World War 1 poster. 1914-18. Canada Food Board
Artist: Joseph Ernest Sampson 1887-1946

2008 – Revised bylaw will welcome urban farming
By Bill Cleverley, Times Colonist
October 04, 2008

Farming will soon become a legitimate home occupation in Victoria. Victoria councillors have approved changes to the municipality’s zoning bylaw to include urban agriculture as an allowable home occupation for up to two people living in a house.

The change won’t mean dairy cattle or hogs competing for space in your neighbour’s garden shed, though. Under the bylaw, urban agriculture will defined as the growing of fruit or vegetables only.

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$100,000 gift helps feed needy – Grant to WSU nourishes urban gardens, other food resources

Darren A. Nichols, The Detroit News
October 17, 2008

Efforts to feed the needy in Detroit with locally grown produce got a $100,000 boost on Thursday from a Ford Motor Company grant.

Wayne State University officials said the money will support the school’s Sustainable Food Systems and Engagement in Detroit (SEED) program. It will aid ongoing efforts to establish urban gardens and other sustainable food resources at Wayne State and throughout Detroit.

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A 57 minute documentary by SeedSavers on traditional diets and how they are grown and eaten in eleven countries.

Our Seeds: Seed Blong Yumi

A small crew comprising Seed Savers directors, Michel Fanton and Jude Fanton, and occasionally a local soundperson took a hundred and sixty hours of footage in eleven countries: Spain, France, Italy, India, Sri Lanka, China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands.

There are interviews of farmers and expert commentators and documented seed saving, farming methods and cultural activities in both first world and tribal locations. Peasants in advanced countries, such as Taiwan, Spain, France and Italy share the same sentiments as indigenous Pacific farmers when it comes to traditional varieties.

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Painting by Beryl Cooks, ‘The Allotment’.
See Beryl Cook web site here.

Editorial in The Times (Britain)
Aug 25, 1919

Urban Allotments

There is a side to the question more important than the money value of the produce. The country is about to undergo an industrial revolution. There is to be a maximum working week of forty-eight hours for the vast majority of working men who dwell in towns. What are the artisans, clerks, shopmen, and the multitudes of indoor labourers to do with their new leisure?

Some will do nothing with it, or worse. But if facilities in the way of allotments and of instruction in the growth of flowers and vegetables are given to them, very many will gladly utilize them. It will be an interest, a recreation, and a health giving pursuit to them.

Even when the working day was long, artisans and miners readily cultivated plots when these were within reach, and the dwellers in large towns should be given the same facilities. The compulsory shortening of hours of labour must be correlated with increased provision for the hours of leisure, and in the provision allotments should be included.

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Information below from the MacArthur Foundation Web Site.

Will Allen is an urban farmer who is transforming the cultivation, production, and delivery of healthy foods to underserved, urban populations. In 1995, while assisting neighborhood children with a gardening project, Allen began developing the farming methods and educational programs that are now the hallmark of the non-profit organization Growing Power, which he directs and co-founded.

Guiding all is his efforts is the recognition that the unhealthy diets of low-income, urban populations, and such related health problems as obesity and diabetes, largely are attributable to limited access to safe and affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. Rather than embracing the “back to the land” approach promoted by many within the sustainable agriculture movement, Allen’s holistic farming model incorporates both cultivating foodstuffs and designing food distribution networks in an urban setting.

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Photo by Cynthia Price. Larger image here.
MetroAg co-coordinators Joe Nasr, James Kuhns and Martin Bailkey, with Marielle Dubbeling of RUAF and Joe’s mother in Philadelphia for the event.

MetroAg promises to bring support and recognition to growing urban agriculture movement

Article by Kristin Reynolds in ‘Urban Grown’ the Newsletter of the Kansas City Centre for Urban Agriculture. Link to all ‘Urban Grown’ issues here.

Excerpt:
In conjunction with the annual Community Food Security Coalition Conference, a newly-formed organization held its first official forum on urban agriculture at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on Saturday, October 4th, 2008.

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Photo by: Dorothea Lange, 1936. See larger image here.
Title from that time: “Homegrown food is homegrown wealth. The foresighted farmer makes a garden plan showing what to plant, when to plant, and when to make second plantings. The plan shows how to cultivate and keep the garden free of weeds, and what poison spray to use to kill the insects that might eat up the vegetables. A garden is meant to feed the family, not the bugs and worms.”

Farmer in Chief
By Michael Pollan
New York Times October 9, 2008

This new post (White House Farmer) would be charged with implementing what could turn out to be your most symbolically resonant step in building a new American food culture. And that is this: tear out five prime south-facing acres of the White House lawn and plant in their place an organic fruit and vegetable garden.

The president should throw his support behind a new Victory Garden movement, this one seeking “victory” over three critical challenges we face today: high food prices, poor diets and a sedentary population.

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Urban Wheat Field Sprouts Busting Through Concrete and Myths in New York City

On Monday, October 6th, a live wheat field, approximately one quarter of an acre in size, sprouted at New York City’s South Street Seaport. The Wheat Foods Council’s “Urban Wheat Field Experience,” which ran October 6th through 8th, brings the farm-to-fork journey of America’s most-consumed grain to life with a wheat field, full-size combine, functioning mill, bread-baking station, nutrition lab and more.

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Image from Growing Gardens, Portland Chickens.

At the 5th Annual Portland Tour de Coops in July, about 600 people visited, on average, 17 backyard chicken farms in Portland, Oregon. Link to their web site here. See photos of hen houses at Dave’ Garden Forum here.

U.S. City Dwellers Flock to Raising Chickens

By Ben Block, Worldwatch Institute
October 6, 2008

In the backyard of a suburban home in Denver, Colorado, 22 chickens are hiding out from the law.

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CBC’s The X-Challenge

Canadian federal candidates debate economic issues facing Canada. The second debate on environmental policy aired October 8, 2008 on CBC Newsworld.

See candidates Lorne Mayencourt, Ujjal Dosanjh, Michael Byers and Adriane Carr in a town-hall-style debate moderated by Mark Kelley. A member of the audience mentioned worm composting and the moderator asked the candidates if they knew what that was.

See the complete CBC show here.

Photographer: Iwasaki, Hikaru — Hyde Park, Massachusetts. 1944
The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley.
Larger image here.

Sheila (age 6), Setsujiro Uno, Chick Masaru Uno and Naomi (age 2-1/2) are shown picking string beans in the victory garden in the back yard of their home at 21 Beacon Street, Hyde Park, Massachusetts. The Unos lived at Tule Lake and Minidoka and came to Boston in November, 1943 as a result of a job offer from the American Baptist Home Mission to lead the boys’ club work in the West End Settlement House. With them came Mrs. Shizuyo Sese, Mrs. Uno’s mother, and Mr. Setsujiro Uno, Chick’s father. In looking for a place to live, they had no trouble because of nationality but did experience it because of the small children since landlords didn’t want to rent them an apartment.

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Photo by Tyler Anderson/National Post

For the past six years, staff at Scadding Park Community Centre have drained the pool of its chlorinated water, filled it with freshwater and dumped in 1,000 rainbow trout for a week of fishing.

So instead of taking people to the fish, Scadding Court brings the fish to them. Several school groups stream through each day; the pool is also open to the public after school hours for $8 per person. Two fish are included in the price, but gutting costs an extra 75 ¢.

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The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community.

But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis.

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Link to the video here at theinsider.com Video is at the top of linked page.

This one-of-a-kind garden video, shot on October 3, 2008, features Bette Midler describing her passion for composting and community gardening and all things green.

The Target East Harlem Community Garden Opens

Bette Midler’s New York Restoration Project (NYRP), a non-profit organization dedicated to developing and revitalizing parks, community gardens and public space in New York City, announced the opening of the Target East Harlem Community Garden.

NYRP and Sean Conway have outfitted the newly designed garden with wind turbines and solar panels which will power the 5,000 square foot garden’s LED (Light-Emitting Diode) energy efficient lighting and a built-in irrigation system.

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Allotments for the unemployed on the Garscube Estate, 10 Jan 1933. The estate belonged to Sir Archibald Campbell (1852-1941). Photo: Glasgow City Council, Glasgow Museums. Larger image here.

Glasgow, Scotland

During the Great Depression of the late 1920s and early 1930s, tens of thousands of Glaswegian men lost their jobs. Although insured workers could claim unemployment benefit it was not equivalent to a living wage; for example in 1931 a man could just claim 15 shillings a week (75p). By 1933 over 120,000 Glaswegians were living on public assistance, and diseases associated with poverty had increased. Allotments offered them the means to improve their diets by growing their own vegetables, and of saving scarce cash for other necessities. The University of Glasgow purchased the Garscube estate in 1948.

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Slightly larger image here.

Photo: ca. 1915
By Stineman, Ralph P., 1871-1955
San Diego Historical Society

See: Developing San Diego: The Images of Ralph P. Stineman, 1910-1915

Photo: Boy Scouts at attention — staircase, rotunda, City Hall. (Victory Garden day, April 1st, 1918.) The Bancroft Library. University of California, Berkeley.
See larger image here.

Although we associate victory gardens with World War II, Laura Lawson says the term was actually coined near the end of World War I, replacing the more commonly used “war garden.” This, after all, was the conflict in which sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage.”

Lawson’s book describes the festivities on April 1, 1918, designated by the mayor as War Garden Day in San Francisco. The Chronicle editorialized that “the first food gun of the nation” had been fired.

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Photo: Nyandarva boarding primary school in Kenya, Rift Valley Province.
© 2004 Didier Ruef

“Over 20,000 children and young people, 400 teachers, with many families and communities (we estimate about 50,000 people in total) in four continents in four continents have participated in garden-based teaching and learning and community action and have come to generate new ways of learning about, and living in, an uncertain modern world.”

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“All users have to do is click their location on the website map and choose their veggies. Once a person has started a garden, he or she can add a small carrot representing that garden to the World Map of Small Food Gardens. This map is configured to let browsers find ideas or connections with other gardeners for sharing tips, seeds, recipes, and whatever else they need to know or swap in quest of the perfect small vegetable garden.”

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Horseradish – Fresh Today From Our Garden from Michael Levenston on Vimeo.
Also see alternative HD High Definition version on YouTube.

Maria pulled up a horseradish root today, cleaned and grated it, added a touch of white vinegar and let me taste it just minutes from the ground. Wow! If you like the flavour of horseradish on oysters, prime rib, or steaks, why wouldn’t you have a patch growing in your garden.

Blogger Durgan’s web page on processing horseradish root here.

How to harvest horseradish here.

How to plant horseradish here.