhoenix
September 8, 2011

Excerpt:

Satzewich is a pioneer of urban gardening in Saskatoon. He is also credited as one the founders of SPIN farming. SPIN stands for Small, Plot, Intensive farming. And one look at his farming techniques and you can tell why he pioneered the slogan.

His farm was originally dispersed over 25 residential backyard garden plots in Saskatoon and the growing area totalled a half acre. These days, he only has a few city plots. But he still manages to grow more than 2,000 pounds of tomatoes, red potatoes and garden salad greens. That’s on top of the 7,500 pounds of pumpkins, potatoes and onions he grows outside the city in the small town of Pleasantdale, Sask.

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Rebecca Frazier, a teacher, said she had cut her food bill in half by growing her own and preserving and by buying in bulk from local farmers. She recently paid $10 for 40 pounds of sweet potatoes, a fraction of the store price. Credit: Luke Sharrett for The New York Times.

“When I go to my cellar and get my own green beans and potatoes, I know I won’t go hungry.”

By Sabrina Tavernise
New York Times
September 8, 2011

Excerpt:

“You see a lot more people turning up ground,” said Wanda Hamilton, 61, a lifelong gardener who sells her surplus vegetables at the farmers’ market in West Liberty, a small town in the Appalachian foothills. “It’s the economy. You just can’t afford to shop at the store anymore.”

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China (right) with recently purchased chickens. Photo by Pol Cucala Bergadà.

China and her fellow gardeners say they would never go back to prostitution

By Nicholas Parkinson
Urban Agriculture in Ethiopia
Aug 25, 2011

Excerpt:

When 29 year old China Dessale approached the Wain Hotel where she used to work as a commercial sex worker, carrying a basket teeming with cabbage, carrots, lettuce and eggs, the hotel owner couldn’t believe his eyes. He remembered taking in China when she was 15 years old. In desperation, China had joined the same hotel to make a livelihood in Ethiopia’s risky commercial sex worker industry.

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Greenhouses on Schaaf Road, Cleveland, Ohio area, with a buggy in the foreground, April, 1927.

This study shows that Cleveland city can meet up to 100% of its fresh produce need.

By Sharanbir S. Grewala and Parwinder S. Grewal
Center for Urban Environment and Economic Development, The Ohio State University,
Wooster, OH 44691, USA
Available online 20 July 2011
Cost of paper at Science Direct $19.95

Abstract

Modern cities almost exclusively rely on the import of resources to meet their daily basic needs. Food and other essential materials and goods are transported from long-distances, often across continents, which results in the emission of harmful greenhouse gasses. As more people now live in cities than rural areas and all future population growth is expected to occur in cities, the potential for local self-reliance in food for a typical post-industrial North American city was determined.

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“Urban farms and gardens are feeding the world – one inner city at a time”

Submission deadline: September 30, 2011

Nature’s Path is giving $65,000 in urban garden grants this year through its Gardens for Good contest. North American non-profits and registered charities are eligible to apply ( 2 winners to be crowned in the US and 1 in Canada) and anyone can vote. With the grant comes technical assistance for their Organic Program Manager, Dag Falck and the team at Organic Gardening Magazine.

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By Amy Pennington
Sasquatch Books (April 1, 2011)
192 pages

Grow squash on your patio, flowers in your window box, and pick blackberries from your parking strip. Apartment Gardening details how to start a garden in the heart of the city. From building your own planter box to sprouting seeds in jars on the counter, every small space is plantable. Beginning and experienced gardeners will discover how to save money on produce and impress friends with their newly-tenacious green thumbs.

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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.

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It serves as a model of what’s possible when people get together and think creatively and compromise and work together in community

By Jamie Stark
Madison Commons
09/06/2011

Excerpt:

Today, the site includes a five-acre organic farm, 330 community garden plots managed by over 200 families, a kids’ educational garden, a prairie, and a trail through “edible opportunities” like fruit trees and an herb garden.

Troy Gardens emphasizes the “community” part of community gardening.

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City Farmers don’t get love? I think we do.

By Jerry Miller
Founder, FarmersOnly.com

Excerpt from their website:

City folks just don’t get it!

Because their stories were so common, I decided to do some research.

When I looked for sites for farmers online dating, I found sites that claimed to cater to farmers, ranchers, and country dwellers, but the majority of postings seemed to be from people living in big cities. How many farms have you seen in New York City?

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Home Grown was a photographic exploration of local food production and sustainable farming in Vancouver and the surrounding region

Video by Fire and Light Media Group
25 minutes. 2011

Brian Harris: I was born in Barrie, Ontario, in 1951. At the age of twenty-one I began my lifelong pursuit and interest in photographing traditional cultures when I traveled to Mount Athos in Greece and then to Jerusalem. Subsequent Asian trips have taken me to Tibet on three occasions, Thailand, China, Korea, Sikkim, Nepal and four trips to India.

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The New Agtivist: Lisa Gross is covering the city with fruit trees

By Lily Mihalik
Grist
Sept 6, 2011

Excerpt:

Our motto is civic fruit, and we call for the planting of fruit trees in civic space. So we really see these trees — which are planted by communities on land that they are somehow connected to or control — as a focal point for community engagement.

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Do you wonder about permitting and zoning issues that affect urban food production? Do you know that there are business services available to help “grow” your business? Ever wonder how other small sectors have developed?

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Vestal Park, North Little Rock, Arkansas.

Argenta CDC receives $39,000 grant from Walmart Foundation to create youth urban agriculture initiative

Excerpt:

(North Little Rock, Ark.) — The Walmart State Giving Program has awarded Argenta Community Development Corporation a $39,000 grant to launch the Vestal Urban Farm Project for 220 students at Boone Park Elementary and Argenta Academy, the North Little Rock School District’s alternative high school.

For participants, the $39,000 Foundation Grant will fund and foster academic and business opportunities, health and wellness initiatives, self-esteem and environmental stewardship through hands-on participation in all aspects of the creation, implementation, management and marketing of a sustainable urban farm. The farm will be located on one acre of land in Vestal Park in North Little Rock’s Baring Cross Neighborhood.

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Rice paddies, Antananarivo, Madagascar.

Antananarivo produces 90%-100% of the vegetables and 15% to 25% of the rice it consumes each year.

Christine Aubry
INRA press service
21/07/2011

Excerpts:

The capital city of Madagascar, Antananarivo now counts about 2 million inhabitants. Originally built on the top of a hill, the city then spread to neighbouring hills and their slopes before starting to cover the marshland in the valleys during recent decades.

Local agriculture covers nearly 43% of the 425 km² or so of the urban region; although it is present today in the centre of the city, it has long occupied the most flood-prone low-lying areas, the nearby plain and periurban hills. It benefits from a tropical, high-altitude climate (1250-1400 m).

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“It is an amazing space where you can learn more about urban gardening, explore vertical gardens, growing plants and food in containers and much more in a beautiful setting above the buzz of the Danforth.” Image via Grass Roots blog.

The Big Carrot Natural Food Market

Description:

Let’s make urban gardening fun! Join us catching the last rays of the summer sun on the brand new Green Roof on top of the Big Carrot (348 Danforth Avenue). Our host, Zora Ignjatovic will guide you through the hows-and-whats of preserving your garden through winter, and sheds light on mysteries like vertical gardening and growing tomatoes in a concrete parking lot. All this on the top of the Carrot, in a very pleasant environments. We will have some snacks to munch on as well.

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