We’ve heard about local farms before — from community centers to rooftop gardens — but this farm is ultra local. Just think, the next time you need to add some herbs to your pasta, all you need to do is pop on over to your neighbor’s front yard and grab some fresh basil.
How is this possible? It’s all part of the Food is Free Project, a movement started in January 2012 in Austin, Texas by John VanDeusen Edwards and Jonathan Horstmann, who simply decided to move their backyard garden to the front and give out their harvest completely gratis. To get more of their neighbors on board, they attached a white board next to their garden bed where folks could write their details if they wanted to get involved.
Over the course of three short months, more neighbors became inspired to start their own front-yard gardens, and eventually, the entire block on Joe Sayers Avenue became one large urban farm offering free food to the community, reports the Austin-based publication Tribeza. Gradually, the movement expanded out of the city to about 20 states and countries.
“We realize that though our idea is simple, it is resonating with folks literally across the globe,” Edwards told the publication. “By using our block as a model for others, our ripple can travel farther than we can imagine.”
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If you check out their inspiring Facebook page, you’ll find an impressive online community of 54,000+ participants from around the world who share pictures of their adorable home gardens that include crops like pineapples, tomatoes, and even hydroponic onions.
Skeptics might scoff at such a kumbaya idea of completely free food and neighbors working together, but the movement really seems to be catching on. As one commenter wrote, “Two of my neighbors have stopped to tell me that seeing that I was actually growing food inspired them to plant some too. It’s contagious!”
As we’ve said before, the urban farming revolution is catching on around the country — from New York City to Detroit — giving city dwellers access to lovingly grown, local food year-round. And when getting a fresh veggies for our salads is as easy as going next door, maybe you’ll be inspired to join the revolution, too.
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Tag: urban farming
How a San Francisco Mom Feeds Her Family With One Teeny, Tiny Farm
Urban farmer Heidi Kooy is proof that you can grow food anywhere—even bustling cities like San Francisco.
As TakePart reports, Kooy and her family dine on onions, tomatoes, lettuce and other fruits and vegetables grown right from the 250 square foot backyard of their Excelsior District home. They also eat eggs from their two chickens, Sweet Pea and Coco Puff, and drink milk from their miniature goats, Lucy and Ethel.
Kooy’s enthusiasm for urban farming all began after a frustrating trip to the grocery store to buy eggs. “I would stand in front of the egg case for 15 minutes trying to figure out which were the best or most healthy eggs to buy. With all the different kinds of labels—free range, cage free—I was just confused,” she says in the video below. “And if I was this confused, I didn’t know how I was going to make good choices for my daughter. So I became obsessed with getting my own chickens and raising our own food here in San Francisco.”
The most amazing part is that Kooy didn’t necessarily come from an agricultural background. While she grew up around farms in her hometown in Nebraska, she wrote in her blog that she’s never lived on one itself. She was also an anthropologist before her current job as a small crafting business owner. So while she might not exactly have farming in her blood, she’s willing to put in the extra effort it takes to feed her family fresh (chemical-and-GMO-free!) foods.
“My urban farm is the way I provide for my family, the way I contribute to my family,” Kooy says.
We mentioned before that the urban farming revolution is happily catching onto sprawling cities around the country, from New York City to Detroit. This agricultural movement giving us fresh, in-season and nutritious food as locally as possible. And if one busy San Francisco mom can farm right from her own backyard, maybe it’s not so hard for more of us join the revolution as well.
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Lettuce Think Differently About Farming in Cities
Despite having a reputation for consuming a lot of junk food, Americans actually eat a lot of lettuce: 30 pounds of it each year, in fact. Behind potatoes, lettuce is the second most popular fresh vegetable.
We’d never tell you to stop eating your veggies but it’s very likely that the leafy greens you find at your local supermarket or salad bar have traveled quite the distance to end up on your plate. In fact, 90 percent of lettuce comes from California or Arizona — and unless you live on that side of the country, that’s kind of a problem.
So what’s the solution? In Atlanta, Ga., 2,000 miles away from America’s lettuce hub, local company PodPonics is growing lettuce right in the city’s backyard. In fact, the sprouting heads are located near Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
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You’d think Atlanta’s sweltering heat, heavy traffic and densely populated sprawl wouldn’t be optimal for fresh greens, but the company is proving that notion wrong. Thanks to the incredible technology of hydroponics, PodPonics is growing (pesticide-and-fertilizer free!) lettuce all year round.
We’ve previously mentioned the nifty technology of hydroponics (and its fishy cousin aquaponics). The beauty of this growing method is that it requires no sunlight, arable land or soil. This means it can be set up just about anywhere — from basements to fish tanks. As you can see in the video below, PodPonics grows their greens in recycled railroad shipping containers.
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The company told NationSwell that inside each of these containers — or “pods” — is a controlled environment (consisting of patented PVC-pipe hydroponic systems, fluorescent lights, virtual systems that control the temperature and nutrients) that allows the plants to flourish year round.
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Impressively, the company said that each pod produces the equivalent of more than an acre of crops. They also have a turnover of crops 26 times a year, compared to traditional farms that have four crop turns a year.
Since its launch in 2010, PodPonics has already expanded to hundreds of local grocery stores. Hydroponics is a serious contender for the future of farming, and it’s coming at an important time for drought-weary states in the American Southwest (yes, such as California and Arizona). While it can be expensive to set up, it pays off in dividends in the long run. It’s been said that hydroponic systems use only around 10 percent of the water used for soil-based crops. Companies like PodPonics are proving that we can grow fresh, sustainable crops anywhere — regardless of the weather.
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From Windowsills to Rooftops, Check Out the Rise of Urban Farming
Statistics show that Americans live further from farms than ever before. The latest census found that 80.7 percent of the population lives in urban areas, which means that most food has to travel to get to our plates. But what if we brought farms closer to people?
In the new documentary “Growing Cities,” Omaha filmmakers Dan Susman and Andrew Monbouquette found city-dwelling farmers who are growing food in bustling hubs like New York City, San Francisco and Chicago. These urban farmers are feeding their communities with nutritious fruits and vegetables grown on windowsills or rooftops. Basically, their mantra is, Got land? Will farm.
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This doc teaches us several lessons about urban agriculture — it’s a solution that literally greens our cities; it brings us fresh, in-season food as locally as possible; it’s giving city dwellers the nutrition they need. Also, as an urban farmer puts it the film’s trailer above, it’s connecting our cities back to the farm: “There’s a great importance in making sure the next generation has the tools they need to feed themselves.”
The documentary has received accolades from film festivals and is currently screening in several cities. Find out how to host a screening in a city near you. Maybe you’ll be inspired to join the urban farming movement, too.
How a Pair of College Students Persuaded Their Town to Legalize Urban Farming
It’s not often that college students make an investment in their rental homes. But then again, most college students aren’t like Sam Frere and Dan Warren. In the spring of 2012, the James Madison University students asked their landlord if they could convert the front, side and back yards of their rental home into an urban farm. Once they had the OK, they got to work on Collicello Gardens — named for the street they lived on — planting everything from flowers to tomatoes to kale and squash. Their goal was to create a business that would earn them decent wages, while also providing them with opportunities to test their ideas for innovative horticulture. In their first year, they started selling their produce through Community Supported Agriculture, and gained quite a following. They even had the supply to start weekly produce deliveries to dozens of customers. Prospects for their burgeoning business were looking good — until they went to apply for their business license. It just so happened that Harrisonburg, Virginia, prohibited farming.
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What’s an entrepreneur to do? For Frere and Warren, the choice was clear. The pair spent the fall and winter fighting against the city ordinance, drafting proposals, going to public hearings and drumming up support for Collicello Gardens and other projects like it. Despite some opposition from neighbors content with only seeing rows of pristine lawns, a new ordinance was approved in March 2013. Collicello Gardens was alive once more, and just in time for summer. Frere and Warren spent the spring reconfiguring their micro-farm, making every inch as efficient as possible. They figured if they could get 30 customers to pay $95 a month for local, delivered produce, they’d make more than enough to offset costs. Despite a rough start to the season, more than a dozen customers signed up from the get-go, raising their hopes. From there, business evened out. They managed to get 15 customers for their delivery service, and were able to sell more of their goods at farmers markets, but eventually they weren’t making enough to keep the business going. By the end of the season, Collicello Gardens was no more.
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But just because Frere and Warren’s business didn’t succeed doesn’t mean that it was a failure. Their passion for agriculture helped persuade a city to change its laws, benefiting citizens in ways that are yet to be realized. And as Andrew Jenner, a neighbor of Frere and Warren, points out in Modern Farmer, the garden itself was “a remarkable proof-of-concept of the sheer amount of produce that motivated and creative farmers can harvest off a tenth of an acre.” While they weren’t bringing in the money they expected, they had more food than could fill their bellies — and good food at that. While Frere has moved on from Collicello Street, Warren still lives in the same home and works at a local food co-op. He often talks to neighbors about how they can start their own urban farms, proving that even though Collicello Gardens is dead, its legacy will live on.
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How Catfish Can Help Solve California’s Water Woes
At Ouroboros Farms in Pescadero, Calif., you will find vegetables growing year round thanks to surprising set of helpers — catfish. These aquatic farmers are part of Ouroboros’ aquaponics system that’s becoming an answer to California’s parched farms, Bloomberg News reports.
California’s record-breaking drought necessitates the need for new ways to grow food. Although it’s expensive to set up (the Ouroboros system cost $60,000), aquaponics saves money in the long run, and more importantly, the system conserves our precious natural resources. Aquaponics actually uses up to 90 percent less water than traditional farming. Another beauty of aquaponics is that less land is used and it can be set up indoors. This means urban environments can have access to fresh, organic produce without having it shipped from elsewhere in the country.
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You can check out the video above to see how aquaponics replicates the way plants and animals work together in nature. As the catfish create waste, the plants suck it up as nutrients; no soil, pesticides or other toxins required. These fish are also sold as a source of protein so nothing goes to waste. Now that sounds like a tasty — and sustainable — solution.
Check Out the Largest Rooftop Farm in the World
You don’t normally think of New York City as a hub for agriculture, but at Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, there’s an enormous 65,000 square feet rooftop vegetable farm that grows kale, heirloom tomatoes, countless varieties of herbs, and seasonal vegetables for the Big Apple’s organically inclined stomachs.
Brooklyn Grange — the world’s largest rooftop farm — has released a fascinating time-lapse of its first seven months, where you can see a plain white roof transform into a flourishing vegetable garden in about two and half minutes. It’s hypnotizing to watch the old factory building withstand New York’s elements, from sunshine to snowstorms. By the end of the clip, you’ll see the roof blanketed in white, save a few patches of winter-resilient crops.
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Rooftop farms are a solution to feeding our cities’ increasing populations. When getting food for dinner is as easy as looking up, it reduces the distance that food has to travel to get to our mouths. It’s also a great way to connect city dwellers to the farm. Brooklyn Grange welcomes visitors from May through October and enlists volunteers as well. Check out www.brooklyngrangefarm.com to learn more.
This Urban Farm Has a Very Unusual Key to Success
Urban hydroponic farming can grow produce with less space and water than traditional methods and no soil at all. But these farms are fussy and complicated–if you mess up the chemistry, you can kiss a whole crop good bye overnight. That’s why Jan Pilarski created Green Bridge Growers. Her son Chris, who has a degree in chemistry and environmental studies but also has autism, is an ideal candidate for managing such a complex system. People with autism have a 90 percent unemployment rate, but Pilarski saw an entrepreneurial solution to Chris’ challenges. Many people with autism, like Chris, excel at work that involves minute attention to detail, precise timing, and constant monitoring–the exact skills you’d want for running a successful aquaponics farm. With the farm’s Indiegogo campaign exceeding its initial $15,000 goal to build a commercial-size facility, Pilarski hopes to hire four more workers for the project.