Category — City Farmer

A lengthly interview with two of City Farmer’s founders by Richard Whittaker, publisher of “Works and Conversation” magazine.

Bob Woodsworth:  “I did my Master’s in environmental economics in 1970. Dan Phelps, a physicist, and I did this huge study of energy movement through the city and nobody was doing an energy analysis of everything. Is it worthwhile getting into your car and recycling your glass bottles at a depot that’s ten miles away? Is that energy efficient? So energy was really foremost in my mind. I just thought food was an obvious example. If you could grow it, and recompost it, it would undercut a massive amount of energy transport. So it was an obvious one to study.”

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Seven years ago Sharon, Head Gardener, brought a small Wasabi plant at a local nursery and tucked it away in a back corner of our City Farmer Demonstration Garden. This spring I noticed how beautiful its leaves looked and thought - wouldn’t it be great if this was more than just a decorative plant. But is it anything like the Wasabi we eat with our sushi at Japanese restaurants?

Maria takes the taste test. Watch the video above.

Learn more about Wasabi here.

Photo by Ian Lindsay. City Farmer’s instructor Lauren Welch in centre. Alexander Dallin and Maren Gilbert Stewart are the students.

[Since 1990, City Farmer and the City of Vancouver have held worm composting workshops for City of Vancouver residents who live in apartments. For $25 participants get a worm bin, 500 worms, Mary Appelhof's book "Worms Eat My Garbage", a trowel, bedding and a one-hour class. City Farmer also holds classes for school kids who come with their class.]

“Decay: It’s bad enough you need to compost organic waste; now you need to have worms eat it for you.”

Article by Denise Ryan
Vancouver Sun June 14, 2008

Since our cat, Gordito, died last year, and hard on the heels of the end of our morbidly bloated gerbil population, my son has been lobbying hard for a pet. Preferably a dog. It doesn’t need to be a big dog, Alexander says. A terrier, a wiener dog, even a chihuahua would do.

When I announce that as part of greening our home we are going to get some pets — 500 of them — he is pretty excited.

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Video: Lina speaks about her school’s food garden. She’s in Grade 5.

What a great thrill to revisit the school garden we (City Farmer) helped create back in 1986 in the West End of Vancouver. Twenty-two years later and the excitement is still present. Young children pick and wash lettuce, radishes and onions, cut them up carefully into small pieces before placing the vegetables in a large salad bowl. Their teacher mixes the spring harvest with dressing and serves the enthusiastic children who come back for seconds. When does that happen at home?

For a city farmer like me, this is “headline” news - kids growing and eating their food amongst the high-rises of inner city Vancouver where they live - parents watching, sometimes taking a nibble themselves, happy to see their children so focused.

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Photo of her deck garden by Sharon Slack.

Article by Isabelle Groc
“Granville Magazine” June 2008

“Mark Bomford, program coordinator of the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at UBC, has quantified the capacity of urban agriculture to feed Vancouver residents. While the city contains about 11,500 hectares of land, the total arable land is estimated to be about 4,400 hectares. However only 81 hectares of public land have urban agriculture capability, according to a 2006 inventory. On the other hand, using a “bio-intensive” method which claims high yields in a small scale, the amount of land required to sustain the population of Vancouver with a nutritionally complete vegan diet for one year would be close to 29,000 hectares.”

See complete article here.

Article in the Globe and Mail
by Anne Roberts
November 29, 1979

“In an attempt to recreate that heyday of urban gardening (Victory Garden Era), a small group of practitioners decided to publish a monthly tabloid called City Farmer to propagate information on intensive cultivation methods that can triple the size of the harvest, winter gardening to extend the growing season, and keeping bees, chickens and rabbits to supply a wider variety of nutrients.”

See complete Globe and Mail article here.

Article in The Tyee by James Glave
Published: May 5, 2008

“There is definitely a buzz and an interest,” observes City Farmer’s Michael Levenston. “We are busy seven days a week; our classes are full, our phone is ringing. There is certainly a great interest generated in city farming and urban agriculture.”

“Someone here said, ‘This is trendy,’ and trendy can be a good thing,” adds Levenston. “There may be a new generation of food gardeners, and I think that’s very exciting.”

Salt Spring Seeds owner Dan Jason is equally stoked to be riding the home-grown wave. Jason has completely sold out his stock of “Zero Mile Diet” seed kits — a collection of bean, grain, and other seeds tailored to help this region’s people grow most of their own food. “Enormous changes are afoot,” he says.

Read the article in The Tyee here.

Preet is our Punjabi host.

Hong speaks Mandarin

And Patrick, Cantonese, in these scripted videos.

Many Vancouver residents want to compost but cannot speak English, so we’ve made three instructional videos, which are available on the Web.

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Peace and urban agriculture - from the City Farmer nomination letter:

· They cultivate calmness and tranquility at their location and within their programming – as much as they cultivate vegetables, herbs and fruits.

· They train people in how to do urban agriculture, with the idea of promoting economic and environmental sustainability – important aspects of peace-building.

· They educate about food security – a potential source of tension internationally.

· In addition to supporting urban agriculture, they advocate for the importance of a sound rural agricultural base, which is vital to good development.

· Inclusiveness is an important part of their philosophy – they are committed to working with a diverse group of people, whether economically, ethnoculturally, socially or in terms of physical or mental challenges.

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Article about City Farmer by Leslie Gillett.

Vancouver’s City Farmer has been dishing up dirt for 30 years now, first through a newsletter and workshops, now through classes and its extensive website.

The dirt - as befits a society formed to encourage urban agriculture - is often about just that, things of the earth and compost and worms.

In fact some of long-time environmentalist and City Farmer executive director Michael Levenston’s favourite repeat questions are about composting with worms. “What do I do? I think my worms are escaping from my bin?” was a recent query - setting up wonderful mental images of dozens of red wigglers making a run for it with little flashlights and very small backpacks.

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