Category — Urban Farm

Photo by Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Urban farming: A growing field

By V.L. Hendrickson
am New York
March 7, 2010

The Queens County Farm Museum’s history dates back to 1697; it occupies New York City’s largest remaining tract of undisturbed farmland and is the only working historical farm in the City. The farm encompasses a 47-acre parcel that is the longest continuously farmed site in New York State. The site includes historic farm buildings, a greenhouse complex, livestock, farm vehicles and implements, planting fields, an orchard and herb garden.

Early morning livestock feedings and cultivating the herb garden aren’t on the daily list of duties for most New Yorkers, but for Leah Retherford, they’re business as usual. As farm manager of Queens County Farm Museum, she oversees 47-acres.

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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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By Aaron Newton
Powering Down
March 11, 2010

Excerpt:

Today we’re designing an urban farm. This one will become real if we can get the funding necessary to start the program. The specific location of the farm will have to remain a secret for now but it’s in Charlotte, NC near uptown. Todd Serdula did most of the excellent graphic work on this proposal.

To start with we break down the design considerations into 4 categories.

Physical Components
Programing Elements
Transition and Construction
Marketing and Distribution

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A Cabbage Patch for City Hall. Last year, Baltimore City Hall replaced its traditional flower gardens with vegetable beds to help serve a local soup kitchen. But not all went as planned. Anne Marie Chaker reports on lessons learned and plans for this year’s crop.

Attack of the Rotten Tomatoes

By Anne Marie Chaker
Wall Street Journal
March 10, 2010

Excerpt:

The city of Baltimore replaced its flower beds in front of city hall with vegetables last year. The goal, says designer Angela Treadwell-Palmer, was to show that vegetable gardens could be attractive and to grow harvests to donate to a local soup kitchen. But the local charity reported that some crops—particularly beets, kohlrabi and eggplant—weren’t appetizing to people.

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Goats from City Grazing trimmed the hillside behind Alemany Farm. Photo by Brian L. Frank

Fewer Farms to Feed ‘Local’ Appetite

By Justin Sheck
Wall Street Journal
San Francisco Bay Area
March 11, 2010

Pocket-size farms have sprung up in cities around the Bay Area in recent years, part of a movement to bring consumers closer to the sources of food they buy.

But even as these small farms show up in urban neighborhoods, bringing with them a sense of a local agricultural revival, the continuing decline in the availability of farmland in the Bay Area’s traditional growing areas threatens to leave consumers further away than ever from where their food is cultivated.

In recent years, the region has lost large tracts of farmland to housing and commercial development.

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Roberta’s already grows about 20 percent of its needs, in a good week, in a small roof garden in back of the restaurant and in a backyard garden several blocks away.

Michelle Knapik
Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation Blog
March 10, 2010

Excerpt:

Once inside the unassuming entrance of Roberta’s, if you can cast your gaze past the wood fired stove and pizza gurus, let your olfactory senses take in something beyond the sweet aroma of ricotta pancakes sopping up maple syrup, and put down your mason jar of local beer, you will see, hear and experience the backyard urban oasis – a farming oasis that is. But don’t look out, look up. There is where you will find the first of the rooftop greenhouses.

The hoop greenhouse is built on top of a shipping container that is fitted out as a radio station. The semi vacant lot next door is also being transformed into greenhouse space that will tie into a fledgling compost operation. Look closely as the construction of this greenhouse and you will find yourself peering into salvaged factory windows.

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GH_Peek in Progress from The Greenhorns on Vimeo.
13 minute trailer.

The Greenhorns

With help from Patrick Kiley.

“The Greenhorns” is a documentary film that explores the lives of America’s young farming community — its spirit, practices, and needs. It is the filmmakers’s hope that by broadcasting the stories and voices of these young farmers, we can build the case for those considering a career in agriculture — to embolden them, to entice them, and to recruit them into farming.

The film will be completed by June, with a release campaign across the country later this year and into 2011. A quarter to a third of the farmers in the film operate in an urban setting. Examples: Louella Hill (the Baltimore cheese maker) and Brooke Budner (San Francisco gardener) and Allemany Farm in California.

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Photo by Don Kohlbauer. See complete series of beautiful photos – and audio here.

Meet the pioneers planting crops in the shadow of downtown skyscrapers

By Erin Glass,
San Diego News Network
March 18, 2009

About a year ago, Karon Klipple, a mathematics professor at San Diego City College, took a long, hard look at the campus lawn.

With all the talk about global warming, the benefits of eating local and organic food, not to mention San Diego’s drought worries, it seemed the land and resources might be put to better use. So Klipple, who is chair of City College’s Environmental Stewardship Committee, founded Seeds at City, a thriving sub-acre farm smack dab on the downtown campus.

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Farm interns share stories of dirt, bugs, and trips to Starbucks.

By Carrie Golus
Photography by Dan Dry
The Core, College Magazine of the University of Chicago
Winter 2010

To her family in North Carolina, “a farm in a city doesn’t make any sense,” says third-year Emily Howe. “Even my friends here don’t understand. They think I work indoors or on a rooftop.”

“I’ve worked on a big pumpkin farm before,” says fourth-year Elspeth McGarvey, who grew up in Arcola, Illinois, population 2,700. “The weirdest part for me isn’t the dirt, or the grossness. It’s being right next to Western Avenue.”

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Founded in early 2009, The Grow Local Colorado Campaign is a project of representatives from the Living Earth Center, Transition Denver, The Mile High Business Alliance and Denver Botanic Gardens.

Grow Local Colorado is currently focusing on these primary projects.

Local Parks Edible Gardens Project

Local Garden Registration

Garden Space Exchange

Grow Local Colorado Events

Visit their website here.

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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Robbie McClam and his wife Sue show off seedlings in the City Roots greenhouse.

Urban Entrants Changing Face of Agriculture

By Eve Moore
Columbia’s Free Times
02/01/2010

Excerpt:

Robbie McClam of City Roots is also a man of many trades. An architect and builder, McClam once headed the Columbia Development Corporation. Now he’s turned his attention to farming.

All the municipal government and planning experience has come in handy. When he wanted to start City Roots, he discovered the city’s industrial zoning classification didn’t allow farms, so he worked with the city’s planning department and City Council to change the zoning ordinance. Future urban farmers of Columbia: Thank Robbie McClam.

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By ProjectHDesign

To be published April 2010

by Manny Howard
Scribner (April 27 2010)

“With My Empire of Dirt, Manny Howard has created a new job category, gonzo agriculturalist. The squeamish and the vegan-hearted shall enter at their own risk, for this is no gentle Farmer’s Almanac. It’s more like war reportage—on one side, angry rabbits, crazed chickens, and a patch of backyard clay so dry it makes concrete seem loamy; on the other, a Brooklyn-raised City Boy, who won’t take crop failure for an answer. Howard takes living off the land to an urban extreme that will make people think even harder about where their food comes from. Ultimately, though, as tornadoes come and fig trees nearly go, he discovers a marriage that needs tending to, proving that when it comes to love, at least, you shall definitely reap what you sow.”
—Robert Sullivan, author of Rats and Cross Country

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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.

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Farming on Film: Mitra Sticklen documents life on the urban farm

Film by Mitra Sticklen and Christine Nielsen
Article Written by: Robin Peterson
Chicago Weekly, June 4, 2009

“It’s not hard to make this stuff look good,” says filmmaker Mitra Sticklen, pausing in between shots of the bright green kale and collards on display on a stand at the 61st Street Farmers Market. “It’s beautiful stuff—beautiful footage.” The stand belongs to Windy City Harvest, an urban agriculture job training program of the Chicago Botanic Garden and West Side Technical Institute, whose participants Sticklen has been filming since last fall. With the working title “Growing Change,” the film was originally meant to be a ten-minute short documenting one season of the program.

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Tara Kolla examines a seedling container, amid other vegetable seedlings that will be planted this spring in the garden at her home in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake district Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010. Like many eco-minded gardeners, Kolla planted seeds, only to find that her garden violated local zoning laws and alienated her neighbors. – AP Photo

Urban farmers fight nationwide to sow green biz

By Raquel Maria Dillon
Feb 5, 2010
Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES – Tara Kolla fancied herself a green thumb-turned-green businesswoman when she planted an organic flower plot in her yard and sold poppies, sweet peas and zinnias at the local farmers market. For her neighbors, it was an eyesore.

Where Kolla saw her efforts as creating a lush sanctuary, her neighbors witnessed dusty pots, steaming compost, flies and a funky aroma on their tiny cul-de-sac in Los Angeles. They complained to zoning officials — and prevailed.

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Photo by Chris Martin

Hayes Valley Farm – San Francisco

Our Vision

Hayes Valley Farm (HVF) is an education and research project with a focus on urban agriculture. Situated on the city-owned lots bordered by Oak, Fell, Laguna, and Octavia streets, the project is organized by an alliance of urban farmers, educators, and designers that comprise the HVF Project Team. HVF is a Parks Partner, a fiscally sponsored project of the San Francisco Parks Trust.

The project is founded on an interim use agreement between Hayes Valley Farm and the City’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development- a two to five year time frame – until which time the City moves forward with other development plans for the site.

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Grow food, health, jobs and justice at an Urban Farm in S Central LA. Community Services Unlimited Inc. (CSU)

Overview

The Community Food Village Urban Farm project will transform an under utilized 1 acre garden into a highly productive urban farm that will supply S Central LA with fresh, local, organic produce. The farm will grow more than just food. It will employ local youth who will learn job, life, and entrepreneurial skills while helping to grow and market produce in the neighborhood. It will empower residents to eat healthy and to participate in transforming their community into a healthy and beautiful place to live.

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Larger image here.

Farmscape woven into the Urban Fabric

By Trevor Boyle and Justin Fong
Email: boyletrevor@yahoo.com

“The site was directly across from a park that during WWII was used for victory gardens, and so that idea was brought into it as well. The elevated ‘walkway’ is used as a growing surface, translating the urban stacked density into a farming notion, instead of the sprawling countryside that’s usually seen.

“Southern facing walls on the buildings are also plant walls on the exterior, with a modular steel frame. The actual fruit/vegetable growing floor space is only around 30% of the total for the building; it’s more about introducing the idea back into mainstream daily life. The square footage is enough to be able to feed 200 people throughout a year, so it’s more about growing for the community around the site than being able to mass produce and feed the whole city, though that would be possible with another iteration.

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