Ted conference presentation about Urban Farming in LA

Check out this video of a unique service in LA that farms backyards for people who want the fresh food but don’t want to do the work.  I’ve also heard of SPIN farming people doing this same thing in some other places.

 

This seems like a rather short term project, not unlike paying for landscaping maintenance.  It can last while people can afford to pay for it but when money or if money gets tight they’ll have to cut this back and then actually do the work themselves so they can still have the food.  Good interim step though between now and then.

Farmscape website

Via City Farmer

 

 

 

 

Urban Farming videos

Another video about being a Greenhorn.  Very inspiring video.  Coe College will be showing this full movie at 3PM on Nov 5th at a film festival.  I’ll be speaking at a panel following the movie about being a greenhorn.

From: Cold Antler Farm

I guess I’m a hipster?  Funny, I don’t feel like a hipster.  Check here.

 

 

 

 

Urban Agriculture update

If you are on Facebook with me you’ll have already seen these, but I wanted to share them anyway.  One of the big initiatives I’ve been working on over the past year or so is a plan with the city to turn some of our vacant abandoned home sites into an urban farm.  It’s finally coming to fruition.  Almost.  🙂

The ordinance modification necessary to allow Urban Agriculture passed it’s first reading.  Our development proposal also passed so we can now begin talking with city staff to work out an agreement to gain access to some land to we can start farming.

I’m going to post more information as it becomes available.  I’d like to post a link to our Urban Ag ordinance so other places can look at it as an example as well as our development plan which I think is top notch (and the city staff members have told us that as well).  If or when I can find them I’ll post them up here so ya’ll can see them.

KCRG TV story featuring an interview with me

Gazette Online story discussing these developments.

Slideshow with pictures from the farm

I’ve created a slideshow on the urban farm book page if you would like to see some pictures of the farm we created through this summer.  It was a ton of hard work form dedicated Americorp VISTA members as well as local volunteers and youth on mission trips.  So far it has been a great success.

Now that the summer is slowing I think I’ll be up for more writing.  Watch out, I’ve got some stuff saved up!

Farm update-Week 3

I’m a little tardy this week sending out your weekly e-mail.  I’m sorry about that. Things are still a little light coming out of the farm space.  This week I expect you’ll have some lettuce, radishes and potatoes.  The potatoes will be very fresh and will surprise you if you haven’t had a garden fresh potato before.  My favorite fresh potato recipe is below.  If you are conscious of your heart you might want to take a pass.  But if you like butter read on:

Gently boil the potatoes until they are cooked but still firm.  Place them into a large bowl with a good helping of butter and salt.  Add some dried parsley (fresh would be OK too) and swirl the potatoes around until they are completely coated.  Serve while still warm.

With farm fresh produce simple preparation is the key so you can enjoy the fresh taste.

Starting tomorrow we will be having a lot of youth involved at the farm space helping us weed, plant and tend plants, as well as do some building.  We are planning to add some nice outdoor spaces to the farm location.  Perhaps later this summer we can have a get together there and enjoy it!  In early July we will also have kids from the Matthew 25 summer meals program begin work, as well as summer daycare kids from St James United Methodist Church.  This is all part of the mission that you support with your involvement.  Not only do you get produce but you help us train the next generation of farmers and gardeners, as well as teaching them how they can provide for their own families.

My constant worry right now is the amount of produce that we’re producing.  Right now we are quite low (lower than I expected even) but I’m confident that later this summer we’ll make up for it.  My counting this week shows better than 15 cucumber plants.  (If you know cukes you know how much even one can produce)  We have in excess of 40 summer squash plants, over 20 pepper plants and rows and rows of green beans, not to mention the 70 or so broccoli plants that are in the ground and the 200+ onions.  I know the produce is coming, but it’s all later season items.  We’ll keep on top of them and keep all the spaces full and planted and I can make a promise to you that we will keep cranking out the produce until October comes.

We have some garden and food related events planned in July.  On July 9th the Tool Library is hosting a worm composting class so you can learn how to compost at home using worms, and you can even see our worm composter in action!  On July 30th the ISU extension office will host a preservation 101 class at Groundswell.  This class will cover basics and focus more on freezing items than canning.  Stay tuned for more information about them and let us know if you have any questions.  We would be happy to answer them.

Thanks,
Matt

Comment on Urban Farm post

Groovy Green elicited a comment on my Urban Farm post that I thought I would share here as I found it interesting.  The comment below was from Joseph:

It’s a nice idea. I would love to see some real, actual effort put into how this could work, because there are a lot of unanswered questions, like: How are unemployed people who can’t even pay their bills, like me, supposed to purchase land? Unless you’re assuming a city government that can’t even pay its backlogged bills is supposed to purchase the land, and in that case, where would that money come from — taxpayers, most likely? Or is this only city-owned, vacant land? Who will clear all of the zoning laws, and pay for all of the permits and property taxes? How will we know what to grow? And if we somehow knew what to grow, how are unemployed people who have no farming background supposed to know what to do? And who is going to find, market to and sell to these mysterious customers, such as restaurants or produce wholesalers? Are municipalities supposed to purchase and convert the acreage, and then hire the unemployed to farm it? And if so, what’s that going to pay beyond minimum wage? And most of all, why would you suggest farming as a possible solution, given that farming is one of the riskiest endeavors in the world — highly dependent on weather/nature and environmental events? It’s good to have your head in the clouds, as long as you have two feet on the ground. Right now, you’re floating.

My response is below:

Hi Joseph-

Thanks for the comment!  There are certainly unanswered questions, but not any that I think are insurmountable.  The reason I think this is possible is because I’m doing it.  Right now.  This summer, in a city, on a small plot of about 1/2 an acre.  Is it hard?  Hell yes it is!  But it’s challenging and fun like any other endeavor.  And I didn’t know anything about farming but I asked around, found some mentors, read some books and started doing it.

Re: farming being a tough business.  You are right.  I think a lot of the problems are mitigated though by practicing it on a small scale.  Weather and nature become easier to overcome when you have an acre to manage instead of 100.  Its easier to water something that size, keep weeds at bay, etc when it’s smaller.

How do you get the land?  Be creative.  I’m borrowing land from a church and a local organization that has abandoned the building after a devastating flood ruined it.  What do I offer them?  I take care of the property so it’s kept up and I teach the kids who go to the church’s daycare about farming/gardening and share some food with them so they can taste fresh food.   The key is to not find ways you CAN’T do it but find ways that you CAN.

For example, in my city we are working on acquiring more land to expand our farm.  How did we do that?  We analyzed the situation to figure out how to solve multiple problems for people around us.  Our city has plenty of devastated properties so we have offered to take over the care of them so they won’t be eye sores (lots where houses have been torn down), put them back on the tax rolls for the city (because we will own them we will pay taxes on them again vs. the city owning them), create a job creation engine in the local economy (small farms require labor) and do it with no more support from the local government than them giving us the land to use, which it can’t be built on because it’s in a flood plain anyway.  It’s a win for us, a win for the city and a win for the neighbors on these properties.  Heck, it’s even a win for our customers because we are in the city, thus easier for them to get to and also a win because we are offering half priced shares for low income people who need the help.

What other options might someone have?

If there is a vacant lot around you find the owner.  Offer to take care of it for them in exchange for free use.  If they don’t like that offer to rent it for a small fee.  If they want to0 much move on.  Maybe you can find a local corporate office that has a huge swath of land.  You could offer to farm part of it in exchange for taking care of it for them for free (ie, mowing it for them)  Thus you would trade your time for their land.  They save the cost of upkeep on the whole thing and you get part of it to grow food on.  Not to mention the ready group of customers you have at your doorstep as they leave the office on Fridays and you have a tent set up to sell them produce.  I treat a lot of this like a normal business transaction.  If you can make it a win-win for all parties you’ll usually get the job done.

Some of this is covered in a book I wrote about how to start an Urban Farm.

How to start an urban farm book

You should check it out.  The big key is your attitude and your desire to do something.  All the things you mention can be overcome and, in fact have been by many people already operating urban farms.  You just have to want to do it and then move forward not letting people throw up roadblocks.

Do any of you readers have any thoughts you would like to add?  Add them here or bounce over to the GG site and comment on the article there.

This is why we have an urban farm

 

 

Watch this video.  This is why we operate an urban farm.  We’re not there yet, but we will be soon.

Courtesy of Civil Eats

Seeding made easy

I’m typing this while having created some time tonight, well, Mother Nature created it for me by sending through a huge rain storm.  It’s raining so hard the gutters aren’t keeping up.  Therefore I’m not out weeding and doing garden work like I need to be, but inside typing and working on all the other things on my never ending to do list.

Today for the first time I used an Earthway seeder.  And I loved it!  I love this thing!  My gardens at home are all sq ft gardens which are planted fairly laboriously by hand using Mel’s techniques.  I even did this with most of the crops that I planted at our urban farm as they are all sq ft garden beds as well.

It’s no wonder that bigger farmers use tools such as this to grow their crops.  It would make the seeding so much more effective, especially when you are seeding in a row. I did figure out though that you need a fairly well broken up seed bed.  The seeder liked my beds made of all compost but didn’t care for the beds that were trucked in dirt with clods and whatnot.  (When I’m planting by hand I can just work around them so the clods don’t really matter.  🙂 )

I used the seeder today to plant green bean seeds, and I tried it in the sq ft garden beds as an experiment, in addition to the long rows I intended to be bean rows.  Typically a sq ft garden bed would have 9 plants per sq, or 288 plants for one 32 sq ft box (8×4).  Today I was able to run 7 rows across the bed (on the 4 ft spacing side) that size and as long as the seeds are spaced at the stated 3.6 inch spacing that would work out to about 200 plants in that bed.  ((8×3.6)x7 rows)  That isn’t as many as with the sq ft method, but I had the bed planted in less than 5 minutes compared to a solid 30 minutes to do it with the finger method.  Given this time savings it might be worth the slightly reduced yield from each bed. Of course I could try to get in an eighth row which would put the number of plants up around 230.

Planting is mostly completed for this summer (save for tomatoes and peppers) but when it’s time to direct seed the fall crops I’m going to use the seeder and see how it works for the beets and carrots, two plants that always take a ton of time to plant in the beds.

Check out the videos below!  Some cool information about the seeder.

If you’re interested, check out this info from Johnny’s.

Also, the human powered home has a section (I need to review this book at some point)

Also, also, 🙂  I know I saw something on Gene Logsdon’s blog about how he uses Earthway Seeders on his acreage  but I can’t find it now.  He meshed together 3 of them I think and used them to plant his corn rather than buying a device to pull behind the tractor.  (Gene is really big on keeping costs down when you grow instead of getting bigger and bigger)

Urban farming, the new way to handle unemployment?

Depending on which figures you choose to use, unemployment in America is approaching 20%, a figure that is quite remarkable.  Fully 1/5 of the people in America who could be working are not currently working.  I think urban farming could be this generation’s way to handle unemployment, sort of like a 2011 version of the CCC.

Urban Farm in Chicago

When you are willing to trade your labor for less space and less machinery you can create an amazing income from a small land base.  SPIN farming is a method developed by a farming couple in Canada when they realized that they could make more money by growing intensively on less land if they grew the right crops at the right times.

They have a farm income calculator on their site that suggests that a farmer with 1/2 an acre can generate $24,000 in gross sales on the low end up to $72,000 on the high end.  I think this is doable as well, but it does require a bit more marketing and growing of high value crops.  We use a CSA model for our urban farm and I don’t think that will get us to those dollar figures because a CSA model is similar to a bulk food model vs. a model where you would grow exclusively high value crops like exotic green, radishes or beets for restaurants.

While the situation in Detroit is well known, the situation in other cities regarding vacant land is less well known.  The Brookings Institute has placed the vacant land in Detroit at around 1/3 of the city area, of 40 sq miles.  I saw a

Urban Farm in Cuba

different article that put the vacant space in the average city at around 14%.  It’s higher in the south (around 19%) and lower in the Northeast (around 9%), but 14% of the space still works out to a pretty good chunk of area.  According to this article about Pittsburgh the size of the 10 largest cities in America is 340 sq miles, with Pittsburgh coming in at 56 sq miles.

Using those figures we can put the vacant land size at 5.6 sq miles in Pittsburgh or 34 sq miles for the average city in the Top 10 of America.  (Stay with me on the math here people)  So if you take the top 10 of our largest cities they would represent 21,760 acres of vacant space per city (640 acres per sq miles * 34 sq miles).  That would work out to 210,760 acres across those 10 cities.

Now, let’s attack Pittsburgh.  This article about Pittsburgh puts this city as the  56th largest city in America.  (this ranking is based on population size not land area)  I’m going to assume that the next 50 largest cities are all Pittsburgh’s size.  (I know this is crazy but I have to make some assumptions to make this work)  56*10% =5.6 sq miles per city * 50 cities = 280 sq miles.

640 acres per miles * 280 sq miles = 179,200 acres.

So, between these two figures we have 389,960 acres of land.  (Let’s make it 390,000 to make things easy)  If you use the figures that SPIN farming provides that means we could potentially create 780,000 new jobs by encouraging urban farming on this vacant land.

The most recent figure I have seen on unemployment puts the total number at 13.7 million people.  (I think is what the government calls unemployed which is not the number of people who are looking for job and quit, those who are no longer getting benefits and aren’t counted, and other factors).  By turning the vacant land in these top 60 cities into urban  farms we could lower the amount of unemployed in America by just under 6%, and would put the total number under 13 million.

A quick Google search puts the number of cities in America at around 25,000.  I have discussed the top 60 size wise here.  If we can assume for a minute that each one of those cities could support 1.5 sq miles of vacant then each city in America could, in theory, support 3 urban farms.  25,000*3 would be another 75,000 potential positions.

Now, I guess this wouldn’t completely take care of our unemployment problem given that it would “only” create around 860,000 new jobs.  It’s interesting though that an initiative like this would make urban farming the 2nd largest employer in America after only the behemoth Wal-Mart.  It’s interesting to think of all the job creation initiatives that are in place to help corporations create jobs and this one initiative could create the same amount of jobs as two new McDonald’s corporations.

Rooftop farming

That is a lot of jobs.  And this just vacant land.  It doesn’t include potential farmland in sprawling suburban campus’ or on rooftops in the city.  I’m going to toss out that an initiative that included those elements would easily produce just as many jobs.  Now you are looking at 1.8million jobs which would, by itself, lower unemployment by 13%, assuming that each farmer doesn’t ever hire any workers or that ancillary industries aren’t created off of this initiative.

Interesting though isn’t it?

Picture 1 courtesy of Cut and Fill

Picture 2 courtesy of thegoldenspiral.com.  

Picture 3 courtesy of Treehugger 

This post cross posted at Groovy Green.

Whoa boy!

Man, I have to tell you.  Between my normal life and getting this farm up for the spring, and my own garden, I’m beat!

Meetings in the morning, then spent 4 hours in the sun yesterday hand shoveling trailers full of dirt, then some meetings, then quick unloaded a truckload of wood chips and then drove back to the farm to cover up all the plants for the frost that I was warned not to plant before June 1st or we may have a stupid late frost only I didn’t listen because I’m too smart for my own good and everyone else is wrong and there you have it.

So hopefully all those lovely squash and cuke plants that I’ve been lovingly tending in the greenhouse make it through the night.

😦