Search Results for "pittsburgh"

Established in 2005, Healcrest started as 15 abandoned and delinquent city lots.

By OurRegionsBusiness
Nov. 2012

“Successful farming can no doubt be difficult in any location, but how about in the heart of the city of Pittsburgh? With a background in community development, Maria Graziana set out to answer this question after acquiring nearly two acres of land in the city’s Garfield neighborhood. Graziana discusses the idea behind farm, which sits on the site of several abandoned home lots.” Video caption.

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Keith Bey speaks at an urban farming workshop at the Homewood branch of Carnegie Library Saturday. Photo by Tony Tye.

16,000-plus vacant lots in Pittsburgh – 15 percent of usable land

By Alex Ferreras
Post Gazette
February 29, 2012

Excerpt:

Ms. Boyd said she is driven to provide food for Homewood and motivated by the role agriculture has played in the past.

“African-Americans have a culture of farming,” she said. “But we are more dependent on the government than ever, and Homewood doesn’t have a place to buy food. I recommend that we as urban blacks return to farming. We need to reconnect to the land and seek the help of our elders to teach and advise and get the younger generations to listen and be teachable.

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For two months and traveling 10,000 miles, Carlsen discovered much about urban farming

Brooklyn College
Feb. 16, 2012

Excerpt:

Carlsen’s original intent was to visit nine farms and to spend time working alongside the farmers. He also wanted to talk to activists, organizers and community members to get a better understanding of best practices and the effect farms have had on local residents and urban development. Carlsen’s journey led him to a deeper truth about his subject. Nothing, especially this project, would be as simple as thrusting a shovel into the ground and sowing some seeds.

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Jody Noble-Choder holds Attila-the-Hen outside her coop in Pittsburgh. Photo by Kris Maher/The Wall Street Journal

As Hobbyists Feather Own Nests, City Dwellers Flock to Tour Backyard Henhouses

By Kris Maher
Wall Street Journal
Aug 2, 2011

Excerpt:

“Some chicken people are coming out of the closet,” said Ms. Noble-Choder, a corporate lawyer who organized this summer’s first Chicks-in-the-Hood Pittsburgh Urban Chicken Coop Tour. She paid $1,200 for her coop, which has heated roosts and an automated door opener, but many coops are humble do-it-yourself affairs requiring little more than a few two-by-fours, some chicken wire and straw. Seven families displayed their coops, and adults paid $5 each to go on the self-guided tour. Between ticket and T-shirt sales, the fledgling group took in more than $1,800, which it donated to a food bank.

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Steve Rapasky, director of the Burgh Bees community apiary on Susequanna Street, poses for a portrait inside the apiary Monday. Rapasky lives in Dormont. Photo by Michael Henninger/Post-Gazette.

Horses and pigs are not considered pets under the city code. Under the new rules, a person with under 3 acres must seek special permission to have either animal.

By Joe Smydo
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
February 08, 2011

Excerpt:

The city of Pittsburgh has new regulations for the increasingly popular practice of urban agriculture, such as the raising of honeybees and chickens, but time will tell whether the rules are the bee’s knees or something to squawk about.

Council approved the guidelines last week. Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s office had proposed most of the changes to complement other greening initiatives — and to make sure people and animals peacefully co-exist in city neighborhoods.

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In 2010, Levi Strauss and Co. began a collaboration in Braddock, Pennsylvania, a broken town struggling to reinvent itself. As part of this collaboration, Levi Strauss and Co. invested in Braddock’s community center, public library, and urban farm. The result is a campaign that tells the story of the people of Braddock.

A vacant lot, an opportunity – We Are All Workers: Episode 7 Urban Farm

As an urban farmer, Marshall envisions Braddock’s empty lots as opportunities to create a stronger, healthier community. Amidst the closed steel mills and abandoned homes, the Urban Farm brings affordable, organic produce that’s “as local as you can get” to the dinner tables of Braddock’s homes. Brought to you by Levi’s in partnership with IFC and Sundance Channel.

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Novella Carpenter turned her backyard in Oakland, California into a small farm to feed herself. Now she’s selling produce and trying to make a small profit. Photo by Mark Richards

Taking root in the city

Casey Miner
Ode Magazine
July/August 2010 issue

Excerpt:

If the ’60s was the decade when back-to-the-landers fled cities for farms, the ’10s is the decade when they—or, more likely, their offspring—are coming back. There is no official count of how many urban farms exist in America, but agricultural entities like the Bells’ have counterparts across the country. Urban farmers work in Houston, Dayton, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York, Oakland, San Francisco, Detroit, Portland, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Seattle, to name just a few. Location matters, and the farms’ business models are different, but they have two things in common: They are committed to feeding their communities with fresh, sustainable food, and they insist on establishing themselves as normal features of city life.

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Ceasia Williams, 14, left, and Jayda Harden, 14, water newly planted seedlings in a raised bed for the Lots of Hope gardening project at The Pittsburgh Project on the North Side. Photo by Rebecca Droke/Post-Gazette.

“It helps people to have clarity about what’s allowed and what isn’t.”

By Rick Wills
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
September 1, 2010

Excerpt:

Pittsburgh’s Planning Commission gave its final approval to legislation that would regulate small-scale, urban agriculture.

The proposed legislation, which goes to City Council for action, applies to honeybees, poultry and community gardens, for which no permitting has been required. The commission passed the proposal 6-1, with Commissioner Monte Rabner voting against.

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The growing interest in urban agriculture means we need to think about the city in a whole new way.

By Dorothée Imbert
Architecture Boston
Published by the Boston Society of Architects
Vol 13 No 3
August 4, 2010

Dorothée Imbert is the chair of the Master in Landscape Architecture program at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University. She is the author of Between Garden and City: Jean Canneel-Claes and Landscape Modernism (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010)

Excerpt:

The contemporary enthusiasm for urban agriculture presents a paradox: zoning regulation, olfactory and sound control, and moral opprobrium have erased almost all traces of food production within most Western cities. This contradiction reveals the difficulty of integrating agriculture into urban systems and the need for landscape architects, planners, and community activists to tackle policy. The perception of urban agriculture as a temporary land use for disenfranchised inner-city populations is also likely to hinder its potential to form a new type of open space.

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Jaymon McGhee, 13, plants mustard greens in a raised bed as part of the Lots of Hope gardening project. Photo by Rebecca Droke/Post-Gazette

“These are exciting times”

By Diana Nelson Jones
July 08, 2010
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Excerpt:

The urban farm — a novel, even whimsical, idea a few years ago in Pittsburgh — is now a movement so fully fledged that a neighborhood without one seems almost an anomaly.

Nationally, the movement is profuse, with seeds in the 1980s when foodies sprouted and gourmet eating went mainstream. The roots of several movements have intertwined since: urban enterprise farms, urban farms for educating children, community gardens, vacant lot greening, soil remediation of industrial landscapes, community supported agriculture, backyard chickens and bee hives, consumers who buy into livestock with farmers and grocery chains selling local produce.

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Inmates working. Photo By Marc Vasconcellos.

Save Our Prison Farms

This new Save Our Prison Farms website has been set up by the national campaign team to respond to growing public concern over the immanent shut down of Canada’s six prison farms. We believe that our government will reverse its misguided policy decision as it continues to discover that the vast majority of Canadians of all political stripes support this productive, cost effective, rehabilitative farm-based program.

Background

Canada’s six prison farms are located at,

• Pittsburgh and Frontenac Institutions in Kingston, Ontario
• Westmorland Institution in Dorchester, New Brunswick
• Rockwood Institution in Stoney Mountain near Winnipeg, Manitoba
• Riverbend Institution near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan
• Bowden Institution in Innisfail near Calgary, Alberta

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Growing prosperity

By Emily Wilkins
The State News
May 24, 2010

Excerpt:

Near the end of his sophomore year, horticulture senior James Manning came to a sudden realization — he had no idea how to grow his own food.

“You learn that food, water, shelter … those are the things we need,” Manning said. “But in school, we don’t learn about growing food or what a carrot looks like before it comes out of the ground.”

Manning, a vegetarian who fostered an interest in learning about where his food was coming from, embarked on a trip across America and worked on diversified vegetable farms in Maine and Georgia. He now is back in East Lansing, but he hasn’t had to give up his green thumb.

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Photo by growpittsburgh.

Pittsburgh plans for urban farmers

By Erika Beras
Ohio River Radio Consortium
2010-04-28

Excerpt:

PITTSBURG, PA (WEKU) – Urban agriculture is growing. And its not just city-dwellers frequenting farmer’s markets for their vegetables, eggs and honey – more of them are interested in growing or cultivating it themselves. That’s leaving officials scrambling for ways to regulate the new farmer that’s cropping up in American cities, farmers like Jana Thompson.

Thompson grew up on farms. Seven years ago she moved to Pittsburgh. Although she had a garden she missed having a connection to nature. So, first came the bees. (Nat Sound from the Hives) 70,000 of them, in open-bottomed hive boxes on her roof. Then came the chickens – three Salmon Bantams. (Nat Sound of Chickens) Next, she wants to raise rabbits for meat. But then she received an email with some troubling news.

“The first code the city proposed everything I’m doing here would have become illegal,” says Thompson.

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An urban community garden in central Vancouver, Canada. This project shows that food can be grown in densely populated areas. Photo by Michael Levenston

By Thair Shaikh
CNN
April 8, 2010

Excerpts:

London, England (CNN) — As the world’s urban population continues to grow at a rapid rate, communities around the world are increasingly turning to “city agriculture” to produce cheap, locally grown fruit and vegetables.

Among skyscrapers and housing estates, previously vacant lots are being used to produce millions of tons of organically grown food that experts say are “greener” and cheaper than commercially grown produce.

But while many countries are in the early stages of their urban agriculture development, China, Japan and Cuba have had successful city farms for decades.

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Allegheny Grows is an outgrowth of the County’s successful partnership with Grow Pittsburgh to create the Braddock Urban Farm, which turned eight vacant lots in the heart of the borough into a 20,000 square-foot farm with 90 raised beds.

Onorato Launches “Allegheny Grows” Initiative to Promote Urban Farming and Community Gardening

March 25, 2010

Excerpt:

PITTSBURGH — Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato today launched “Allegheny Grows,” a new initiative to encourage urban farming and community gardening on vacant lots and blighted properties. Allegheny Grows will offer startup materials, as well as technical and educational assistance to municipalities that show significant interest in developing urban farms and community gardens.

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Urban Farm Hub tries to answer the question

Urban Farm Hub is launching a series of articles addressing the long-term economic viability of urban agriculture. We know commercial agriculture enterprises pencil in shrinking midwest cities such as Detroit, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, but what about thriving metropolitan areas such as Seattle where there’s a shortage of developable land?

We’ll be interviewing small business owners, design professionals, urban farm entrepreneurs, and commercial developers in rapidly growing metropolitan areas to see what they have to say about reaping the green from urban agriculture.

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Urban farming at Braddock Farms (Photo courtesy Susanna Meyer)

Training for local growers starts next month

By Denise Ellsworth
Special to the Beacon Journal
Feb 20, 2010

Excerpt:

Thanks to enthusiasm and support from partners in the Summit Food Policy Coalition, a group started last year to address food access in Summit County, Akron is jumping on the urban farming band wagon. The Summit Urban Farming Initiative (SUFI), a seven-week training program, will begin in March at the Akron General Wellness Center in Bath Township.

The pilot program, co-sponsored by OSU Extension of Summit County, Akron’s Department of Planning and Urban Development and the Summit Food Policy Coalition, will be offered on Thursday evenings through April.

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Ordinance changes bother keepers of bees, chickens

By Diana Nelson Jones
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
February 08, 2010

Proposed changes to the city ordinance dealing with the keeping of agricultural animals on city properties has agitated bee and chicken keepers.

Burgh Bees, a 375-member nonprofit, has put out a “call to action” via e-mail for attendance at a public hearing before the city planning commission at 2 p.m. Feb. 16 “to show how many beekeepers and beekeeper supporters there are” in the city. The hearing is at 200 Ross St., Downtown.

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This paper explores the growth of urban farming across the United States, and highlights three different case studies.

An Overview of Urban Farming
A Report from Green For All’s Capital Access Program

Excerpt:

III. Urban Farming as a Business

Urban farms come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Almost all, however, share some basic startup costs. Assuming a plot of land of at least half an acre, a list of such costs would likely include:

• Rototiller ($4,500): a motorized plow that uses rotating tines or blades to cultivate the soil and get the land ready for planting. This is the only mechanized equipment necessary.
• Coolers ($4,000): Two upright produce coolers used to store fresh vegetables and prevent spoilage.
• Other equipment ($1,000): garden seeder, wheel hoe, standard-issue tools, harvesting bins, hoses, and sprinklers
• Sales & Marketing ($500): farmers market tables, display baskets, digital scale, signage
• TOTAL: $10,000

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Publisher: New Village Press
(January 1, 2008) 376 pages

Places of peace
Gardens of green
Standing together, we’re growing
Visions of wholeness coming.

Friendship can be a reality
Harmony can be for you and me, Oh!

Places of peace
Gardens of green
Standing together, we’re growing.

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