By jnicholl
Center for a Livable Future
March 8, 2010

Excerpt:

This past weekend, I witnessed hundreds of volunteers working in a very tangible way to take back the food system for a community. The ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu said, “the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” This was a stride. Two high schools in Richmond, Calif in the span of one weekend built urban school farms at their respective school sites. Supported by Urban Tilth http://www.urbantilth.org, those students, teachers, parents and community volunteers laid the infrastructure and built the capacity to grow significant amounts of local produce in Richmond.

These are farms that will not just change the physical environment of the schools and the community, but significantly change the way students think about food. This year, close to 30 students at Richmond High are enrolled in the second pilot year of an Urban Agriculture and Food Systems class, what we call Urban Ag Institutes, and those students will grow from seed thousands of pounds of produce, that will feed families from their high school. Last year, the program had a small but impressive 10 family CSA box (community supported agriculture) and this year with the expansion of the farm at the high school, they hope to do even more.

Just as exciting, across town at Kennedy High School, an even larger farm with thirteen 100 ft. rows were put in behind the football field. Say bye-bye to the school garden and say hello to the school ‘farm!’ Imagine the depth of knowledge that will come as those students learn to manage a working urban farm. Growing seasons, soil, pests, nutrition, food systems, marketing, community food security, advocacy, organics, cooking, and permaculture are just some of the topics that we will engage with students in the program.

See the rest of the article and more photos here.

BK Farmyards: Developing a 1-Acre Youth Farm – achieves funding goal

NEW YORK
Associated Press
February 28, 2010

NEW YORK – Students at one Brooklyn high school won’t learn about farming from textbooks in the near future. They’ll learn directly from the soil. Students at the High School for Public Service in East Flatbush plan to break ground in April on a 10,000-square-foot vegetable farm on their campus’ front lawn. The first crop of vegetables could be harvested in June.

Principal Ben Shuldiner says the goal is to teach the skills and science behind farming. Fresh produce will also be offered to the community. Senior Elliot Bowman says it’s difficult to find fresh produce in the neighborhood.

Urban farming collective BK Farmyards will design and operate the farm, which is expected to cover the school’s entire 1-acre yard in four years.

BK Farmyards: Developing a 1-Acre Youth Farm

About this project:

Food. We love it and can’t live without it. It keeps us happy, healthy, and smart. We’re making local, organic food available to everyone, one yard at a time. And we need your help to keep the dream alive.

We are starting a Youth Farm in Partnership with the High School for Public Service in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The students are required to do 200 hours of public service before graduation, but on average, they do 700 hours! They are focusing their attention on health and nutrition in the community, and they are ready to get their hands dirty.

We will develop the 1-acre farm over the course of the next four years incorporating farming into the science, health, art, and media classes. We will have a summer youth employment program which will provide summer jobs for the students as well as after-school volunteer programs. In the first year, we will provide fresh affordable produce to 20 families in the community for 16 weeks, and by year 5, we will be providing produce for 80 families. This farm will be one of the only fresh food sources in the neighborhood. You can come celebrate with us at our spring and fall harvest festivals when we close down Kingston Avenue for a block party!

Our farmers are the most essential ingredient for the success of our farms. Because of them, we can maximize production, and teach the students valuable lessons about food and the environment. With your kickstarter pledges, we can secure farmers for the planning of this growing season and the development of a Youth Farm that empowers the students to become leaders in their community. This is truly the gift that keeps on giving; once in place, the farmyard will continue to thrive for years.

Funding website here.

BK Farmyards website here.

Reach and teach more kids about healthy food on and off our urban farm. Urban Roots, a program of YouthLaunch

Urban Roots is looking to expand our reach beyond our farm interns to more students in the Austin. We will hire youth outreach specialists to work with Urban Roots staff to create and facilitate educational activities in schools and for after-school field trips to our farm. We will train these youth to lead interactive activities on the farm that teach students about healthy living.

In schools, youth will lead activities similar to Veggies Make You Strong, a photo-powerpoint gameshow in which contestants attempt to match vegetables to the associated plant and get interesting nutritional information about those veggies.

Students who participate in these age-appropriate, interactive, educational activities either on the farm or in their own classroom will also go home with something tangible, such as a couple of seed packets or a potted plant with instructions on how to plant it. Goal: 15 in-school presentations, 30 field trips to the farm, 1225 students served total.

Link to Urban Roots Austin here.

Cultivating Failure

by Caitlin Flanagan
the Atlantic Magazine
Jan/Feb 2010

Excerpt:

Imagine that as a young and desperately poor Mexican man, you had made the dangerous and illegal journey to California to work in the fields with other migrants. There, you performed stoop labor, picking lettuce and bell peppers and table grapes; what made such an existence bearable was the dream of a better life. You met a woman and had a child with her, and because that child was born in the U.S., he was made a citizen of this great country. He will lead a life entirely different from yours; he will be educated. Now that child is about to begin middle school in the American city whose name is synonymous with higher learning, as it is the home of one of the greatest universities in the world: Berkeley. On the first day of sixth grade, the boy walks though the imposing double doors of his new school, stows his backpack, and then heads out to the field, where he stoops under a hot sun and begins to pick lettuce.

It’s rare for an immigrant experience to go the whole 360 in a single generation—one imagines the novel of assimilation, The White Man Calls It Romaine. The cruel trick has been pulled on this benighted child by an agglomeration of foodies and educational reformers who are propelled by a vacuous if well-meaning ideology that is responsible for robbing an increasing number of American schoolchildren of hours they might other wise have spent reading important books or learning higher math (attaining the cultural achievements, in other words, that have lifted uncounted generations of human beings out of the desperate daily scrabble to wrest sustenance from dirt). The galvanizing force behind this ideology is Alice Waters, the dowager queen of the grown-locally movement. Her goal is that children might become “eco-gastronomes” and discover “how food grows”—a lesson, if ever there was one, that our farm worker’s son might have learned at his father’s knee—leaving the Emerson and Euclid to the professionals over at the schoolhouse. Waters’s enormous celebrity, combined with her decision in the 1990s to expand her horizons into the field of public-school education, has helped thrust thousands of schoolchildren into the grip of a giant experiment, one that is predicated on a set of assumptions that are largely unproved, even unexamined. That no one is calling foul on this is only one manifestation of the way the new Food Hysteria has come to dominate and diminish our shared cultural life, and to make an educational reformer out of someone whose brilliant cookery and laudable goals may not be the best qualifications for designing academic curricula for the public schools.

See the complete four page article here.

Responses to Atlantic article.

School Gardens Cultivate a Richness Some Fail To Grasp

The Learning Garden (Almost) Daily
Jan 28, 2010

Students at Venice High School’s Learning Garden tend their plots on a sunny day last term. The Learning Garden is one of Los Angeles’ most successful collaborative school/community gardens in California, turning a one acre eyesore into a learning experience that is trans-generational. David King is the garden manager (Gardenmaster) and teaches for UCLA Extension’s Gardening and Horticulture Program.

See blog post here.

Sharon Astyk’s comments:

Even more than the “technology and cheap energy will save us” assumption that is so prevalent and wrong in our society is another underlying assumption, even more destructive. It is that because agriculture is unskilled labor, work suitable to people who aren’t qualified for better and higher things, we will simply be able to handle this through market forces – as low wage jobs disappear in one area, those people will just become farmers. But that’s ridiculous on several levels. The first is that low wage workers can’t buy land, and often can’t even rent it. But the more important one is this – agriculture is highly skilled, highly thoughtful, important work that requires an enormously varied skill set. I know this because I’ve been trying to acquire it for most of the last decade, and I now finally feel like I know enough to describe what I don’t know. Learning to farm was considerably harder than academia, than learning multiple languages, reading Kant or writing publishable papers. It was also a hell of a lot more fun, but that doesn’t diminish the difficulty of understanding an ecological system that you depend upon.

From blog post here.

By KIM SEVERSON
Published: January 19, 2010
New York Times

THOSE who believe trends start on the West Coast and are perfected on the East Coast might add to their argument a garden planned for an elementary school in Brooklyn.

This summer, supporters will tear up a quarter-acre of asphalt parking lot behind P.S. 216 in the Gravesend neighborhood and start building the first New York affiliate of the Edible Schoolyard program, developed by the restaurateur Alice Waters of Chez Panisse.

It’s a $1.6-million architect’s dream. A new building, powered by the sun, will hold a kitchen classroom with communal tables where children can share meals they make from food they grow in the garden.

Designers from the Work Architecture Company have incorporated a chicken coop, a composting system, an outdoor pizza oven and a cistern to collect rainwater. A movable greenhouse will be rolled out each fall.

Teachers will use the garden to give students — 460 children from prekindergarten to the fifth grade — lessons in subjects like art, math, history and science. Administrators hope the school will eventually become a center for the study of the environment and agriculture.

The P.S. 216 project will be not only the most expensive of the six Edible Schoolyards but also the only one to operate year round. The original, built 15 years ago at a middle school in Berkeley, Calif., cost about $75,000, Ms. Waters recalled.

She will attend a series of invitation-only events in New York next month to raise money for the garden and for the Chez Panisse Foundation. Ms. Waters, a former Montessori teacher, set up the foundation to improve food and education in public schools.

Leading the fund-raising charge will be John Lyons, a movie producer and foundation board member.

Mr. Lyons, the son of a high school librarian, began volunteering at P.S. 216 five years ago and has made the garden his personal project. Even though private money will pay for construction and the estimated $400,000 a year in staffing costs, some might wonder if a multimillion-dollar garden is what a public elementary school in a large, cash-short district really needs.

The most-recent critic of the Edible Schoolyard program is Caitlin Flanagan, whose lengthy essay “Cultivating Failure,” published in The Atlantic, attacks Ms. Waters and garden-based education.

Ms. Flanagan argued that school gardens are a vast pedagogic experiment based on a set of untested assumptions.

“I have yet to find a single study,” she wrote, “that suggests classroom gardens help students meet the state standards for English and math” in California, where she lives.

She found it especially distasteful that the children of migrant farmworkers might be sent to the fields in what she regards as an unhealthy mix of public schooling and social engineering.

See the rest of the article here.

By Jane Coaston
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
01/17/2010

ST. LOUIS — Kara Dalton is attempting to control chaos. It’s Monday at the teacher’s pre-veterinary science class at Gateway Institute of Technology high school, and that means baths for the dogs, cats, bunnies, mice, hamsters, guinea pigs and one elusive ferret named Riley.

On one side of the room, three students are grooming a terrier named Shadow. In the walk-in shower room for larger animals, two students hose down a black Labrador retriever. Other students are attempting to corral and bathe a large black cat. Fluffy the bunny has his cage cleaned and his toenails trimmed.

Gateway Institute of Technology, 5101 McRee Avenue, is among a growing number of suburban and urban high schools nationwide offering agricultural and animal science classes. Such classes are also offered at Clyde C. Miller Career Academy in St. Louis and Edwardsville High School, among others in the region.

But the focus isn’t predominantly on farming.

Instead, schools are increasingly using animal science as a springboard to teach math, biology and chemistry. Teachers use cats, dogs and guinea pigs as a hands-on way to teach animal physiology and development.

Dalton says that three-fourths of the class at Gateway plan to study to be veterinarians or veterinary technicians in college.

“I feel that specializing in one area, like ours does, will really allow an urban program to grow and be successful,” Dalton said. “It doesn’t have to be veterinary science. It could be horticulture, biotechnology or food science.”

Signs of the trend can be seen as the nation’s largest student agricultural organization gains footholds even in urban areas. According to the National FFA Organization, formerly known as Future Farmers of America, the number of agricultural and animal science classes has been on the rise for a decade, with chapters in 16 of the nation’s largest 20 cities and a third of membership coming from outside of rural areas.

Julie Adams, a spokeswoman for the FFA, said the growth of specialized schools such as magnet and charter schools had helped to raise interest in agricultural education. But she said the relevance of agriculture to core subjects was also a factor.

“Students can have a real hands-on way of understanding math and science,” she said. “You have to be able to understand science concepts to know what you’re talking about when you’re dealing with agriculture.”

The class at Gateway, composed of juniors and seniors, covers an introduction to animal health care, ethics in veterinary medicine, careers in animal health and clinic procedures and safety measures. Dalton has been reworking the curriculum to emphasize anatomy, animal diseases and nutrition, such as avian prenatal development.

Seniors take on internships and spend Tuesdays at sites around the city, including Grant’s Farm and the World Aquarium.

See the complete article here.

Although there is no story to accompany this graphic in the 1941 edition of the comic, it is a wonderful promotional image, which would have reached millions of kids during the war. Superb!

The Garden of Happiness

By Erika Tamar (Author), Barbara Lambase (Illustrator)
Harcourt Children’s Books, 1996

From Publishers Weekly:

Tamar, the author of such tough-minded YA novels as Fair Game, turns dewy-eyed in her first picture book, an idealistic tale about a community garden in a rundown part of New York City. A studiously multiethnic coalition of neighbors claims an empty lot, and there Mrs. Willie Mae Washington plants black-eyed peas and greens “like on my daddy’s farm in Alabama”; Mr. Singh raises valore, as he did in Bangladesh; etc. Young Marisol, pining to grow something, too, plants a seed she finds on the sidewalk and waters it faithfully. She is ecstatic when a sunflower finally blossoms and then grief-stricken when, at the end of the season, it dies.

Overawed dialogue (”Los girasoles from Mexico, where they bring joy to the roadside,” says old Mrs. Garcia), exaggerated emotions and an unlikely happy ending turn this outing into a sort of urban Marisol of Sunnybrook Farm. Lambase, a debut illustrator, wisely interprets the goings-on as fantastic. Her exuberant oil paintings tweak perspectives to the extent that Marisol’s “flower of sunshine” reaches to a fifth-story window, and her warm palette bathes the characters in a protective golden light.

See more here at Google Books.

Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale

Karina Rusk
December 21, 2009
KGO-TV San Franscisco

SUNNYVALE, CA (KGO) — Hands on learning for school kids is nothing new, but in Silicon Valley amid all the high-tech companies and housing development, there is something you do not see a lot of in the Bay Area anymore — a farm. It is giving kids a whole new appreciation for what they eat.

Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale is an independent non-profit organization. It is a rare working farm in the heart of Silicon Valley, but it is also an outdoor classroom for a new generation of gardeners.

“I really like farming, being in the sunshine and having fun,” said student Cindy Lenhu.

When Full Circle broke ground two years ago, part of its mission was to create an outdoor learning center for nearby Peterson Middle School.

“This farm is really an opportunity for us to reconnect kids with their food, you know, where does your food come from? How does that happen?” said Rebecca Jepsen, ex-director of Full Circle Farm.

Sixth grade students at Peterson explore the answers to those questions in a semester-long course. The kids immerse themselves in planting, mulching and harvesting, but if you watch and listen, the farming experience is all about life sciences, the environment and healthy eating.

“We learned a lot about worms and we even got to touch them and examine them and write about them in our farm journals,” said student Tiffany Wang.

“I learned how composting is done and that worms are a big, big help in making soil fertilized,” said student Ilyas Kamil.

“We’re learning about the eco systems and the cycle of life,” said student Niharika Bhat.

The innovative program is just a small part of the Full Circle operation, but it is so successful there are plans to expand it to include more students. After all, the non-profit leases the land from the school district.

The 11-acre plot of land was not set aside lightly. At a time when school funding is constantly being cut, the district seriously considered selling the property for development.

See the complete story here.

Trailer ‘Grown in Detroit’ from Mascha Poppenk on Vimeo.

Grown in Detroit

by Dutch filmmakers Mascha and Manfred Poppenk
(Highly recommended film! Mike)

Imagine urban teens, pregnant, and farming a decaying city. They’re working, learning and planning for a better life for themselves and their babies. It’s not a movie script. It’s the subject of a new documentary, Grown in Detroit, by Dutch filmmakers Mascha and Manfred Poppenk.

While Detroit may have a reputation as one of the most impoverished and dangerous cities in the U.S., this award winning documentary exposes a different side; the side about residents who are emerging by using their resource and creating unique solutions.

“This isn’t the typical, negative Detroit story. It’s a powerful, uplifting story about rebirth of the city,” Said Mascha Poppenk, documentary filmmaker. “It focuses on the future by featuring the efforts of teens and their educators. The message they are teaching us applies to all in the world, not just the residents of Detroit”

Ironically, after the destruction of many abandoned homes, nature has taken over and the city. Detroit is literally greening from within. Satellite images speak for themselves; more than one third of the city has become green again, just as it was before the industrial era. This new landscape is creating opportunities and hope for the city and its residents. Land that was used for farming a century ago has again been cultivated, this time by the urban farmer, out of necessity and resourcefulness.

Grown in Detroit features urban gardening efforts organized by a public school of 300, mainly African American, pregnant and parenting teenagers. In Detroit alone, there are more than 3,000 pregnant teenagers who drop out of high school each year, nationwide more than 500,000.

The school featured in the documentary is one of only three located in America. As part of the curriculum, pregnant teens are taught agricultural skills at the farm next to the school. The young mothers, often still children themselves, are learning through farming to become more independent and knowledgeable about the importance of nutritious foods. Many of the teens initially dislike farm work but the aversion disappears as they see their crops growing and being sold for profit.

This “back to the roots” concept is a simple, yet effective solution for a city that has to start all over again and perhaps a lesson to be learned for the rest of the world.

Filmmakers Mascha and Manfred Poppenk

Website and Press Access to the Film

http://grownindetroit.filmmij.nl/

Online film preview for the press is available by e-mailing mail@filmmij.nl and requesting log in information.

Media Contact:
Mascha Poppenk
mascha@filmmij.nl

Acclaim for Grown in Detroit

“… As a documentary about hope, the tenacity of the human spirit, and the silver linings in even the darkest of clouds, the Poppenks’ tale of The Motor City and its less-privileged residents is excellent, stunningly shot and well-devised.”

James Goodall | CULT OF CINEMA

“…’grown in Detroit’: won best documentary in Austin– and deserved it. This film has a great pace and a amazingly hopeful, positive message, about a city that is going through some real shit.”

Liquorishspliz | AIN’T IT COOL NEWS

“…But when all is said and done, it is the unabashed realism of the faculty and staff of the Catherine Ferguson Academy for Young Women that convinces us of the integrity of their good intentions. The Poppenks have made a truly remarkable documentary about a story of real, honest-to-goodness hope in one of the most unlikely places.”

Paul Bower | TINY MIX TAPES

“…Lots of people want to make movies in Detroit…we’re a great backdrop for sci-fi thrillers (The Island) or dramas that need a gritty backdrop (Gran Torino). But not many filmmakers make movies ABOUT this notorious city. That is why Grown in Detroit, a documentary by two Dutch filmmakers, is so impressive.”

Karen Dybis | TIME MAGAZINE

“…The movie does a great job of showing how the experience of nature transforms the teenaged mothers at this amazing school. It also captures some of the strange, quiet romance of Detroit, where there seem to be more bicycles than cars because people are too poor to buy cars, where there are goats and haymaking in city neighborhoods, and lots of wonderful people stubbornly insisting that there is something very special and beautiful about any city–even the poorest city–that has the luxury of land for apples, peaches, and tomatoes.”

Michelle Owens | GARDEN RANT BLOG

“…Audience Buzz made it the highest rated, most scheduled and most visited film of the festival” & “… 4.8 stars out of 5”

B-Side | PLANET IN FOCUS FESTIVAL

Awards and Festivals

2009 Award for ‘Best Documentary’ Austin Film Festival | United States

2009 Award for ‘Best Documentary’ Formula Mundi Film Festival | Baden Wuerttemberg | Germany

2009 Special Jury Award for its social values Urban TV Festival | Madrid | Spain

2010 Official Selection Cinema on the Bayou | Lafayette, LA | United States

2009 Official Selection International Millenium Festival | Brussels | Belgium

2009 Official Selection New Kingston Film Festival | United States

2009 Official Selection 2009 Planet in Focus International Environmental Film & Video Festival | Toronto | Canada

Marzipan Kitchen Garden vegetables

By Eddie Gehman Kohan
Obama Foodorama
Dec 2, 2009

White House Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses has been as busy as an elf in Santa’s workshop–for months. In addition to a loaded schedule that includes making the thousands of sweets for all the White House holiday events (17 parties, 11 Open Houses)–and for private Obama family consumption–Yosses has also had a whole architecture project going on for the past six weeks, during the creation of the annual White House Gingerbread House, a holiday tradition that in the past was brought to stunning heights of creativity by former White House Executive Pastry Chef Roland Mesnier, the only chef to last for 26 years in the Executive Mansion.

Yosses’s latest version, debuted today at First Lady Michelle Obama’s Holiday Decorations Preview, can hold its own with past holiday gingerbread extravaganzas. And it was a big team effort, according to Yosses, something of a pet project for White House staff.

“We had everyone working on this,” Yosses noted at the press preview. “Electricians, plumbers, carpenters, lots of staff.”

Photo by Luxist. Yosses shows off his Gingerbread House. See larger image here.

And, according to Yosses, Malia and Sasha Obama also came in to check on holiday house progress, and loved what they saw. The incredibly detailed, 390-lb white-chocolate covered gingerbread house (250 pounds of chocolate and 140 of gingerbread), at 56 X 29 inches, is based on White House architect James Hoban’s original design, but cheats a little: Windows are missing from the South Portico, so it doesn’t have the dramatic “bow” effect of the real South Portico, and the doors at the base of the Portico are straight on top, rather than arched. The balconies for both levels are not true to scale, either; these are where the President speaks during big events on the south Lawn. That’s quibbling–the house is a masterpiece. Mrs. Obama referred to Yosses as “brilliant” in her holiday remarks.

See the complete article here.

See a video of the gingerbread house described by the chef here.

Millennials, who are generally considered to be a group of participatory, positive, technologically-savvy 18- to 30-year-olds

By Alissa Walker
Fast Company
Dec 8, 2009

Excerpt:

Waxman sought to have a group of students physically reclaim a strip of public land bordering the school’s street, which California College of the Arts (CCA) shares with homeless residents as well as day laborers. Waxman believed they could intervene agriculturally on the block–which was littered with hypodermic needles–by growing enough food for the neighbors. “We were three transient populations brought together by a piece of toxic land that held the potential for building community and for addressing a food issue,” she remembers. Dubbing the project FARM (Future Action Reclamation Mob) she encouraged students through posters and other campaign methods to rally behind the cause, using language she believed would appeal to the Millennials.

At first, Waxman planned to take over the land forcefully, but was encouraged by other students to ask permission. Amazingly, the city was so excited about the project they approved the site to be turned over to the group within a week. On the first workday, in March of 2008, more than 50 people showed up to convert the land into a farm.

Creative Collaboration
Art students worked side by side with day laborers to convert the space into a permaculture environment that referenced natural, local ecologies, yet also helped to detoxify the soil, layering the ground with cardboard, compost, granite dust and mulch. Through a series of workdays or signing the FARM’s “Manifestation” over 150 registered farmers have now contributed to the project, but the most surprising contributions started to appear without any direction from Waxman whatsoever. Donations of tools, materials and plants poured in. Architecture students designed a bench. Signage was produced for the farm, as well as directions for the verimiculture compost bin. A collaboration between industrial design and architecture students has constructed a rain-catchment system on the roof of CCA, to be completed in January, using leftover corrugated metal siding from the building’s roof.

The farm, which grows crops from strawberries to lettuce to oyster mushrooms, donates about half of its yield to Free Farm Stand, who gives them seedlings in return. Food is also given to the residents of Hooper Street. There are no rules for the garden as to who can or cannot eat from it, and Waxman says she often has to offer the harvest to homeless and food insecure people on the street.

The complete article here.

The Farm website here.

Link to larger map here.

High School Students To Spearhead Organic Farm
Students Will Tend To Garden Near Arlington High School

The Indy Channel
November 4, 2009

INDIANAPOLIS — Community, education and healthier food choices are at the center of a new urban garden planned for Indianapolis’ northeast side.

The Devington Green Acres Farm will occupy a 3.5-acre plot just east of Devington Shopping Center and Arlington High School, and will be the city’s largest sustainable urban organic farm, organizers said.

While the Devington Community Development Corporation will spearhead the project, high school students will help run the farm, using the garden as an outdoor learning lab.

“They’ll be teaching them, at the school, agriculture science courses, everything from horticulture and nutrition to land management,” said DCDC Deputy Director Naeemah Jackson. “The students will then have this as their actual hands-on laboratory, working the farm, and then
they’ll have a farmers market, too.”

Students will get paid for their work, which could also end up in the school’s cafeteria, and an FFA chapter will be established for interested students to learn more about agriculture.

Besides acting as an educational outlet, the garden will also bring a new source of local, fresh-grown food to the neighborhood.

“We have no health food store out here, no health clinic. It’s not a desert of food, but there’s not the culture of healthy, organic food,” Jackson said. “This farm will provide people in this neighborhood fresh, organic produce, that’s affordable.”

Organizers said they are seeking financial donations, along with help from those with agriculture experience.

The plot is expected to be cleared in time for spring planting.

See article here.

FAO/UN film (in Spanish) about urban agriculture in Bolivia involving young people. This film shows an FAO initiative which is improving city dwellers’ lives by helping them grow their own food.

Feeding Cleveland: Urban Agriculture

Cleveland State University Libraries presents The Cleveland Memory Project

A recurring theme in 20th century Cleveland that continues to the present day is that during difficult economic periods communities of people have come together to  raise food crops on city land. The working men’s farms during the Great Depression, the victory gardens during World War II, community gardens established during the years of urban renewal, and the present day market gardeners of the local food movement, all provide examples of revivals of urban agriculture as a response to economic difficulties. 

During this same time period the innovative Cleveland Public Schools Horticulture Program (CPSHP) began training the first of many generations of student gardeners. Although the system-wide CPS horticulture program ended in 1978, some of these former school garden sites called tract gardens, became community garden sites. The most significant legacies of the Cleveland Public Schools Horticulture Program were the gardeners themselves.  On the commercial front, greater Cleveland was home to America’s largest concentration of farming acreage under glass. (Rose, 1950) 

A summary of the history of Agriculture  in Cleveland, Ohio is available at The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History. Explore the role that urban agriculture has played in Feeding Cleveland. Agricultural Land in Cuyahoga County.  Note:  The increases that occurred in the 1930s were due to land that reverted to farmland due to failed real estate ventures.

See the Feeding Memory, Urban Agriculture web site here.

An editorial cartoon by Willard Combes to promote victory gardens. It depicts a man dressed in overalls like a farmer with the word “victory” emblazoned on the front of them pushing a wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow is filled with giant-sized vegetables. The farmer is saying, “If you want stuff like this next fall – start your victory garden now!” and a bubble above a small dog reads: “There’s no quarantine against kohlrabies – Plant em!” The cartoon was published in The Cleveland Press on April 11, 1945 with the title “If You Like to Eat, Get to Work!” The cartoon was drawn using Craftint Singletone Drawing Board Pattern.

There are almost 400 images featuring urban agriculture in Cleveland here.

Soldiers of the Soil: A Historical Review of the United States School Garden Army

By Rose Hayden-Smith
4-H Youth Development and Master Gardener Advisor,
UCCE-Ventura County
WINTER 2006, 20 pages

“Every boy and every girl should be a producer. Production is the first principle in education. The growing of plants and animals should therefore become an integral part of the school program. Such is the aim of the U.S. School Garden Army.”

With these words, the federal Bureau of Education (BOE) launched the United States School Garden Army (USSGA) during World War I. The USSGA represented an unprecedented governmental effort to make agricultural education a formal part of the public school curriculum throughout the United States.

While agricultural education for rural youth had been a government goal for several years, efforts to teach agricultural education to urban and suburban youth had been slower to take hold. The USSGA represented a shift in federal policy by strongly targeting urban and suburban youth.4 Using patriotic appeals (and no small degree of coercion), the government sought to enlist the aid of youth to raise food for America.

The USSGA exemplifies how Americans mediated competing urban and rural values during a period of rapid change and national transformation. Through the USSGA, positive values attributed to America’s rural past were recast and articulated in the largely urban milieu of gardening. Gardening itself offered a new synthesis of the urban and rural, as new techniques and methods pioneered by urban-led scientific agriculture blended with traditional rural folkways. The USSGA’s
curriculum reflected new educational philosophies that schooled urban youth in tasks traditionally associated with rural life.

After Armistice was signed in November of 1918, the National War Garden Commission, Food Administration, and Bureau of Education published “victory” editions of their manuals, revised posters to reflect Allied victory, and encouraged Americans to continue gardening. Gardening was needed to rebuild the world. However, despite these efforts, the USSGA was dismantled soon after Armistice was signed. Its cousins, the Liberty/Victory Garden and Woman’s Land Army programs, suffered the same fate, and quietly disappeared. Urban and rural Americans still gardened, of course, but Uncle Sam didn’t ask them to.

See the complete 20 page monograph here.

Michelle Obama and Sesame Street: 40th anniversary season

LOS ANGELES (Reuters)
Sep 29, 2009

U.S. first lady Michelle Obama is to kick off the 40th anniversary season of the children’s TV show “Sesame Street” with a segment encouraging kids to plant gardens and eat healthy food.

Obama, who is planting a fruit and vegetable garden on the grounds of the White House, will appear in the November10 season debut of “Sesame Street” — the educational show for kids that is broadcast in more than 120 countries around the world.

Producers said on Tuesday that Obama will teach the furry “residents” of Sesame Street about the benefits of growing a garden and healthy living, and will show children how to plant tomato, cucumber and lettuce seeds.

“All these seeds need to grow are sun, soil and water. If you eat these healthy foods, you’re going to grow up to be big and strong, like me,” Obama says.

“I know you’re going to like these vegetables, because in addition to being healthy, they really taste great!”

The new season will highlight a two-year science initiative on “Sesame Street” called “My World is Green & Growing.” The show is broadcast on public television in the United States.

Michelle Obama in March broke ground on the first fruit and vegetable garden at the White House since World War Two. The 1,100 sq ft garden will grow some 50 fruits and vegetables for use in the White House kitchen.

Other celebrities due to make “Sesame Street” guest appearances in the 40th season include actresses Cameron Diaz, Eva Longoria-Parker, British comedy actor Ricky Gervais and U.S. basketball star Kobe Bryant.

Link to Sesame Street at 40 here.

The Real Mr. McGregor’s Garden

Written by Victoria and Albert Museum

“Before she married in 1913, Beatrix Potter would accompany her family on three-month summer holidays in the countryside. In 1903 the Potters rented Fawe Park, a large, comfortable house in the Lake District, on the edge of Lake Derwentwater. Here, Potter was able to escape outdoors, sketching the terraced gardens that sloped down towards the lake and the beautiful fells beyond. The kitchen garden, with its greenhouses, cold frames and potting shed was a favourite retreat and inspired the setting for The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904).

“When sketching backgrounds for her book illustrations Potter would often attempt to adopt the viewpoint of an animal. She drew aspects of the kitchen garden at Fawe Park that she imagined a rabbit would find appealing: a plank walk ‘under a sunny red-brick wall’, towering lettuces and broad bean plants. Potter used these as the backdrops for Peter and Benjamin’s adventures in Mr. McGregor’s garden. In an ingenious blending of reality and fantasy, she incorporated them into her narrative having made few changes. The animal characters were positioned with an expert eye, and a few recurring motifs, such as Peter’s red handkerchief, were used to add a splash of colour to the greens and browns of the garden.

Beatrix Potter, ‘Sketch of an onion bed, Fawe Park (1903)’ © Frederick Warne & Co. 2006

“Potter produced meticulous preliminary studies for even the smallest and most insignificant details in her finished book illustrations. Among her sketches of the kitchen garden at Fawe Park are several drawings of onions and carnations, and an exquisite study for a potted fuchsia that appears in The Tale of Peter Rabbit.”

Link to story and more images at V and A Museum here.

Fawe Park, Keswick.

See more on Fawe Park here.

More on Beatrix Potter and gardens here.

Beatrix Potter Biography

Link to Beatrix Potter A Life in Nature by Linda Lear

Peter Rabbit 1

Peter Rabbit 2

Peter Rabbit 3

Peter Rabbit 4

Peter Rabbit 5

Peter Rabbit 6

Peter Rabbit 7

Holyfield said, ‘I will give you 40 acres for the solar farm and another acre for the children’s garden’ — continues,

“In addition to this milestone solar project, an additional acre of my land will be used to create a working organic garden to teach neighborhood youth the importance of going green. The organic garden will be installed in cooperation with local community groups and administered by the Evander Holyfield Foundation.”

Holyfield’s estate.
See his house here on Bin Maps – great detail!


Holyfield’s property seen from the air.
See larger Google map here. (You may have to move the map left to get to 794 Evander Holyfield Hwy.)

40-acre solar energy farm on his suburban Atlanta estate – turning another acre into an organic garden that can be used by neighborhood youths.

‘Real Deal’ Holyfield tackles global warming

By PAUL NEWBERRY (AP) – Sep 24, 2009

ATLANTA — Evander Holyfield has no intention of hanging up his gloves. In fact, he’ll have a new nickname the next time he climbs into the ring.

The Real Deal is now the Lean Green Fighting Machine.

Refusing to give up on his goal of retiring as heavyweight champion even as he approaches his 47th birthday, Holyfield said he’ll travel to South Korea in November for his next bout — he’s not even sure of the opponent — and bring along a message of preserving the environment.

Boxing, it seems, has another odd partnership.

“I guess I’m lean and green,” Holyfield said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “I’m pretty much going to do all I can to fight against global warming. I’ll see what I can do to help and try to help other people who want to do the same thing.”

He plans a formal announcement Friday about his environmental partnership, which includes building a 40-acre solar energy farm on his suburban Atlanta estate and turning another acre into an organic garden that can be used by neighborhood youths.

Why the environment, champ?

“A mission as big as this needs someone who is recognized through the whole world,” Holyfield said. “We as a people have to come together to save this planet.”

The four-time heavyweight champion seems to have resolved some of his money woes, which were on public display when his sprawling home twice faced foreclosure notices. He recently began appearing in a new Taco Bell advertising campaign and he’s partnering with Global NES-Georgia to build the solar farm on his property.

“My finances are great now,” Holyfield insisted. “When you bless somebody else, then you get blessed too.”

The boxing side of things is more unsettled. He lost his last two bouts, both in bids to claim shares of the fractured heavyweight title. Many thought last December’s disputed majority-decision defeat to towering Russian Nikolai Valuev would mark the end of his quest.
Not so, said Holyfield.

“I will be the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world,” he said, repeating a familiar pledge. “I’m sure I will be champion next year sometime.”

Holyfield said there are plans in the works for a Nov. 8 bout in South Korea though he was sketchy about further details, including one that’s fairly important — his opponent.

“Well, I don’t even know,” he said. “A lot of times they don’t give me the opponent. I don’t know who this opponent will be. But I’m sure I’ll be able to make some adjustments when necessary.”

Holyfield will turn 47 next month, and plenty of close advisers and outside observers have called on him to retire from boxing before he gets seriously injured by a younger, quicker opponent. Plus, his legacy as boxing’s only four-time heavyweight champion, the undersized warrior who beat everyone from Mike Tyson to Riddick Bowe to George Foreman, has certainly taken a beating since Holyfield last captured a heavyweight belt in 2000.

He’s won just five of his last 12 fights, a stretch that includes four futile attempts to regain at least some portion of the championship.
“All my life, I’ve had doubters,” Holyfield said. “I don’t start something I can’t finish. … Eventually, I will be heavyweight champ of the world. Then, what are they going to say?”

He’s encouraged by his performance against Valuev, the tallest (7-foot-2) champion in boxing history. The two judges gave Valuev a narrow victory, while the referee scored it a draw. Many at ringside felt Holyfield deserved the decision and WBA belt.

“He had the reach and the strength and the size, all that. And I still hit him more times than he hit me. How did I not win?” Holyfield asked. “I’ve got to fight a little harder next time. I fought hard and thought I fought hard enough to win, but obviously (the judges) didn’t.
“I probably wasn’t old enough,” he jokingly added. “This time, I’ll be a little older.”

Link to article here.

No information about this garden. Perhaps a children’s hospital. (Mike)