Category: Urban Farming

“Local gardening enthusiasts on Saturday braved freezing winds to learn winter plant management techniques at an urban garden in Uptown, the latest in a series of grassroots workshops aimed at educating city growers.

Breanne Heath, the education program manager at Peterson Garden Project, offered participants tips for caring for perennial herbs, planting garlic and preparing unplanted raised garden beds to weather an oppressive Chicago winter until the spring growing season.

Peterson Garden Project, a Chicago-based non-profit founded in 2010, provides 4-foot by 8-foot raised garden beds, growing materials and learning resources for members, who pay an annual $85 fee to participate. However, membership was not required for the weekend workshop, which cost $25.”

READ THE FULL STORY HERE: Medill Reports Chicago

“When Gracie and Bob Cavnar launched the Recipe for Success Foundation in 2005, their main goals were to battle childhood obesity by changing the way children understand, appreciate and eat their food, and to provide the community with healthier diets. Today, their hands-on curriculum is the largest outreach of its kind in the nation, empowering over 4,000 children every month through various initiatives.  But rather than sitting on their laurels, the couple became inspired to do even more. In the historic Sunnyside neighborhood of southeast Houston, they found the ideal location for an urban farm to expand their mission.

Thanks to a generous seed grant from Wells Fargo Foundation and support from the UnitedHealth Foundation and other corporations and philanthropists, the Hope Farms Showcase and Training Center came to life in one of the city’s largest food deserts.  To further their important mission, Hope Farms instated a grant-supported program to train U.S. military veterans to become new urban farmers.”

READ THE FULL STORY HERE: “Forbes.com“

“Marcus Roberson has a vision. He wants to grow crops on an empty lot in the Kingman Park-Rosedale neighborhood, close enough to Miner Elementary School to hear children during recess. “If we can get to the kids, we can get to the parents and touch the community,” he says.

Roberson is the co-owner of Woodbox Farms in Alexandria and graduated from Arcadia Farm’s 2017 Arcadia Veteran Farmer Program. The Southwest D.C. resident is submitting a plan to the city, hoping to be awarded the 10,000 square feet of public land to use as an urban farm.

In addition to engaging the elementary school through educational programming, Roberson imagines creating a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program that relies on cyclists to deliver produce to neighbors. He was among a handful of likely bidders at a site visit on Oct. 24.

Earlier this month, the Department of General Services put out a request for proposals for two plots of land totaling 20,000 square feet as a part of D.C.’s Urban Farming Land Lease Program. Site one is on the 1600 block of Kramer St. NE between 16th and 17th streets NE in Ward 6. Site two is at Longfellow and 9th streets NW in Brightwood Park. ”

READ THE FULL STORY: “WashingtonCityPaper.com“

“Regulations allow two miniature goats, two beehives and up to 25 hens (not roosters, because those are the chickens that crow at sunrise) on every residential property in the City of San Diego — with restrictions depending on the distance they’re kept from property lines.

“Kriss Marion wasn’t planning to become a farmer when she moved to Blanchardville, Wisconsin. The goal was to get out into green space with her family and be around farms, she tells CNBC Make It.

But after working on farms in the area and growing her own garden, Marion took the plunge and opened a community supported agriculture operation (CSA) in 2007. Today, her farm, CircleM Market Farm, continues to grow for CSA, offers a bed and breakfast for guests and raises sheep and cows. “It’s been really delightful to grow and change on this farm, and I feel like a rural place like this offers a lot of opportunities,” says Marion.

Marion is one of a growing number of women making a living running her own farm. In fact, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics,women farmers, ranchers and agricultural managers outearned their male counterparts in 2017, one of just 10 occupations in which that’s the case. The weekly median salary for women in this field was $1,114. Men took home $963.”

READ THE FULL STORY: “CNBC.COM“

Urban Grange Farm, owned since 2015 by Alesha and Thomas Gonzales, is moving out of Augusta after being cited for animal cruelty, allowing livestock to run at large, operating in a residential zone and not obtaining a local business license. The four-acre farm, located in a rural neighborhood of large-acreage lots, had become a regular vendor at Augusta’s Saturday market and the Veggie Park Farmers Market and sold its produce and meat to local caterers and restaurants.

An Augusta animal services officer told the court she responded to a report of ducks in the road in September and found some in a ditch in front of the Gonzales’ Seago Road home. Behind the house, the birds had access to water from a small swimming pool, she said.

Returning with department of health and codes enforcement officers a few days later, she photographed chickens and turkeys she said were crowded in a coop with little or no access to water. Augusta Code Enforcement Officer James Robinson said he saw four piglets scamper into the yard next door, then run back.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: “AugustaChronicle.com“

“CHICAGO (CBS)–Plans to expand a Chicago Public School in the Lincoln Square neighborhood have hit a roadblock after some neighbors are fighting to keep a piece of the community threatened by the project at Waters School.

The school houses one of the oldest urban gardens in the city, and neighbors are at odds with CPS’s plans to build an addition to the school right in the middle of the garden.

Restored and cultivated by staff, students and nearby residents for decades, the garden is home to four 300-year-old trees towering above the sprawling city space.”

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE: “ChicagoCBSLocal.com“

“By 2050, 70 percent of the world’s people are expected to live in urban areas, and if we’re going to feed all those people, we’ll need to continue to make cities and towns into centers of food production as well as consumption. Worldwide, there are nearly a billion urban farmers, and many are having the greatest impact in communities where hunger and poverty are most acute. For example, the Kibera Slum in Nairobi, Kenya, is believed to be the largest slum in sub-Saharan Africa, with somewhere between 700,000 and a million people. In Kibera, urban farmers have developed what they call vertical gardens, growing vegetables, such as kale or spinach, in tall empty rice and maize sacks, growing different crops on different levels of the bags. At harvest time they sell part of their produce to their neighbors and keep the rest for themselves.

The value of these sacks shouldn’t be underestimated. During the riots that occurred in Nairobi in 2007 and 2008, when the normal flow of food into Kibera was interrupted, these urban “sack” farmers were credited with helping to keep thousands of women, men, and children from starving.

The role urban farmers played in saving lives in Kibera is probably only a precursor of things to come. In large parts of the less developed world, as much as 80 percent of a family’s income can be spent on food. In countries where wars and instability can disrupt the food system and where the cost of food can skyrocket overnight, urban agriculture can play a fundamental role in helping prevent food riots and large-scale hunger. In that respect, promoting urban agriculture isn’t only morally right or environmentally smart, it’s necessary for regional stability.”

READ THE WHOLE STORY AT: “FoodTank.com“

“Founded under the initial name Embracing Horses in 1993, The Urban Farm at Stapleton was established to provide equine education and interaction for 15 inner-city youth. In the 25 years since its establishment, The Urban Farm has expanded its programming. They now offer educational opportunities in animal husbandry and agriculture.

The original goal of the organization was to “work with inner-city kids get them experience riding horses, develop them, make them more responsible, build respect for the animals.” Executive director, Mike Nicks explained that the present mission stays true to the farm’s origins. “We use practical work experience in the farm setting to inspire excitement for learning while fostering respect, responsibility, curiosity, caring and grit.””

READ THE FULL STORY AT: “303Magazine.com“

“The District is searching for organizations to create and run urban farms at two locations in Kingman Park and Brightwood Park. Totaling more than 20,000 square feet, the parcels are currently vacant. Once redeveloped, they would be managed through D.C.’s Urban Farming Land Lease Program, which was established to foster a sustainable system for locally grown food. The D.C. Department of General Services (DGS) recently put out a solicitation for bids.

“The Department reserves the right to make multiple awards to different applicants for sub-areas within each Site, however no such subarea will be less than 2,500 square feet,” notes DGS in its request for proposals. The Brightwood Park site is situated on an (unnamed) alley between 9th and 8th streets NW, near Longfellow Street NW, while the Kingman Park site is located in the 600 block of Kramer Street NE between 16th and 17th streets NE. Applicants must have “experience in agricultural production,” per DGS, and responses are due Nov. 21.

The opportunity arises as urban farms are becoming more popular across D.C., particularly in underserved areas where traditional grocery stores are lacking—areas commonly known as “food deserts.” Other major cities like New York are also seeing an uptick in urban farms.”

READ THE FULL STORY AT: “DCCurbed.com“

“Not many churches can boast their own Garden of Eden, but South Philadelphia’s historic Union Baptist Church (UBC) can. When Loretta Lewis and other veteran congregants of UBC opened a soup kitchen 20 years ago, they made a solemn pledge: “We just vowed that we’re not going feed people anything that we wouldn’t eat or feed our families,” she says. “The people who come are used to eating substandard food, but here they have never had substandard food.”

The soup kitchen volunteers have always prepared for the weekly Friday luncheon by shopping for and cooking food in an industrial kitchen in the church’s basement, adjacent to a dining room with cloth-covered tables, where people from nearby shelters are welcome to enjoy a free, nutritious meal.

And for the past year, sourcing fresh vegetables—often a big challenge for the church—has been easy. The soup kitchen’s pantry is now supplemented by hyper-local produce, harvested the same day from a new garden in a previously underused plot next door to the church.

Meei Ling Ng, an artist and urban grower who lives nearby, began a collaboration with the church a year and a half ago to develop what they’ve jointly called the UBC Garden of Eden. “I want to promote ‘grow food where you live,’” Ng says. “That’s always my project title, everywhere. And ‘provide fresh, healthy food to the needy, to the homeless.’ It benefits the rest of the community, too, through educating how to grow.”

READ THE FULL STORY AT: “CivilEats.com“