Category — Urban Farm

Sisha Ortúzar on NYC’s Most Urban Farm.

The Riverpark Farm, created under the direction of Chef/Partner Sisha Ortúzar, is already supplying fresh produce to the adjacent Riverpark restaurant, making innovative use of one of New York City’s 600+ stalled construction sites

Press Release:
New York, August 3, 2011 – The Riverpark restaurant and the Alexandria CenterTM for Life Science – New York City today announced the creation of New York City’s most urban farm, the 15,000 square foot Riverpark Farm at Alexandria Center. The Farm’s large scale, direct connection to the restaurant, highly urban location, and operation within one of the city’s 600+ stalled construction sites distinguish it from all other urban farms in New York. The Farm is a landmark example of the temporary alternative use of a stalled site to stimulate local interest and economic activity, benefit the environment, beautify an area, and engage the community.

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Image via The Wall Street Journal.

Herbs and vegetables common in Latin America, such as yerba buena (“good herb”), cilantro and tomatillos, grew alongside Italian staples like basil and tomatoes next to African-American classics like collard greens.

By Sophia Hollander
Wall Street Journal
Aug 1, 2011

Excerpt:

The 2.5-acre plot is actually a working farm in the heart of the Bronx called La Finca del Sur, yielding 30 pounds of produce a week at peak harvest. Wedged between Metro North tracks, the Major Deegan and the Grand Concourse, it is the largest of a growing network of farms across the Bronx that health and government officials say will soon rival Brooklyn and Manhattan’s more celebrated web of local food producers.

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New Roots sign. Photo by by MadPainter.

Whereas community gardens are more about feeding individuals or families, urban farms feed the larger community.

By Madalyn Painter
St. Louis Public Radio
July 30, 2011

Excerpt:

The next stop was a visit to the first urban farm in St. Louis, New Roots Urban Farm, a farming collective located in the St. Louis Place neighborhood north of downtown St. Louis.

At the corner of Sarah Street and Martin Luther King Drive we found the Bee Sweet Urban Orchard, the site of several half-century-old fruit trees and now the home to 48 fruit trees and a vegetable garden. The site serves as a component of Mark Twain Community Resource Center’s Hip-Hop Health program for kids.

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GrowHaus – An interactive urban farm and marketplace

CBS4 Denver
July 29, 2011

From the farm website:

Our growing operations are separated into two spaces: the Hydrofarm is a commercial facility designed to maximize yield for our neighbors and generate earned income, while Growasis is a demonstration farm for education and food security.

Growasis

Growasis is our hands-on demonstration farm where we host year-round public workshops, service learning events, and community programming. Growasis currently consists of 1,000 square feet in a corner of our greenhouse, where we have been able to perform basic renovations. It contains the following elements:

Two aquaponics systems, where we raise fish and plants together in a recirculating high-yield setup

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An Urban Farm is more about the compilation of these various elements than a large space dedicated to growing food.

Written By Jay Rosenberg
Hayes Valley Farm
14 June 2011

Excerpt:

For a brief period of time, we have been granted the opportunity to research, educate and demonstrate what an Urban Farm could be. Recently, as the city has come to an agreement to sell a portion of the farm for development, we have been engaged in a series of meetings at City Hall to scout locations for future farms.

At the same time, the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance realized a tremendous success when Mayor Ed Lee signed the “Salad Bill,” further advancing the city’s priority on urban agriculture. This has been a very exciting time!

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City Farm Spreads the Urban Farming Gospel

Photos and text by Frank Carini
ecoRI News staff
July 3, 2011

Excerpt:

PROVIDENCE — There’s an urban farming revolution underway in Rhode Island, and City Farm deserves much of the credit.

The three-quarter of an acre farm in the heart of South Providence has served as an outdoor classroom for three decades. Kids, college students and inspired backyard gardeners have visited this urban oasis for a food-growing education. Its bounty and beauty — cultivated for the past nine years by Rich Pederson — has inspired apprentices, interns and volunteers to grow fruits and vegetables in vacant lots, on porches and in backyards.

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We have ten sites, over a half-acre of land (distributed around the city), and over a hundred volunteers!

The Urban Farm Collective began in 2009, educating, growing and sharing food in inner NE Portland, Oregon and exchanging produce exclusively via a barter system. The first year we grew on just one lot; by the next year we’d grown to four sites.

This year, we have been accepted as a project of Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust and have the opportunity to take on five new plots, bringing our total garden space up to more than 1/2 acre.

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Esperanza Pallana raises chickens and bees and grows seasonal plants at her 5,000-square-foot Oakland property. Photo by Russell Yip / The Chronicle.

“Even just in the last year, I think there have been a lot more people who are venturing to convert their space more intensively to grow food and keep animals.”

By Lauren Reed-Guy,
San Francisco Chronicle
June 12, 2011

Excerpt:

In 2008, Ruby Blume founded the Institute of Urban Homesteading, which offers classes in everything from beekeeping to cheese making to herbal medicine taught by local experts.

Next Sunday, the institute will offer tours of five backyard farms of varying sizes to demonstrate various sides of urban sustainability and show people how they can use the land they have, said Blume, co-author of “Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living” (Skyhorse Publishing), written with Rachel Kaplan and released earlier this year.

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Our 1/2 acre garden provides fresh vegetables, fruits and herbs to our household of twelve as well as the households of our friends and neighbors.

By Natasha Shapiro and Niambi McDonald
Philadelphia Neighbours
June 7, 2011

Excerpt:

Only a few years ago, 215 E. Penn St. was an abandoned lot, overrun by 15-foot bushes and weeds. Now it’s a half-acre farm in the city.

The Germantown Kitchen Garden practices local agriculture, supplying fresh fruit, vegetables and herbs to the Germantown community.

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“Essentially urban farming right now is illegal,” he says. “There’s no business license designation for it in the city and you can’t sell anything or deliver a service without having a business license.”

By Luke Brocki
The Dependent
June 6, 2011

Excerpt:

But today’s farmers and their allies don’t want to wait that long and are pushing for more leadership from City Hall. Among them is Arzeena Hamir, agronomist, co-ordinator of the Richmond Food Security Society and long a thorn in the side of local government officials and land use authorities.

“It is still not legal for you to grow and sell your products within Vancouver city limits. A backyard farm, or an empty lot farm, is not zoned for that in Vancouver. You can grow food for yourself, but as soon as you start brining in an economic component into it, you’re in that grey area. The climate at city hall is such right now that I think staff has been told to look the other way, which is great, because you won’t see anyone being prosecuted for farming. Unless someone complains.”

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“His resolve to become more self-sustainable has grown since he first began farming.”

By Autumn Thatcher
In This Week
2011-06-01

Excerpt:

In a neighborhood in downtown Salt Lake, there is a two-bedroom house surrounded by a chain-link fence. Across from the fence, in the area nearest the street, you will notice a carefully tilled and cared-for vegetable garden. Behind the fence, on any given day, you may encounter a fuzzy-footed chicken walking through the yard, a white duck quacking by, or even more entertaining, a beautiful Nigerian Dwarf goat jumping around and reaching up to eat leaves from the trees that grow in the yard.

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Curtis Stone SHAW TV interview, May 24th 2011.

“In any other system of agriculture, profits are totally diluted through all the machinery, mortgage and lease payments that you have, plus all your transportation costs.”

By Adrian Nieoczym
Globe and Mail
May. 26, 2011

Excerpt:

Kelowna, BC. Mr. Stone describes himself as a “pedal-powered urban farmer.” Now in his second year, he works three-quarters of an acre spread between six plots located in other people’s backyards. “With the land that I’m running now, I could feed about 120 families,” he said.

A former musician who had not even gardened before starting his business, Mr. Stone is quickly emerging as a leader in the growing urban agriculture movement known as SPIN (small-plot intensive) farming. This past winter, he delivered paid workshops in California and B.C., sharing his techniques with other would-be urban farmers. He recently accepted a gig to do the same next year in India.

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Fox 2′s Urban Farming Garden in Detroit

WJBK FOX 2
Detroit, MI
May. 22, 2011

Spring has sprung in the Fox 2 garden! The folks with Urban Farming came out this week to work on what will soon be a mini-farm with crops right outside our studio.

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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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Camilla Hammer, left, and Alexanna Ashley-Roth till the earth at their first planned farm in Lower Manhattan. Photo by Librado Romero/The New York Times.

A Farm Grows in the Battery – only one acre in size

By James Barron
New York Times
April 10, 2011

Exceprt:

The idea for an urban farm there originated with the environmental club at Millennium High School on Broad Street, a short walk from the park. The Battery Conservancy says that 650 students from 8 schools have now signed up to farm, and it is expanding the program to include community groups, Lower Manhattan residents, even people who just work there and want to do some digging, planting and nurturing.

The planting officially begins on Monday, when the the students will plant enough vegetables to fill the produce section at a corner deli.

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The Marathon Farm in North Philadelphia’s Brewerytown neighborhood will both ship food to the six Marathon restaurants throughout the city and sell produce to local residents. Photo by Dan Nessenson.

Urban farms surge around Philadelphia

By Hayley Brooks
The Daily Pennsylvanian
April 13, 2011

Excerpt:

Marathon Restaurants — a Philadelphia chain with six locations, including 200 South 40th St. — recently acquired 15,750 square feet of land at the corner of Master and 27th streets. The formerly vacant urban spot in North Philadelphia’s Brewerytown neighborhood has been transformed into “Marathon Farm.”

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Urban farmer grows crops right in backyard: wthitv.com

Urban farmer grows crops right in backyard

By Matt Gregory
WTHI TV
Mar 27, 2011

Excerpt:

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) – He doesn’t own a combine or even a more than an acre, but Kevin Levesque has crops.

“This is our little backyard farm, I gotta keep enough room for the kids and the puppy dogs, “ Levesque said.

From his house right here in Terre Haute, Levesque grows enough produce to cut right into the family’s grocery bills. He calls himself an “Urban Homesteader.”

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Harry Rhodes, executive director of Growing Home Inc., tends to more than just plants at the farms. Growing Home provides transitional jobs for people who have multiple barriers to employment, such as a criminal record and housing instability. Photo by Harry Rhodes.

We farm 12 months of the year, but we harvest 10 months out of the year.

By Jennifer Wholey
Medill Reports
Feb 04, 2011

Excerpt:

Harry Rhodes, 51, came home to Wilmette in 2001 after living in Israel for 16 years, where he worked on Jewish-Arab co-existence projects. When he returned, he became the one and only staff member at Growing Home, a non-profit organization started in the early ‘90s to provide job training for the homeless using urban agriculture as a teaching tool.

Now as executive director, Rhodes is at the forefront of the urban agriculture and food justice movement in Chicago, where Growing Home operates three farms on the South Side with a fourth springing up later this year. The farms next season will employ 35 people who have been imprisoned or homeless, and if Growing Home’s record holds, more than 75 percent will find jobs afterward.

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Dig where you live

We are a new farm enterprise that grows lots of food in small city spaces through a network of urban farms.

We envision a small central farm located in downtown Raleigh that grows and markets food in the city. Core operations are self-sufficient, sustained by revenue from sales to Raleigh residents and restaurants. We are part of a sustainable food system that provides competitively priced fresh produce while restoring the environment.

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The Dervaes harvested 7,030 pounds of organic produce on 1/10th acre in 2010 – a record since they started keeping track 10 years ago

Excerpt from the Urban Homestead site:

These last few days, I too have been anxiously waiting the final harvest tally from Justin who’s been going through the invoice books to tally the herbs and edible flower boxes that we harvested and sold (which came to 117 lbs for the year).

On a side note, we just couldn’t figure out how to calculate the weight of 100 plus flats of wheat grass that we grew last year, so we just left them out of the final tally. Oh well.

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