Young Farmers Shine at Growing Power Conference
Will Allen, director of Growing Power, giving a tour of his farm. Recently, I had the chance to attend Growing Power’s National-International Urban & Small Farm Conference in Milwaukee. It was a great experience, and I’m glad that I had the chance to meet lots of people from around the country interested in urban and sustainable agriculture. The workshops I attended were terrific, and many of them were focused on helping young... Read More
Bootstrap @ City Grown Seattle – What I Am Learning: Changing With the Seasons
With our really small land area (1/4 acre total, spread among eight plots), we are able to grow enough produce to supply our two weekly markets, but just barely. This leads to a different type of harvest procedure than I remember from the farms I interned on. On a City Grown harvest day, we go out and get everything that’s ready. We generally keep the plants very well harvested, because we have to in order to have enough to sell! There... Read More
Bootstraps @ City Grown Seattle – What I am learning: Creativity
July at City Grown Seattle has seen a huge explosion of growing and producing plants. Looking back at photos from the beginning of the month, I was amazed at how things have changed: Sunflowers now in bloom were just little sprouts at the end of June, and the beans currently reaching off the tops of their eight-foot trellis hadn’t even begun climbing 30 days ago. I marvel at the plants’ vigor and appreciate that their health shows we’ve... Read More
“Farmland is for Farming:” A Discussion with Anya Kamenskaya on the Gill Tract Occupation
Occupy the Tract activists. Photo courtesy of takebackthetract.com Since the National Young Farmers’ Coaltion first reported on the Gill Tract Occupation in April 2012, occupiers were removed from the property by a UCPD raid on May 14th, 2012. Despite being prohibited by the UC to maintain a physical presence on the Gill Tract, protestors remain active in their efforts to sustain the 13-acre acre parcel as community-supported and educational agricultural... Read More
Brooklyn Grange: The World’s Largest Rooftop Farm
The vegetables grow in the abundant morning sunlight. Brooklyn Grange is alive, in the truest sense of the word. This urban organic farm, located in Queens, New York, buzzes with energy from the very moment you step out of the elevator doors and onto the sunbathed rooftop. In 2009, five Brooklyn natives started this commercial enterprise to cultivate and sell fresh produce to the local community. Today, the farm stretches an acre wide and innocuously... Read More
Bootstrap @ City Grown Seattle – What I am learning: Tenacity
I was so busy with spring farming tasks, I didn’t notice that it was May until May 19th. That day I realized it was considerably past time to flip to the next page on my Nikki McClure calendar. This local artist (she’s from Olympia, Washington) pairs each lovely paper-cutting image in her calendars with a single word. Sometimes the word is clearly related to the picture; sometimes it takes a little bit of thinking to make the connection. On... Read More
Bootstraps @ City Grown Seattle – Introduction
I’m Becky Warner from Seattle Washington, and my farm is called City Grown Seattle. City Grown is a multi-plot urban farm. We are growing vegetables on a quarter acre (10,000 square feet) of growing space within northwest Seattle. Our land is distributed among 8 different plots, of which 7 are in the yards of private homeowners and one is at a community center. These land partners offer us the use of their space in exchange for a portion... Read More
Filmmaker Dan Susman on Filming the Urban Agriculture Revolution
I’m from farm country. Well, sort of. I grew up outside of Omaha, Nebraska in a little town called Elkhorn. We had a big yellow house with two towering maples out front, an old barn, and a couple acres of land. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t farmers—although my parents showed me at a very early age the importance of growing my own food. Every year I planted pumpkins with names like “Big Max,” “Atlantic Giant,” and “King Jack,”... Read More
Occupy the Farm Fights Back for Urban Agriculture in the East Bay
This Earth Day, April 22, a Bay-area coalition of local residents, farmers, students, researchers, and activists called Occupy The Farm began an action protesting the loss of farmland and agricultural education in the East Bay. The group planted over 10,000 seedlings at the Gill Tract, the last remaining 10 acres of Class I agricultural soil in the urbanized East Bay area. The Gill Tract is public land administered by the University of California,... Read More
Chicago’s New Rooftop Farm – The Urban Canopy
A new rooftop farm project by The Urban Canopy aims to show how rooftops can be used as small farms throughout Chicago to grow fresh fruits and veggies organically and sustainably. Along with farming vacant lots–or even entire abandoned buildings–rooftop farming is a vital part of the growing urban agriculture movement to recreate a local and regional food system that is both sustainable and equitable. The Urban Canopy’s new farm... Read More
