Posts from — January 2012

From the Library and Archives Canada.

24 Aug. 1942
Québec, Quebec

The Perry Sisters, employed at the Dominion Arsenals Ltd. plant, armed with rake, watering can and pitchfork, help look after the vegetable garden where they are working.

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Helps to Feed 200,000 People Every Month

By John Cueler
growingyourgreens
Jan 6, 2012

From Irvine Wiki:

The Incredible Edible Park a 7.5 acre community garden in Irvine and is located at 15058 Harvard Ave Irvine, CA, next to the meeting of Harvard Avenue and the Walnut Trail and Metrolink. Southern California Edison has an easement on the land and after years of being empty and overgrown with weeds it was decided to transform the area into a park.

The Incredible Edible Park is one of the last vestiges of agriculture in Irvine and features beans, broccoli, carrots, lettuce, oranges, potatoes and squash just to name a few. The crops grown and maintained by the community six days a week and up to 1,2000 volunteers a year. It is subsequently donated to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County to help feed thousands of hungry families.

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In the field.

“Our research was conducted with 35 farming families across eight sites.”

Team: John Brett, Jessica Cook, Dr. Debbi Main, Kate Oviatt

Excerpt:

Of the 35 farm families interviewed, only one reported growing crops primarily for personal consumption. Most indicated that they may consume a little of their produce, but reported that they buy most of their food. Farm families that grow crops exclusively for personal consumption are likely to have other means of employment and, therefore, spend less time working in the field–which is probably why we didn’t run into more subsistence farmers in the field. Once crops are harvested, the majority are sold through one or more of the many distribution options available to Delhi farmers.

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See a large readable image here.(5.2MB)

And a few facts and figures to show what an average Washington family can save by doing so

The Washington Times
April 29, 1906,
Magazine Section

Excepts:

That the best things of life are to be gathered from simple sources was never more truthfully shown than In the transformation of an unsightly debris strewn back yard into a thriving profit-bearing vegetable garden. How this evolution can be brought about, what is its beginning and its probable outcome with relation to both the cost entailed and the benefits to be derived are questions which enter the mind every spring and summer when the problem of supplying the table with fresh green vegetables becomes of household importance.

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Photo by Amy Senese.

Hear Feed ‘Em Freedom Grower at 31.30 minutes in the radio show. Slide the button forward to the chosen time.

By Krista Tippett
On Being – American Public Media
January 19, 2012

We travel to Detroit to meet the civil rights legend Grace Lee Boggs. We find the 96-year-old philosopher surrounded by creative, joyful people and projects that defy more familiar images of decline. It’s a kind of parallel urban universe with much to teach all of us about meeting the changes of our time. Radio interview here.

“Detroit, because we have this position in the history of the country and the world, is creating that alternative — not in words but in action,” she says. “There’s a group on the east side called Feed ‘Em Freedom Growers; if you don’t have food you can’t be free. Detroit has over 1,000 community gardens. Urban agriculture started very simply with some African-American women seeing some vacant lots.

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Bangalore produces over 2000 to 3000 tonnes of waste everyday. The centralized government composting plant can handle only 500 tonnes per day. The rest reaches dumps that are illegal.

In just five years the Daily Dump team has helped over 4,500 customers in Bengaluru to compost household waste in terracotta pots, and these customers keep around 5,522kg of organic waste out of landfills every day. What is remarkable about Poonam Bir Kasturi’s waste management process is its simplicity, and the cleverly designed terracotta pots add a touch of earthiness to it.

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Credit: Salon, Mignon Khargie / Chee-Onn Leong via Shutterstock.

It’s easy to make fun of, but as more and more farming moves downtown, eating local is taking on a new flavor

By Will Doig
Salon
Jan 21, 2012

Excerpt:

With penny-farthings, handlebar mustaches and four-pocket vests back in fashion, the rise of urban farming should just about complete our fetish for the late 1800s. Today, you can find chicken coops on rooftops in Brooklyn, N.Y., goats in San Francisco backyards, and rows of crops sprouting across empty lots in Cleveland.

That it fits so snugly into the hipster-steampunk throwback trend is what makes urban farming ripe for ridicule. (“Portlandia” has taken a crack or two at it.) But could city-based agriculture ever make the leap from precious pastime to serious player in our cities’ food systems — not just for novelty seekers and committed locavores, but for the Safeway-shopping masses?

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Smart Gardener Fund Raising from Smart Gardener on Vimeo.

Using technology in smart ways, we make this easier, and much more personalized, based on your location, household size, tastes, and growing conditions.

Smart Gardener is built with proprietary IP and delivers consumers highly personalized tools and garden plans based on key inputs including geo-location and household size. Our service is also differentiated by a complex weather mapping algorithm, an extremely rich database of over 500 plants, as well as ecommerce to purchase the best organic seeds available online.

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By Susan LeVine and Tom Shepherd
Summerland Publishing
January 1, 2012

Many years ago, every citizen had a garden. Today, some of us are too busy or don’t know how to grow a garden. So, how do you make a garden and become a citizen farmer? This Handbook for Citizen Farmers was written by Tom Shepherd and Susan LeVine. Tom has been an organic farmer since 1973 and shares his secrets in this simple format to inspire children, families and schools to grow their own garden. Susan, a gifted artist, provides beautiful watercolor illustrations that help tell the story of growing a wonderful garden of your very own.

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A brief glimpse of urban agriculture projects in Catalonia beginning at minute 18:25 of the film and ending at 20:40. Simply drag the slider button along to the chosen start time and press the play button.

From the film: Another Life Is Possible – Homage to Catalonia II
By Joana Conill, Manuel Castells and Àlex Ruiz

Catalonia, Spain comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona.

A documentary, a research project, a story of stories about the construction of a sustainable, solidary and decentralized economy. Weaving nets that overcome the individualization and the hierarchical division of work. Thousands of people every day all over the world. Here and now.

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“People can’t be expected to live more sustainable lives if they don’t even know the most basic terms and principles that define sustainability.”

For the past three years Douglas Gayeton and Laura Howard-Gayeton have crisscrossed the USA to learn this new language of sustainability from its foremost practitioners in food and farming. Alice Waters on edible schoolyards. Wes Jackson on reinventing wheat farming. Joel Salatin on embracing the value of saner farming practices. Vandana Shiva on the global imperative of protecting seeds. Paul Stamets on how mushrooms can save the world. Will Allen on Food Security. Temple Grandin on the humane slaughter of animals. Farmer John on the revolutionary idea of community-supported agriculture.

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Viraj is a LEED® Accredited Professional and received a B.A. from Colgate University

Viraj Puri is co-founder and CEO of Gotham Greens, a New York City based company dedicated to growing the highest quality vegetables and culinary herbs for local restaurants and retailers. Gotham Greens’ premium quality produce is grown in sterile rooftop greenhouses in Brooklyn, NY, using clean, renewable energy. His written work has appeared in several books and publications including, “100% Renewable — Energy Autonomy in Action” and the un Academic Journal.

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Winter greens in raised boxes. Downtown Montgomery is off to the left of this picture. Photo by Caroline Nabors Rosen.

Growing a Better Future

By Brent Rosen
OKRA Southern Food and Beverage Museum
Jan 18, 2012
Brent Rosen is a raconteur and pontoon boat captain on Lake Martin Alabama. He is interested in Southern food and Southern culture.

Excerpt:

Urban farming operations exist throughout the South, but their stories often go unreported. I’ve read newspaper articles about Brooklynites whose roosters annoy their neighbors, and I’ve read about Berkleyites who have dinner parties using only ingredients grown locally by the attendees, but local agriculture in the South does not make headlines. If I tell you people are growing things in Alabama, you’ll likely shrug, knowing that melons and peaches grow just as easily as peanuts and cotton, that greens thrive in our mild winters, that pecan trees are as commonplace in backyards as Labrador retrievers. Even in Birmingham, Alabama’s largest urban area, you need only drive 15 minutes in any direction to be surrounded by farm and field. Agriculture is everywhere, so it seems unnecessary to focus on the agriculture that now exists within city limits.

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Backyard Slaughter Trend Evokes a Backlash

By Sami Grover
TreeHugger
January 20, 2012

Excerpt

The rise of backyard farming has been held up by many as a more sustainable, humane alternative to the industrial food system. And many backyard farms are including animals for meat and dairy production. Some of their vegetarian neighbors, however, are none too pleased about it. In the latest issue of VegNews, Ian Elwood of Neighbors Opposed to Backyard Slaughter lays out his opposition to backyard animal husbandry of all kinds:

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A transformed piece of city land, the Demonstration Food Garden.

Red Celery In the Sunshine – An Urban Eden: transforming hopeless backyard hardpan into a lush organic plot

A story about City Farmer’s Demonstration Food Garden
Article and photography by Michael Levenston
Originally published in Harrowsmith Magazine
April/May 1984 Number 54

It is little more than a stone’s throw from downtown, a means of measure quite appropriate for the volunteers digging, weeding and discarding rocks from the painstakingly created soil that covers the sunny backyard of the Vancouver Energy Information Centre. Here, beautifully illustrated signs identify plants and techniques for gardeners who pass by a cold frame, a large solar greenhouse, a three-bin composting system and 30 raised beds filled with healthy vegetables. Occasionally, a train clangs by almost close enough to touch, overwhelming all the other city sounds and reminding the gardeners that not long ago, this little chunk of Eden was not much better suited to growing food than the railway siding next to it.

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Tilapia in the Bronx. Urban farmer Christopher Toole teaches children how to grow fish and vegetables at The Point in Hunts Point.

“Give a person some fish, and you start a self-perpetuating cycle of education and growth.”

By Jon Schuppe,
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
January 18, 2012

Excerpt:

HUNTS POINT — Christopher Toole sees the future of urban farming at the bottom of a 50-gallon garbage bin in the South Bronx, where a pale foot-long fish does lazy loops in dark water.

The fish is one of dozens of tilapia Toole keeps in trash and recycling containers, “aquaponic” tanks and traditional glass tanks in Hunts Point, where he is conducting an ambitious experiment. His plan is to create a network of homes, restaurants and cooperative farms where millions of people in the metropolitan area will raise and eat what he calls Bronx Best Blue Tilapia.

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Michael Abelman from GroAction on Vimeo.

Luke Miller Callahan interviews Michael Abelman, a Leader in Sustainable Development

By Luke Miller Callahan
GroAction Interviews
01/18/2012

Synopsis

How do we catalyze a movement of urban farmers throughout the country throughout the developed world? Renowned speaker, activist, and urban farmer, Michael Abelman sits down with me to discuss the reasoning and strategy behind encouraging millions of people to become small plot farmers.

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City Farmer Society from 1978-2003

By Michael Levenston
City Farmer – 2003

In 1978, a group of young environmentalists working at the Vancouver Energy Conservation Center stumbled across a book called The City People’s Book of Raising Food by William and Helga Olkowski. It described in everyday language how the authors grew all their own food right in the middle of the city of Berkeley. This inspiring book led us on an exploration of urban food production, which continues today, twenty-five years later.

Working at an energy center, the first thing that struck us was the amount of fossil fuel used to transport food from far away farms to our supermarkets. We quickly realized that there were real savings for people who grew food at home. Such a simple act struck us as revolutionary, especially when we saw that there were other environmental and social problems that could be addressed as well. The urban farmer became our new-found hero!

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The Metro Vancouver Small Farm Resource Manual is a project of the Richmond Food Security Society. This Manual is offered as a resource to small-scale farmers to help them source supplies, services, markets, and knowledge. The manual is a dynamic manual that can expand with your feedback and can be updated easily online.

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Benchmarks were compiled by Wally Satzewich, creator of the SPIN-Farming system

By Wally Satzewich, Roxanne Christensen
Oct 06, 2011
94 pages

SPIN-Farming has released the latest print guide in its learning series for sub-acre farmers. SPIN-Farming 2.0: Production Planning & Crop Profiles quantifies exactly how much money a farmer can generate for 40 crops grown on less than an acre. SPIN stands for “small plot intensive,” and it is a system that combines intensive production with a direct marketing business model.

With SPIN-Farming 2.0 crop profiles, for the first time ever, sub-acre farmers can benchmark their sales revenue from selling produce directly to consumers at farmers’ markets. The benchmarks were compiled by Wally Satzewich, creator of the SPIN-Farming system, based on his experience at his multi-sited backyard urban/peri-urban farm operation in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

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