Down on the (city) farm in London

Photo by Accidental Londoner.

For this up-rooted, former country girl, these farms are a pleasing reminder of home.

By Accidental Londoner
24 March 2012

Except:

When I moved to the city I resigned myself to only seeing such creatures when I went back to The Midlands to visit my parents. How wrong I was to be. Having lived in ignorance for my first few years in London, last year I discovered just how many city farms there are scattered about the place. From Houslow to Mudchute, there are tiny small-holdings and market gardens tucked into the most unlikely of places. In Kentish Town the city farm is surrounded by three different train lines, which weave beneath the collection of enclosures and allotments.

A small group of goats scrambles up above the tracks, climbing over large concrete boulders, probably pretending they live in a small Alpine village somewhere.

Goats are pretty standard inhabitants of London’s city farms, as are sheep, cows, and pigs; from the large pink variety to a rather fetching pair of small, curly-haired, marbled individuals, called Edward and Jenny, who live in Vauxhall. (Also at Vauxhall lives a rather incongruous alpaca, some distance from his Latin American roots.) Ponds also seem to be popular farm features, usually inhabited by ducks of different shapes and sizes, and maybe the odd goose.

Read the complete article here.