1000 Piece DeLuxe Jigsaw Puzzle

Excerpt:

“My early years were spent in Stoke on Trent, son of a ceramic pattern and transfer maker, and nephew of a famous aeroplane designer. So, it wasn’t surprising that I went to Art College, gaining my degree in Graphic Design and Illustration, discovering all the materials and methods that were available , investigating how they worked and how other illustrators used them.

My first commercial work involved producing military illustrations for units of the British Army stationed in Germany, soon followed by a long relationship with aviation art and illustration, including book covers and other work for Arms and Armour Press, Sidgwick and Jackson, and Orion Books.

An interest in style and media techniques has led me to develop skills in oils, acrylics, gouache and watercolour – I was fortunate enough to produce early commissioned illustrations for such widely differing clients as the Licensed Victuallers Association, Trend Paints and Waddington’s jigsaws. Among other types of work at this stage, I was producing impressions of proposed developments for architectural companies.

Next came working as a freelance for Mirage Fine Art, producing historical event aviation prints, and then curiously my family background of ceramic transfer manufacture was echoed in my being offered the opportunity to paint commissioned images for the Past Times company, subjects such as sports, trains, cars, animals, historical events and famous people. These were used on such items as mugs and teapots. My aviation designs were used on collectors plates by clients such as Royal Doulton, Coalport China, and I produced the artwork for the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Britain plate , sold jointly by the RAF Museum and the Sunday Express. More recent work has included large amounts of Greeting cards featuring children, atmospheric landscape, architecture and aerial views, Book illustration (including work for the children’s market) children, adults and military, Illustrations for product labels, Commissioned Jig-saw designs, subjects including nostalgia, people, vintage transport and settings and Calendars.”

See more about the artist here.

Buy his jigsaw puzzle here.

New Monaco – a new 125-acre sustainably planned neighbourhood in the District of Peachland, British Columbia.

Community Gardens

New Monaco’s home and community program will be one of a kind and will include:

Patio farm/ greenhouse for individual homes who wish a personal experience

Community farm/ greenhouse for those who enjoy group work

Programs to advise home gardeners and offer public seminars

Community composting to minimize organic wastes and to enrich local soils

Growers awards, events and day market for fun

A diversity of local cafes and restaurants

Links to local food producers, farmers and wineries

See the company website here.

Global warming is hitting not just home, but garden. The color-coded map of planting zones often seen on the back of seed packets is being updated by the government, illustrating a hotter 21st century.

By Seth Borenstein
AP Science Writer
January 25, 2012

Excerpt:

It’s the first time since 1990 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has revised the official guide for the nation’s 80 million gardeners, and much has changed. Nearly entire states, such as Ohio, Nebraska and Texas, are in warmer zones.

The new guide, unveiled Wednesday at the National Arboretum, arrives just as many home gardeners are receiving their seed catalogs and dreaming of lush flower beds in the spring.

It reflects a new reality: The coldest day of the year isn’t as cold as it used to be, so some plants and trees can now survive farther north.

“People who grow plants are well aware of the fact that temperatures have gotten more mild throughout the year, particularly in the wintertime,” said Boston University biology professor Richard Primack. “There’s a lot of things you can grow now that you couldn’t grow before.”

He stand the giant fig tree in his suburban Boston yard stands as an example: “People don’t think of figs as a crop you can grow in the Boston area. You can do it now.”

Read the complete article here.

This was a very personal picture of John Constable’s back garden and was never sold during his lifetime.

By BBC – A History of the World

This view of Golding Constable’s kitchen garden painted by his son, John Constable, gives us a very personal insight into the internationally famous landscape artist’s own world. It was painted as a pair along with a view of the flower garden in 1815. This was a difficult year for the artist as his mother had just passed away and his father was now ill. The Suffolk home that he knew and loved was going to change. These paintings captured from the upper window of the parental home are his eye witness view of the landscape that has now become known as ‘Constable Country’.

He never sold these paintings during his lifetime. People from all over the world are familiar with the Suffolk landscape that he painted which has been reproduced on everything from tea towels to chocolate boxes.

Link to BBC.

See larger image here.

Proposed project an entry in the Mahindra Spark the Rise Project Championship.

Project Implementation Examples

The idea of School Garden was conceptualized and set up at Loyola Composite Pre-University college with the help of one organization, that funded this project. An Eco-Club was formed, comprising of 16-18 students from 8th and 9th standards, to maintain the terrace garden and this was a huge success. These students have displayed initiative and enthusiasm in maintaining the garden on their own and are very involved that they reach out with questions and related problems they face. These students have been supported by their teachers and have been able to harvest 3 kilos of greens within 30 days of starting the project. Vegetables harvested from this project have been directly diverted to their mid-day meal preparation, which is an achievement in itself. This has fostered a green community within the school today.

The second school which has its own garden is B M English School located in Hennur, Bengaluru. The high school students of the ICSE division were introduced to gardening through a workshop and ever since have played an active role in maintaining their garden and are part of the “Green Club” in school. The vegetables grown are sold to their teachers and it is observed that their knowledge of plants, seeds etc. have increased tremendously and are able to identify them with ease.

See the project proposal here.

An upcoming zone change will allow the sale of urban-grown produce.

By Aaron Dubois
MN Daily
Feb 2, 2012

Excerpt:

Proposed amendments to the City of Minneapolis’ zoning code would allow community members to turn a profit off of their market gardens and urban farms.

The changes to the code, authored by Ward 2 Councilman Cam Gordon with help from community members, will make it so individuals can sell their own produce, which was not allowed under the old code. Gordon’s proposal passed the City Planning Commission on Jan. 23.

Russ Henry supports the proposed changes. His landscaping business, Giving Tree Gardens, specializes in organic garden installation and maintenance.

“This is about a lot more than community gardening,” Henry said. “This is about opening the door for selling food in Minneapolis that was grown in Minneapolis, and that has never been allowable under city code.”

Henry said he considers Minneapolis to be progressive, but that other cities are way ahead.

“In this arena of urban farming, we are lagging behind other communities who have a similar demographic representation,” he said.

Read the complete article here.

See Growing Lots Urban Farm here.

A small but vocal group in Oakland, California thinks so. I beg to differ.

By Kiera Butler
Mother Earth News
Feb. 2, 2012

Excerpt:

A few weeks ago, my friend was handed a flier (PDF) at a farmers market in Oakland, California. It’s from a local group called Neighbors Opposed to Backyard Slaughter that wants the City of Oakland to forbid people to raise livestock on their property. Around here, urban farming is a pretty hot issue; a nonprofit called City Slicker Farms has been promoting DIY food production for several years, and author and farmer (and Mother Jones contributor) Novella Carpenter brought the practice into the limelight with her 2009 book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, about her experiences at her Oakland farm.

Now I’m obviously biased on this issue; I’ve written on this site about the experience of raising turkeys for meat in my Berkeley backyard. But when I read through the anti-urban farming arguments put forth on the flier, I couldn’t resist making a rebuttal. Herewith, some sections of the flier, along with my responses. First up:

I called the Oakland Animal Shelter and asked whether it had seen an uptick in livestock (chickens, rabbits, and goats) since the urban farming trend took off around 2005. While the number of chickens at the shelter has gone up in recent years, from 213 in 2009 to 340 in 2010, shelter director Megan Webb attributes that increase to the city’s crackdown on fighting roosters in 2010, when the city confiscated hundreds of roosters. Aside from that, said Webb, “I’ve asked several of my animal control officers and they don’t feel like we have been seeing more livestock-type animals in the field or being impounded in the shelter.”

Read the complete article here.

‘Grandpa’s Allotment’ – jigsaw puzzle, prints

Michael Herring – Born in Hertfordshire in 1944, Michael grew up in post war Watford where there were still fields, woods, farms and rivers where he loved to be, along with visits to his grandparents who lived on a farm in Essex.

Trained in the print industry and studied in life classes at Watford School of Art, he preferred wildlife and the countryside.

Turning professional in 1985, turning his attention to dogs, childhood memories etc. In 1990 Michael moved to the Fens before moving back to his families roots in Norfolk.

Sadly Michael passed away suddenly on 27th August 2010 aged only at 66 years.

His work in now appreciated by collectors as his work appears on plates, mugs, clocks etc from Danbury Mint. Puzzles produced by Gibsons and The House of Puzzles.

See more of his work here.

Card of the print for sale.

Jigsaw puzzle for sale.

We produced more than 3,000 pounds of produce and distributed it through our free farm stand, food banks, and community groups.

By Sarah Henry
Grist
Feb 2, 2012

Excerpt:

Urban Adamah, a one-acre urban farm on a vacant lot in a gritty stretch of Berkeley, has transformed an area better known for liquor stores and light industry into a thriving community gathering space and food hub.

Adam Berman founded the farm in the summer of 2010 with just such lofty goals. Urban Adamah (for the Hebrew word for “earth”) offers a fellowship program for young adults, dubbed The Jewish Sustainability Corps, that integrates organic farming, social justice outreach, leadership training, environmental education, and progressive Jewish spiritual practice. There’s yoga, meditation, and singing too.

Berman, who directed a Jewish retreat center where he founded a similar fellowship in Connecticut before relocating to Berkeley, got a lucky break when landowner Wareham Development agreed to host the farm rent-free for two years. Hence, the portable feel to the project: The farm has dozens of raised, movable produce pallets, greenhouses, a cob oven, chicken coops on wheels, and large tents that serve as classrooms.

Read the complete article here.

The garden not only gave them a way to contribute but gave them a way to shine.

By Jill Richardson
Latitude News
January 30, 2012

Excerpt:

Imagine escaping from your farm in a war-riven part of Africa or Asia. You arrive in the U.S. What a relief! But you’ve replaced farming with asphalt and concrete of a U.S. city. Bewilderment, shock, all over again.

To help refugee farmers adjust, the International Rescue Committee started an urban farm in San Diego. It hired Amy Lint, then 31, to get New Roots Community Farm up and running.

She was a good choice — San Diego is home to many refugees from Cambodia and Somalia, and Lint knew rural Cambodia from her graduate work, and had been an aid worker with the Somali Bantu.

New Roots farm has thrived. It’s gone from five acres to 80, worked by 90 families, mainly from Cambodia, Somalia, Latin America and Burma. Lint’s work has been recognized by Michele Obama’s Let’s Move campaign with a visit from the First Lady herself.

Read the complete article here.

February 16, 2012
11 a.m. – 12 p.m. (PST); 2 p.m. – 3 p.m. (EST)

A vibrant movement is afoot in cities across the country ? farmers, activists, and community organizations are improving the health, economic outlook, and vitality of their communities through urban farming. Advocates are illustrating that urban agriculture is a pathway to making healthy food more available for low-income communities, a key to shifting economic revitalization efforts, and catalytic for battling the challenges of blight and abandonment.

Building from the recently released PolicyLink Urban Agriculture Tool, PolicyLink will be hosting a mini-series of webinars focusing on how low-income communities and communities of color are incorporating urban agriculture into their community development efforts and into policy infrastructures supporting this work.

This first webinar will feature Green City Grower’s CEO Mary Donnell, Ian Marvy, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Added Value (see video here), and Malik Yakini, Chairman of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. Each panelist will discuss challenges and strategies for growing and sustaining urban agriculture projects in low-income communities and communities of color.

Register for the Webinar here.

Visit PolicyLink Urban Agriculture Tool here.

Curtis Stone wants to teach you how he makes $60,000/year in sales growing food on 3/4 of an acre.

Mission: To create a movement of urban farmers to build communities, resilient local food systems, and income to support their families.

Your Guides: Curtis Stone, owner and operator or Green City Acres, a 3/4 acre pedal-powered urban farm in Kelowna, BC ($60,000 sales in his second season) and Luke Miller Callahan, founder of GroAction, a hub for social entrepreneurs.

The details of the course:

This course is laid out for you to go through all the steps of creating a successful urban farm even if you’ve never grown a vegetable before.

Tasks – Each week we will give you tasks to complete for your urban farm.

Video Lesson – After you recieve the task, you’ll be sent a video where Curtis and Luke will go over Luke’s progress for that task to give you tips and clues of what you may run into and how to get through it

Submit your progress – After you have completed your task you will submit your progress to be reviewed by Curtis, Luke, and your peers. With the submissions, Curtis and Luke will review a sample of them in the weekly video lesson, talking about the good points and what can be improved.

Topics Covered: Market research, site selection, site negotiation, crop selection, bed layout, tools, planting, weeding, watering timers, harvesting, market prep & storage, restaurant, CSA, and much more!

Take the course here.

The Tap Tap Garden is Haiti’s largest urban garden containing more than 500 brightly painted tire gardens

Bochika press release
Jan. 2012

The “Jaden Tap Tap” urban agroecology and youth empowerment program was inaugurated on January 22, 2012. Nearly 600 individuals and organizations joined in this celebration of possibility and progress in Cite Soleil, Haiti, sponsored by Bochika with special guest BelO.

PORT AU PRINCE, HAITI – Bochika is pleased to announce that the “Jaden Tap Tap” (Tap Tap Garden) urban community garden was proudly inaugurated on January 22, 2012 in Cite Soleil, Haiti. The Tap Tap Garden is Haiti’s largest urban garden containing more than 500 brightly painted tire gardens, flower garden, and a nursery of 1,000 trees. Nearly 600 community members, NGO’s, and government officials joined Bochika, SAKALA-Pax Christi Ayiti, and SOIL in celebrating the inauguration of the garden, as well as a new community Eco-San Toilet. The crowd was delighted to participate in the daylong event that featured a “farmers market”, agricultural demonstrations, musical and dance performances by local youth, and special appearance by internationally recognized Haitian recording artist, BelO.

The inauguration showcased the Tap Tap Garden as a model for urban agriculture for the neighborhood, country, and the world – demonstrating that bountiful, nutritious gardens can be grown in even the harshest conditions. The Tap Tap Garden is an acre of former landfill that now symbolizes hope, empowerment, education, and opportunity for Cite Soleil, one of Haiti’s most impoverished neighborhoods. As part of Pax Christi Ayiti’s SAKALA youth empowerment program, the garden is also a living classroom, providing 250 at-risk youth with a safe, positive environment in which to learn the basics of agroecology, agroforestry, nutrition, and to develop leadership and entrepreneurial skills. Food grown in the Tap Tap Garden feeds more than 250 neighborhood youth and residents of the nearby elderly and disabled persons displacement camp, Mitchiko, and will be sold to ensure long-term sustainability of the garden.

Bochika would like to thank everyone who attended and/or contributed to the success of the inauguration, especially our fellow partners in the Tap Tap Garden: Pax Christi Ayiti, Pax Christi USA, SOIL (Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods), Pro- Huerta, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) and Onslot Creative. A special thanks to esteemed guests, Ambassador Marcelo Raul Sebaste from Argentina, Ambassador Ivan Gaton from the Dominican Republic, and to all of the performers, especially BelO for their support.

See their website here.

“Urban agriculture a great way to make fresh fruits and vegetables available at reasonable prices to neighborhoods who do not now have access to them and it helps to build a sense of community where none existed before.”

By Chad Deal
San Diego Reader
January 31, 2012

Excerpt:

Today was a landmark for urban agriculturalists as the City Council voted unanimously in favor of amendments to municipal code which simplify the process for approving farmers’ markets on private property, make minor adjustments to community garden regulations, and ease restrictions for keeping chickens, goats, and bees.

In an affable session marked by laughter and applause, the Council heard from several supporting speakers ranging from Hoover High School geographic information systems students to members of the San Diego Beekeeping Society, the San Diego County Farm Bureau, the Goat Justice League, Food Not Bombs, the International Rescue Committee, New Roots Community Farm, the San Diego Hunger Coalition, and the One In Ten Coalition, as well as 55 written supporters who did not speak at the meeting.

The amendments follow a $50,000 grant awarded to the City of San Diego in March to pursue municipal code and general plan amendments supporting urban agriculture with the goal of stunting obesity rates by planning communities in ways that support increased physical activity and access to healthy foods.

Under the amendments, retail farms (produce is grown and sold at the same location) are differentiated from farmers’ markets.

Read the complete article here.

Help publish the Urban Farm Manifesto

By Justin Husher
On Rockethub

The Urban Farm Manifesto is a 20-page comic-zine with essay elements that chronicles some of my surreal experiences during the last three years of growing in the wilds of western Cleveland; and then combines it with socio-cultural commentary on food sovereignty versus the corporate food system, the politics of local food, and other seemingly disparate topics like “the Small-Mart Revolution” and permits. It’s about the modern aesthetics of urban farming. I liken it to the Four Elements of Hip Hop.

Although Cleveland is my personal reference, the subject materials in the Manifesto are devoid of geographic area (with perhaps the exception of land prices in the Rust Belt as they pertain to the one single “budget” page of the Manifesto). This 1st edition will be hand numbered and limited to 500 copies.

Please note, the Urban Farm Manifesto is not a “how to” guide. Furthermore, the Manifesto does not promote socialism, communism, or fascism, and is very pro-small business instead.

Help raise funds here.

Visit Justin’s blog here.

“The goal is for the resource to be continually growing with high quality advice on how to earn a living farming in the city”

By Gavin Walsh

“Urbanpatches will be a place where successful urban farmers can post what they’ve learned and their ‘best practices’ for running their farms. It’s designed so farmers can easily login (via Facebook) and add a post with their tips and strategies for running their farm successfully. It’s designed to be a resource and a way for urban farmers to share their knowledge with each other in one location.

“It is my hope that urban patches will grow into a solid resource for aspiring farmers to learn the best techniques for starting a farm of their own which is, I believe, the best way to make urban farming more popular. If we can make the content easy to read, learn from, and understand, more and more people will begin starting their own urban farms. This will in turn begin changing the way we eat.”

Visit the site here.

“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.

Suppose we had 7,500 acres of vacant lots in Brooklyn

A Club in Minneapolis

See full page image here. (2.2MB)

“The community was ready for a garden like this. It was just the right idea at the right time.”

By Michelle Pak,
NRCS Idaho
January 23, 2012

Excerpt:

Eric Moore had a vision to grow a garden outside his office window. Moore, an employee of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service in Idaho, works at the USDA Service Center in Gooding.

For years, the back part of the Service Center property was vacant and covered in weeds. Looking at that weed patch always bothered Moore. So he was excited when he got permission from the landlord to start a garden there last year.

Many partners pitched in to help create the Gooding Community Garden. The city provided water. Glanbia, a local cheese manufacturer, provided funds. Boy Scouts built wheelchair-accessible raised beds, and local farmers plowed the fields and helped install irrigation. The University of Idaho donated a shed.

In one year of operation the garden provided 6,000 pounds of food to homebound seniors, local soup kitchens and food pantries. In addition, 17 families enjoyed free garden plots to feed their families.

Read the complete article here.

Baltimore-area aquaponic farmers raise seafood and vegetables in a quest for self-sustainability and better health.

By Timothy B. Wheeler
The Baltimore Sun via LA Times
January 28, 2012

Excerpt:

The aquarium in the living room of Meir and Leah Lazar’s home isn’t just for decoration. The tilapia and bluegills packed into the 50-gallon glass tank are waiting their turn to wind up on dinner plates.

Out back, Meir Lazar is putting the finishing touches on a bigger new home for the fish inside a plastic-covered greenhouse. There, he hopes, the waste from the fish he’s tending will help him raise enough lettuce, tomatoes and other produce to feed his family of five year-round.

Sustainability is more than a buzzword for Lazar, 32, a computer systems administrator and teacher who’s pursuing aquaponics in his small suburban backyard off Greenspring Avenue. He said he’s inspired in part by news reports about food tainted by pesticides, bacteria and even radiation from the Japanese nuclear disaster last year.

“I think it’s incumbent on every person to start growing their own food so they can take back some of the control over their health, over what’s in their food,” he said. “Plus, you have a deeper appreciation of what you’ve grown and what you’re about to eat.”

Read the complete article here.

Seen on a London balcony next to Regent’s Canal.