Category — History

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“When a farmer within the city limits is making $30,000 yearly out of potatoes alone, it is time to think of vacant lots in connection with the cost of living”

The New York Tribune Magazine
Jan. 14, 1917

Excerpt:

In the three metropolitan boroughs of New York – Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn – Brooklyn alone has vacant land suitable for farming and gardening purposes. The Brooklyn land has been used for hundreds of years or more by farmers, beginning with the old Dutch landsmen, and the soil has been made productive by constant fertilization. In Manhattan there are practically no vacant lots. The vacant lots in the Bronx are fast disappearing and what remain are rocky and unproductive. In Queens there are acres and acres of vacant land, but Queens to all intents and purposes is still a rural district. Brooklyn, therefore, is the only part of the metropolitan section of New York City that contains farmlands and truck gardens.

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And a few facts and figures to show what an average Washington family can save by doing so

The Washington Times
April 29, 1906,
Magazine Section

Excepts:

That the best things of life are to be gathered from simple sources was never more truthfully shown than In the transformation of an unsightly debris strewn back yard into a thriving profit-bearing vegetable garden. How this evolution can be brought about, what is its beginning and its probable outcome with relation to both the cost entailed and the benefits to be derived are questions which enter the mind every spring and summer when the problem of supplying the table with fresh green vegetables becomes of household importance.

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A transformed piece of city land, the Demonstration Food Garden.

Red Celery In the Sunshine – An Urban Eden: transforming hopeless backyard hardpan into a lush organic plot

A story about City Farmer’s Demonstration Food Garden
Article and photography by Michael Levenston
Originally published in Harrowsmith Magazine
April/May 1984 Number 54

It is little more than a stone’s throw from downtown, a means of measure quite appropriate for the volunteers digging, weeding and discarding rocks from the painstakingly created soil that covers the sunny backyard of the Vancouver Energy Information Centre. Here, beautifully illustrated signs identify plants and techniques for gardeners who pass by a cold frame, a large solar greenhouse, a three-bin composting system and 30 raised beds filled with healthy vegetables. Occasionally, a train clangs by almost close enough to touch, overwhelming all the other city sounds and reminding the gardeners that not long ago, this little chunk of Eden was not much better suited to growing food than the railway siding next to it.

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City Farmer Society from 1978-2003

By Michael Levenston
City Farmer – 2003

In 1978, a group of young environmentalists working at the Vancouver Energy Conservation Center stumbled across a book called The City People’s Book of Raising Food by William and Helga Olkowski. It described in everyday language how the authors grew all their own food right in the middle of the city of Berkeley. This inspiring book led us on an exploration of urban food production, which continues today, twenty-five years later.

Working at an energy center, the first thing that struck us was the amount of fossil fuel used to transport food from far away farms to our supermarkets. We quickly realized that there were real savings for people who grew food at home. Such a simple act struck us as revolutionary, especially when we saw that there were other environmental and social problems that could be addressed as well. The urban farmer became our new-found hero!

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Britton Abbot’s cottage garden near the town of Tadcaster, England, a productive quarter of an acre

Excerpts from An account of a cottage and garden near Tadcaster, by Thomas Bernard, 1797

The land required for each cottage and garden, need not be more than a rood (quarter acre); the value of which would bear no possible comparison to that of the industry to be employed upon it. The quarter of an acre that Britton Abbot inclosed, was not worth a shilling a year. It now contains a good house and a garden, abounding in fruit, vegetables, and almost everything that constitutes the wealth of the cottager. In such inclosures, the benefits to the country, and to the individuals of the parish, would far surpass and petty sacrifice of land to be required. “Five unsightly unprofitable acres of waste ground would afford habitation and comfort to twenty such families as Britton Abbot’s.”

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Written by the public and gathered by the BBC

A selection of letters:

Edinburgh allotments
By Elizabeth Gray

At the beginning of the war I was registered as a botanist at Edinburgh Botanic Gardens.

I was enlisted as a gardens allotment volunteer and would go round advising people how to grow food. The same thing happened in the 1914-18 war. Ground was dug up and made into allotments at Blackford hill and Inverleith Park and round about the Meadows in the heart of Edinburgh.

Most folk in Edinburgh weren’t gardeners and we showed them what to do. There was a limited number of seeds and plants and I used to take some seed from my own garden to give to people.

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By Twigs Way
Shire
2008

The humble allotment has a surprisingly turbulent history. Initially the right to an allotment was proposed as a charitable means by which the poor could grow their own food and stave off starvation, but it quickly entered political and social debate. During the World Wars the allotment became the focal point on the home front, as families took part in the Dig for Victory campaigns. The post-war years saw a decline in the popularity of the allotment as the supermarket took over from home-grown produce. Successive governments condemned allotments in favour of new housing.

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Photo of Bill in his backyard in Acton St, Berkeley, California around 1975. In March 1975 the Olkowskis published “The City People’s Book of Raising Food”.

And we’ve just heard from Bill and Helga Olkowski!

From Bill’s email:

You may remember us as the authors of the “City Peoples Book of Raising Food” back in the 1970′s.  We gave a talk in Seattle for the Pea Patch Group then encouraging people to set up community and backyard gardens.  I remember this talk as one of the high points of our life because it went like this:

We were giving a rousing talk about how important urban agriculture is and could be for the following reasons:

1) it can save money,
2) it can save gasoline normally spent going to the market and traveling for fun,
3) it produces clean food without pesticides,
4) it’s good for the ecosystem since it uses compost from food wastes, and
5) it reduces the amounts of waste vegetable matter thus saving space in dumps.

At the end we asked for questions and the great question arose: “Who is going to do all this?”

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“The main difficulty in our American mode of life now is that we are tending to obliterate the distinction between work and play, by crowding work into hours which ought to be devoted to perfect relaxation of mind and body.”

Scientific American Magazine
April 6, 1878

Excerpt:

As a rule school hours are intelligently adjusted with a view of taxing the young brain to a safe limit; and to put any more upon it, by compelling children, voluntarily or involuntarily, to absorb more knowledge of the kind which should be, if it is not, taught in school, and this during their play hours, is simply continuing work. Besides play that is of any value as play has its very essence freedom.

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Sweden, which is the the home of garden schools, takes the lead and has 2,000 of them.

Scientific American Magazine
Oct 27, 1900
Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in America, began life on August 28, 1845.

From a Department of State pamphlet:

In France school farms increased rapidly, and in 1852 there were seventy, the number allowed by law.

The following are some of the advantages of the system: The children obtain an intimate knowledge and intercourse with nature, they learn about the cultivation of fruits and vegetables. It educates boys beyond the tendency to pilfer fruits and flowers in orchards, and instills in children a fondness of rural life.

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There were many poultry magazines 100 years ago, perhaps as common as our computer magazines today. They were full of photos, stories and ads for a large audience. The North American population was closer to its rural roots then. But even during the First World War, people looked back to a time when they were more involved in agriculture. Mike

From the Editorial
Everybodys Poultry Magazine
September 1917

“… to increase the production of poultry and eggs, to increase the general interest and especially to, in some way, bring back the thousands upon thousands of small and backyard breeders who flourished years ago, who kept high grade standard-bred stock, and were in part at least, producers as well as consumers.”

“There are great questions requiring consideration and united action, but this one of the backyard breeder in city and village alike is foremost of all.

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Title: Cliffside Arbutus Tree. “He painted for over 50 years, totally unrecognized, every week, every month, every year.” See more of Donald Flather’s work here.

Flash from the past – 1979 article in City Farmer Newspaper

By Kerry Banks
City Farmer Newspaper
Vol 2 No. 1, October, 1979
(City Farmer began in 1978 by publishing a newspaper. Kerry is a founding member of City Farmer. He is an award-winning freelance writer and journalist. See bio further on.)

(1979) – Dr. Donald Flather and his wife Grace have one of the more unique vegetable gardens in Vancouver. It’s the last remaining ‘victory garden’ from the city’s World War Two home food production effort.

Beginning back in the early forties, the Government of Canada made a concentrated effort to get city and town folk involved in growing their own food. Large advertisements were placed in the daily newspapers.

“Plant a wartime garden,” they urged. “Home production of vegetables is needed now more than any time during the war. Help by growing the vegetables your family needs.”

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George Washington Carver designed a mobile classroom to take education out to farmers. He called it a “Jesup wagon” after the New York financier and philanthropist Morris Ketchum Jesup, who provided funding to support the program. See more information here.

Today is the day to return as the dressers and keepers of the garden

By Uriah Yisrael
Truly Living Well Urban Harvest
Oct 4, 2011

Excerpt:

In 2008, I was directly affected by the Recession. For months I survived off of severance pay, and unemployment benefits, the months became years and all hope and money seemed to fade. I then remembered a sharecroppers words “everyone needs something to eat”. This sharecropper escaped the Jim Crow south and moved to the city of Boston, Massachusetts, where he continued to grow his beloved crops in a vacant lot next to his home. With no fanfare, grant money, or nonprofit status and while working 3 jobs with a family of 6 to feed he nurtured a trash filled plot into the envy of the neighborhood.

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Small portion of 17th Century Pictorial Map of Galway. See full map image here.

Shantalla scheme will make up to 30 garden plots available

By Dara Bradley
The Connacht Sentinel
September 13, 2011

Excerpts:

Plans for city garden allotments are beginning to bear fruit.

For years garden allotments were an aspiration for Galway City Council but at last concrete proposals have emerged that could see between 25 and 30 plots available for public use later this year.

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Antique Map Of Barth By Braun and Hogenberg. From: Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Part 5. Köln, 1598. See a larger image here.

Town and country, rich in agriculture

Commentary By Braun: “Barth has a large market at which one can buy all the necessities of daily life at a fair price, thanks to its fertile land and its favourable location by the sea. For since there are fertile soils not only all around the city but in the whole duchy, it has an abundance of salt water and other fish, game, cattle, grain, butter, honey, wax and other such things. The wealth of the citizens comes from livestock farming and from trade, which they conduct very profitably with the kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and other distant lands far across the ocean. They brew a tasty beer, which they also trade in.”

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Thomas Jefferson’s vegetable garden at his home of Monticello. Photo: Monticello/Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

Gardening as politics: Digging the Founding Gardeners

America’s Founding Fathers knew the importance of gardening and the environment. Today’s efforts — urban farming, composting, even drought-tolerant yards — echo their ideals.

By Andrea Wulf
LA Times
May 29, 2011
Andrea Wulf’s book “Founding Gardeners — The Revolutionary Generation, Nature and the Shaping of the American Nation” is published by Knopf.
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Excerpt:

Most people today, however, don’t regard gardening as an overtly political act, as it was for the Founding Fathers. But it can empower people and local communities. The rise of urban farming and gardening across the country in the past decade and the increasing interest in local produce is one example — it gives Americans control over their food and its production, which for the most part is in the hands of industry and huge conglomerates.

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Over a period of four months, beginning in January 1797, she describes a “productive garden filled with vegetables and fruit trees.”

Wyck Historic House and Gardens in Philadelphia

By Meghan Gelardi Holmes
Rutgers University
May 26, 2011

Excerpts:

This season marks the fifth year of an urban farming experiment at Wyck Historic House and Gardens. The 18th-century homestead, located in the heart of upper Germantown in Philadelphia, has been a museum since the early 1970s. With the help of an extensive collection of artifacts and documents, the house relates three hundred years of history – the daily trials and tribulations of one family of Philadelphia Quakers. Except it hasn’t always been clear who’s listening.

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Edward Henry Potthast (1857 – 1927) was an American Impressionist painter.

He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. From June 10, 1879 to March 9, 1881 he studied with Thomas Satterwhite Noble. He later studied at the Royal Academy in Munich with the American-born instructor Carl Marr.

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Brother Nature in North Corktown. Photo by Marvin Shaouni.

Detroit’s food system seems to get richer and more complex everyday.

Patrick Crouch
Model D Media
Apr. 26, 2011

Excerpt:

Detroit’s current vibrant urban agriculture movement attracts people to this work for multiple reasons.

For some it’s the political act of increased food sovereignty for peoples in the city of Detroit, exhibited by groups like Feedom Freedom, the Detroit Black Food Community Security Network, and the Capuchin Soup Kitchen’s Earthworks Urban Farm.

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“I believe it’s impossible to understand the making of America without looking at the founding fathers as farmers and gardeners.”

Interview with the author by Amy
Garden Rant
April 9, 2011

Excerpt:

It was in Bartram’s letters that I first realized a remarkable connection to the founding fathers, for he was a good friend of Benjamin Franklin. As I read on through letters, diaries and other manuscripts, I came across a visit of the delegates of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 to Bartram’s garden and an invoice to George Washington, who had ordered hundreds of trees and shrubs for his garden at Mount Vernon, as well as accounts that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson had visited. As I read on, I realized that America s first four presidents – Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison – had used nature, though in different ways, in their fight for America.

AMY: It’s amazing to think that they had time for gardening or even farming. I mean, there was a revolution going on!

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