Author: UOG

If you travel by train into Bristol from north of the city, there is a point two miles from the center when you can catch sight of a tiny farmyard. Nestling at the bottom of a railway embankment between houses, builders yards, and a car rental depot, it has sties, snoozing Gloucester Old Spot pigs, a paddock with caramel-colored Dexter cattle grazing and vegetable plots in which you might see the farmer and her three young children at work.

It is not, as you might assume, a visitor attraction. Founded on the council-owned site of a former market garden, Purple Patch is a fully functioning four-acre smallholding that turns a profit from vegetable boxes, bagged salads and meat. Mary Conway, the 32-year-old who formerly worked for a veg-box scheme in Norwich, set it up five years ago and has become something of a local hero. Her salads – blends of unusual leaves, herbs and edible flowers – are popular in the nearby liberal enclave of St Werburghs. She lives in a converted shed on Purple Patch, with her kids and her husband, Jona, a carpenter, and finds any missing suburban comforts amply compensated for by the friendships she makes.

READ THE FULL STORY The Guardian

Megan Chen — author, Dual School alum and rising junior at Newark Charter — has always had a passion for environmental issues. Now, she’s also the founder of a 501(c)(3) called the Urban Garden Initiative.

“I learned about the food desert problem in Wilmington, and I had an idea that I really wanted to stick with,” she told Technical.ly.

Chen is sharing the concept of urban gardening with kids as young as preschool age, through middle school — where agricultural education is often lacking — by partnering with local schools and teaching hour-long container gardening workshops. Classes can then maintain the containers themselves.

“We aim to spread environmental and sustainability education through the urban gardening educational component,” said Chen. “The gardens are one way to learn how to do that, but we go over other [aspects of sustainability], too.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT https://technical.ly/delaware/2019/08/12/megan-chen-urban-garden-initiative-teen-teaching-ag-skills-sustainable-future/

Imagine hearing that familiar summer song and looking up to see a truck rolling up your block. Kids flag it down, only to find vegetables.

A mobile farm stand truck might be less exciting to kids than an ice cream truck, but the prospect of getting one in West Sacramento has proponents of urban agriculture pretty pumped up.

Here’s how it would work. Several urban farmers in West Sacramento would sell their produce through a refrigerated truck that stops in neighborhoods where residents face barriers when it comes to affording fresh, local produce.

Several areas of West Sacramento are designated as food deserts by the USDA.

The project is Sara Bernal’s brainchild. She’s the program manager of West Sacramento Urban Farms, which is part of the Center For Land-Based Learning, a non-profit based in Winters that runs farmer training programs. Bernal oversees 10 start-up farmers working on “incubator” plots that were formerly empty lots.

READ THE FULL STORY: CapRadio.org

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — An urban farmer in Kansas City is using his skills and life experience to cultivate the minds of young men.

Dre Taylor is the founder of Males to Men, a rites of passage program that works to raise “strong, conscious and productive young men.”

“A man has accountability and responsibility with himself and his community and that’s what we try to teach our young men,” Taylor said.

One component of the program involves Nile Valley Aquaponics, a plant and fish-based farm at the corner of 29th and Washbash. Taylor, who operates the farm, uses it to teach the young men in his program valuable lessons.

SEE THE FULL ARTICLE AT Fox4KC.com

In March this year, Atieno Kasagam came home from a long vacation to find a slip for a misdemeanor complaint on the front door of her house. It cited her for possession of a farm animal without a permit and having an unlicensed dog.

It wasn’t the first time her and her partner Zomi Huron have gotten the fine, and it probably won’t be the last. The couple owns a produce farm, Ile Ibeji, spread across several lots in Jefferson Chalmers where they keep dozens of fowl—chickens, ducks, geese—and don’t plan on getting rid of any. It’s currently illegal to keep any “wild animals” inside the city limits, according to Detroit’s city code.

Kasagam was furious. She and Huron have been keeping animals for years and live on a block with lots of vacancies and only six neighbors, none of whom mind the animals. The law is largely enforced through a complaint-based system, so Kasagam suspects that an outsider spotted the animals and reported it.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE Detroit Curbed

Darren Chapman: A Phoenix Urban Farmer Growing Hope for the Formerly Incarcerated

Since 2005, the founder of the Tiger Mountain Foundation in Phoenix, Arizona has recruited and worked with thousands of formerly incarcerated people, teaching them practical, on-the-job skills for growing food, maintaining landscaping, and more. The foundation grows produce for 12 of the region’s farmers’ markets, and has helped more than 1,000 entrepreneurs launch their businesses.

Kate Greenberg: Shaping Colorado’s Farmland for the Next Generation

The 31-year-old advocate and policymaker has her work cut out for her: How to preserve the state’s farming and ranching traditions amidst a wave of farm retirements, development pressures, and climate change?

Art Cullen: Putting Rural Politics on the National Stage

The Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaperman from Storm Lake, Iowa, has used his “tenacious reporting, impressive expertise, and engaging writing” to get readers to look closer and think harder about the political, economic, and environmental challenges unfolding in the Midwest.

TO SEE THE FULL LIST VISIT Civil Eats

CHICAGO (CBS) — Thousands of acres in Chicago are little more than empty fields.

But CBS 2 Morning Insider Vince Gerasole learned they could sprout jobs and economic opportunity by converting them into farms. He spent a day down on the farm getting to know the people who work the soil.

“I get to eat a lot of good vegetables and grow a lot of vegetables,” said Urban Growers Collective production manager Malcolm Evans. “I can put in a lot of work and get a lot of love out of it.”

Evans grew up in the Cabrini Green public housing complex, so he didn’t know much about farming – or even where vegetables came from – until he started with Urban Growers in 2003.

He’s now worked in urban farming for 16 years.

READ THE FULL STORY Chicago CBS Local

It was 8:15 Tuesday morning and the greenhouse was just waking up for the day.

Spurred by an electrical panel that serves as its brain, its roof vents had popped open, letting in the cool, morning air.

Meanwhile, the human staff of Altius Farms was already busy doing its work. Moving among rows of aeroponic growing towers the pickers plucked leafy greens, herbs and edible flowers like Genovese basil and red Russian kale, washed them and packed them in coolers.

Within hours the harvest would be distributed to some of Altius’ three dozen odd regular and seasonal customers in the Denver area including top restaurants and grocers like Choice Market and Marczyk Fine Foods.

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE Denver Post

Sasha Kanno is the eternal optimist.

The founder and farmer of Farm Lot 59, an organic farm, retail spot and education center that sits on a one-acre site surrounded by oil fields, is absolutely convinced that the people of this city need a business like hers.

But…

“I’m just a one-woman show here,” she said. “It’s a very expensive operation. We are looking for a grant to fund it. (Long Beach) Park and Rec is supposed to do some improvements to the area. Some improvements need to happen to re-open the stand.”

Created in 2010, and located at 2714 California Ave., Farm Lot 59 has historical ties to the city’s past. According to the University of California’s Urban Agriculture website, the property is one of the last remnants of a 20-acre farm lot subdivided by the American Colony Tract in the late 1800s.

READ THE FULL STORY Gazettes.com

A pop-up urban garden has taken over a small slice of Broadway for the summer.

This week, the Garment District Alliance announced the return of a seasonal pedestrian plaza to the neighborhood. The space is located along Broadway between 37th and 38th Streets, a block that was converted into public space.

The garden features a mural by Ecuadorian-born artist Carla Torres, called Nymph Pond. The 180-foot-long mural was inspired by a small pond in the Galapagos Islands that she would visit often when back home.

Part of the summer plazas program, the garden offers additional space for pedestrians and cyclists, along with birch trees, planters, turf, café tables, and chairs. The space will be open until August 31, and every Wednesday there will be free lemonade and music.

“Over the past few years, the Garment District Urban Garden has served as a vibrant, welcoming outdoor space for the public to enjoy during the summer in the heart of Midtown Manhattan,” Barbara A. Blair, president of the Garment District Alliance, said in a statement.

READ THE FULL STORY NY Curbed