Category — City Farmer

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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City Farmer head gardener, Sharon Slack, in British Columbia Magazine, “The Good Earth”, 2008 (spring issue)

” … Sharon Slack maintains an incredible garden in her Dunbar district backyard. The earth, she says, is in her bones. Around her on this warm June day – squeezed onto her residential lot – are at least 100 species of flowers, five dwarf apple trees, a pond and bog garden, a patch of half-metre-high garlic plants, rows of salad greens and beans, potted herbs, two dozen blueberry bushes, a greenhouse full of tomatoes, more than two dozen bee boxes, and two well-tended composters. There are basketball-sized cabbages growing on her carport roof.

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“It was a bit of an oxymoron,” he recalls. “If agriculture, you’re rural; if urban, you’re a modern consumer. Our outlook at City Farmer was mostly aimed at the backyard farmers who had veggie gardens. It was the non-commercial demographic and we wanted to teach them about the environment through our organization.”

“Back in 1978, urban agriculture didn’t have a place in the world as an important topic, but that has changed so dramatically. It is now a serious subject of discussion in the United Nations and development groups, in food and agriculture groups, in the World Bank and in academia.”

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Every year in March, City Farmer head gardener, Sharon Slack, teaches classes on ‘how to grow veggies at home’. Once again in 2008, our sign-up book is filling up with eager students who will get the unique experience of learning how to garden both in a warm classroom and also in our demonstration garden, ‘hands-on’.

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Thirty years ago, the headline in the first issue of ‘City Farmer’ (our newspaper) was ‘Chickens in Soup’, a story about a Vancouver woman who was in trouble with municipal authorities for keeping chickens in her back yard. Recently the subject has popped up multiple times across North America.

Just before Christmas, Canada’s ‘As it Happens’ a national radio show, interviewed an Ann Arbor, Michigan Council Member who was championing the right of city residents to keep chickens.

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Throughout the year, City Farmer welcomes visitors to our Demonstration Garden. This group from Taiwan looks up at our web cam during a tour with Maria, our garden ‘Bug Lady’. Even in January there are many things to see including kale and swiss chard, still green and ready to eat. The visitors are part of a large organization representing over 100 organic farms in Taiwan. Last week, city planning students from Korea came by.

Our web cam. You never know who will be in the picture.

First printed in 1975, this wonderful book inspired City Farmer to take action in 1978 and start our work promoting urban agriculture. The authors, Helga and William Olkowski, visited us in Vancouver in those early years and introduced Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to many people in the city. They also motivated one of our founding directors to get her Ph.D. in entomology.
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