Archive for Sustainable Agriculture

Growing Food Locally: Integrating Agriculture Into the Built Environment (PART 3)

February 15, 2009 at 12:00 pm · Filed under Green Building and Design, Sustainable Agriculture ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Aquaponics

Aquaponics is a relatively new approach to food production, combining both recirculation hydroponics and aquaculture (fish production). Some of the earliest research into aquaponics began in the 1970s at the University of the Virgin Islands, where James Rakocy, Ph.D., developed a commercially viable aquaponic system using raft hydroponics. The beauty of aquaponics is that it offers a balanced nutrient cycle that does not require the addition of fertilizers. It also solves one of the significant problems associated with aquaculture: what to do with fish waste.

In an aquaponic system, wastes produced by fish become beneficial fertilizer for hydroponically grown plants. According to Nelson and Pade, Inc., the leading North American firm involved with aquaponics (and publisher of Aquaponics Journal), ammonia-rich fish wastes are broken down by bacteria into nitrate—the form of nitrogen that plants use. This nutrient solution is used in a recirculating hydroponic system—most commonly raft hydroponics but occasionally NFT or Dutch bucket hydroponics. Due to the weight of fish tanks, aquaculture is rarely a rooftop enterprise, though it would be possible to locate the fish tanks at ground level with NFT hydroponics on the roof.

“Aquaponics has just incredible potential,” Rebecca Nelson, of Nelson and Pade, told EBN, especially if space is tight. “Even an eighth of an acre [500 m2] could be viable for a commercial operation,” she said, making aquaponics a good option in urban areas as long as there is adequate sunlight for the hydroponics.

Nelson and Pade sells packaged systems for aquaponic farming and provides estimates of annual yield. A small commercial system, occupying a total greenhouse footprint of about 16′ x 20′ (5 x 6 m) and selling for about $4,000, including all tanks and raft hydroponic trays, is estimated to produce over 180 pounds (82 kg) of fish and 1,500 heads of lettuce (without supplemental lighting) per year.

Fish waste from a dozen large tilapia tanks (in the background) fertilizes organic greens at this AquaRanch aquaponic facility in Illinois.

To date, there aren’t many commercial-scale aquaponic systems operating in North America. One of the most established is AquaRanch Industries in Flanagan, Illinois, where Myles Harston has been working with aquaculture since 1985 and aquaponics since 1992. In twelve 1,200-gallon (4,500 l) fish tanks and eight hydroponic trays measuring 4′ x 150′ (1.2 x 46 m) in a 12,500 ft2 (1,200 m2) greenhouse, AquaRanch grows tilapia (a freshwater fish favored by aquaculturalists because it does well in low-oxygen, cloudy water) and a wide variety of vegetables including lettuce, kale, chard, herbs, tomatoes, and hot peppers. All of the company’s vegetable produce is certified organic, and Harston is hoping to become certified for organic fish production as soon as that standard, currently under development, is finalized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Demand is strong for AquaRanch’s tilapia filets and organic produce, which the company sells through its website. “We are having trouble meeting the demand,” Harston told EBN.

Growing food inside buildings

What about growing food inside buildings? It’s an idea that has been gaining some attention. BrightFarm Systems is advancing an idea it refers to as the Vertically Integrated Greenhouse. Linsley explained that this technique was originally developed to be incorporated between the layers of glass in a double-skin façade of a commercial building, a system that is more common in Europe than North America. Plants would be grown in little pockets on a vertical frame and managed hydroponically; the inner glazing would separate the greenhouse area from the occupied space.

BrightFarm Systems suggests that the same idea could be implemented on the inside of the glazing, and the company has built a prototype. Some experts EBN spoke with expressed their doubts about the wisdom of that approach, though. Vern Grubinger, Ph.D., an Extension professor and sustainable farming specialist with the University of Vermont, argues that living or working with a relatively small number of house plants is fine, “but when it comes to growing food crops in the home or office, the mismatch between what makes humans and plants comfortable can be problematic.” For optimal production, Grubinger says that crops generally require higher humidity, stronger light levels, and hotter temperatures than one finds in occupied buildings. In addition, managing the fertility and pest issues with crops often means applications of materials that people should limit their exposure to. “In short,” he says, “good fences make good neighbors, and in this case the fence is a wall.” Linsley acknowledges potential conflicts and suggests that xeric (dry-loving) herbs may be most appropriate inside buildings. (For more on plants in buildings, see EBN Vol. 17, No. 10.)

Chickens and livestock in the city

Believe it or not, chicken farming is gaining steam in lots of cities nationwide. Programs in New York City and Portland, Oregon, encourage homeowners to raise hens for egg production (roosters are usually illegal due to noise concerns). Just Food, the nonprofit organization in New York City that has operated The City Farms community gardening program since 1997, launched its City Chickens program in 2006 and publishes The City Chicken Guide. Raising hens complements community gardening programs because of the fertilizer chickens produce.

Laws relating to keeping chickens vary widely. In some cities, such as Boston and Toronto, chickens are banned outright. Other cities, such as Seattle and Baltimore, limit numbers and prohibit roosters. Often there are setback requirements from neighbors, and Minneapolis requires that applicants get approval from 80% of neighbors within 100 feet (30 m). Chicken laws for several hundred cities can be found at www.thecitychicken.com.

As with chickens, there is growing interest in raising bees in some cities. While Boston prohibits chickens, it is one of a number of cities that encourage beekeeping to aid in pollination (others include Chicago, Seattle, Dallas, and San Francisco). Though New York City currently bans beekeeping—classifying bees as “wild and ferocious animals” (along with lions and alligators)—there is an active effort in the city to overturn that designation. Awareness of the value of bees has increased as a result of Colony Collapse Disorder, which has devastated commercial beehives throughout the country.

Raising livestock and poultry for meat is less common in cities, though some large cities permit livestock. Growing Power, an urban farm in Milwaukee, raises ducks and goats for slaughter, the latter serving many of the city’s ethnic communities. Growing Power also uses goat milk to make artisan cheeses.

Vertical farms

BrightFarm Systems in New York City is promoting the idea of producing food inside buildings, as shown in this rendering.

Some suggest that the ultimate in urban farming will be high-rise farm buildings that might produce everything from algae-based biodiesel to salad greens, eggs, beef, and milk. Magazines such as Time, Popular Science, and Scientific American have been rife with articles on this futuristic model of farming. Some articles have even suggested that our meats will be produced in industrial laboratories through cloning of cell tissue—animals won’t even be required.

Dickson Despommier, Ph.D., a professor of Environmental Health Science at Columbia University, has been a leading proponent of this concept through his Vertical Farm Project (www.verticalfarm.com). As an exercise in evaluating possibilities, this is a fascinating discussion, but as a practical reality, it is difficult to imagine that the infrastructure costs of multi-story, vertical farm structures could be even remotely economical. The model also promotes the kind of factory process that many food experts say we should move away from. We’ll leave this discussion, for the time being, to science fiction.

Final Thoughts

Integrating food production into the built environment—from community gardens on empty lots to rooftop hydroponic greenhouses and aquaponics—offers an opportunity to reduce the energy intensity of our food system. This urban and suburban agriculture seems like a new idea, but the basic idea isn’t new at all. A few short generations ago, prior to the industrialization and regionalization of agriculture, local food production was a way of life in America and elsewhere. And in the 1940s, during World War II, Americans were convinced to plant “Victory Gardens,” and they did so by the millions. In 1943, 20 million Victory Gardens produced 40% of America’s fresh vegetables, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Local food production also affords what could prove to be a critically important level of self-sufficiency in an uncertain world. Just as the issue of passive survivability (see EBN Vol. 17, No. 4) addressed why and how to create buildings that will maintain livable conditions in the event of extended loss of power or heating fuel or shortages of water, producing more of our food locally offers a level of security we don’t have today. Hopefully, this won’t become necessary, but the chance that it might should be a strong incentive to move in this direction.

– Alex Wilson

For more information:

City Farmer 
www.cityfarmer.info

Just Food 
www.justfood.org

Nelson and Pade, Inc. 
www.aquaponics.com

Sky Vegetables, LLC 
www.skyvegetables.com

http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm/2009/1/29/Growing-Food-Locally-Integrating-Agriculture-Into-the-Built-Environment/

Leave a Comment

Growing Food Locally: Integrating Agriculture Into the Built Environment (PART 2)

February 14, 2009 at 12:00 pm · Filed under Green Building and Design, Organic Gardening, Sustainable Agriculture, Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Permaculture landscaping

Conventional practice in commercial development of all types is to install generic shrubs and shade trees in a sterile landscape of mounded mulch and turf. One can walk out of almost any office building, school, hotel, or restaurant coast-to-coast, and see the same landscape. Why not devote some of that landscaping cost and effort to trees and shrubs that bear fruit? This is one of the ideas of permaculture, a landscaping practice (the word derived from “permanent” and “agriculture”) pioneered by Bill Mollison of Australia.

While there are plenty of examples of homeowners replacing their lawns with edible landscapes (and a number of excellent books on this topic), EBN was—remarkably—unable to find any examples of commercial buildings whose owners implemented an edible landscaping strategy. Why can’t employees at a Florida office complex go outside for a mid-afternoon stroll and pick a ripe orange from a well-managed landscape of dwarf citrus trees? Why can’t schoolchildren and teachers in Yakima, Washington, pick cherries, raspberries, and apples during recess? Wouldn’t this be the “low-hanging fruit” of a transition to more localized food production?

Farming Our Rooftops

For an article in 1998 on low-slope roofing (see EBN Vol. 7, No. 10), we calculated that the nation’s 4.8 million commercial buildings had about 1,400 square miles (360,000 ha) of roof, most of which is nearly flat—this is an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. While lots of these roofs are shaded by neighboring buildings, are structurally inadequate to support rooftop activity, or are otherwise inappropriate for use, there are lots of buildings where rooftop gardens or greenhouses could very effectively be used for food production.

Green roofs and container farming

Most green roofs today are created to manage stormwater flows, to reduce the urban heat island effect, to save energy, or to create attractive green spaces. Green roofs can also provide “farmland.”

Portland, Oregon, has been a leader in advancing green roofs (eco-roofs, as they are called locally), so it’s no surprise that some examples of food-producing green roofs can be found there. One of them is the Burnside Rocket building, a new mixed-use green building in the Lower Burnside neighborhood of the city. On the roof, Marc Boucher-Colbert manages about 1,000 ft2 (100 m2) of garden space. Included in this growing space are two small sections of intensive green roof ( intensive green roofs have deeper soil than the more common, extensive green roofs—which are typically planted with sedums), six 3′ x 9′ (0.9 x 2.7 m) raised beds, and 39 circular plastic planters made from “kiddie” pools, each about four feet (1.2 m) in diameter. For two years, Boucher-Colbert has been growing a variety of produce for the Rocket Restaurant located on the first floor of the building. (Unfortunately, the restaurant closed in late 2008.)

Boucher-Colbert uses a variety of soil amendments for his organically managed gardens, including kelp meal, glacial rock dust, bone meal, blood, worm casings, and commercially available organic fertilizer. His soil depths vary from about 3″ (80 mm) for the round planter beds to 18″ (460 mm) in the raised beds. When necessary, he waters beds with a solution including a fish-emulsion and kelp organic fertilizer. His goal is year-round food production, offering chefs a variety of healthy, fresh, seasonally appropriate produce. Along with a variety of herbs, Boucher-Colbert has produced lettuce, arugula, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, summer squash, cucumbers, and various specialty vegetables, such as golden-podded peas.

Using green roofs for food production is not without challenges. Along with the structural loading issues (Boucher-Colbert cautions that one should not follow his example without a thorough inspection by a structural engineer), easy access to the roof is critical. In a multifamily residential or commercial building, occupants may not want urban farmers traipsing with wheelbarrows of fertilizer and muddy tools through a public lobby.

Rooftop greenhouses with soil

Eli Zabar’s greenhouse operation in the Upper East Side of Manhattan illustrates the potential for integrating commercial-scale food production onto rooftops. Significantly more food can be produced over a much longer growing season in rooftop greenhouse operations than with open-air green roofs and container gardens. Zabar’s idea for the greenhouses emerged around 1995 from two of his interests. He wanted to stretch the season during which he could sell fresh, local tomatoes, and he wanted to use the waste heat from a bakery he operates. “When I put the two ideas together, the light bulb went off,” Zabar told EBN. He currently manages four greenhouses, the largest 40′ x 100′ (12 x 30 m), with a full-time greenhouse staff of two.

Since he built the first of his rooftop greenhouses, Zabar has always grown in soil. While he has visited lots of successful hydroponic greenhouse operations, he believes that produce grown in soil tastes better. “I’m not interested in hydroponics,” he said. With soil-based growing, he’s also able to make use of compost that he produces on the roof using discards from his market. He has an eight-foot (2.4 m) diameter drum with an auger that is turned regularly to mix the compost. His recipe for compost includes sawdust and bread from his bakery (which supplies about 1,000 restaurants in the city). Zabar would like to compost more of his organic waste but can’t. “We could do a ton more, but there’s a space limitation,” he said.

Ducts from his bakery ovens heat the rooftop greenhouses, providing all of the needed heat for his lettuces and herbs. For tomatoes, he has to supplement that heat to maintain an optimal temperature of 75°F (24°C).

Rooftop hydroponic greenhouses

While Eli Zabar is a strong proponent of soil-based growing, much of the recent interest in rooftop greenhouses has focused on hydroponics, which involves growing plants in nutrient-rich water. This method offers a number of distinct advantages in rooftop applications.

Benjamin Linsley of BrightFarm Systems in New York City (www.brightfarmsystems.com) consults on rooftop greenhouses and claims that hydroponic management is 10–20 times more productive than field agriculture, with far lower water use and higher reliability. After developing the “Science Barge,” a demonstration project with a floating farming component that operated along the Manhattan waterfront in the summers of 2007 and 2008, he shifted his attention to rooftop hydroponic greenhouses. BrightFarm Systems has several hydroponic rooftop greenhouse projects in the queue for construction during the first half of 2009, he told EBN, and another 15 projects that stand a good chance of moving forward before the end of 2010.

There are three basic hydroponic techniques. With raft hydroponics, plants are grown on a floating raft with roots extending into nutrient media. This approach adds considerable weight, depending on the depth of the hydroponic tanks, so it is most commonly used in ground-mounted greenhouses, not rooftop applications.

Nutrient film technique (NFT) hydroponics is used for leafy plants, such as lettuce, spinach, and basil; the nutrient solution is circulated through hollow plastic channels that support the plants, and the plant roots hug the surface of the channel to absorb the water and nutrients. This is a recirculation technique; nutrients are added to the solution in the reservoir. Of relevance to rooftop applications is the lighter weight of NFT compared with other hydroponic approaches or soil. The primary weight is the reservoir, which can be located on a portion of the roof that has adequate structural reinforcement—so the entire roof structure may not need to be strengthened.

Dutch bucket hydroponics involves buckets or bags filled with an inert media—such as perlite, vermiculite, or mineral wool—through which the nutrient solution is circulated; this system is used primarily for tomatoes, peppers, root vegetables, and other plants with more substantial stems. In this type of facility, there is greater weight spread throughout the greenhouse, both from the buckets and the plants themselves, which can be quite heavy when fully grown.

With Dutch Bucket hydroponics, nutrient solution is trickled through buckets or sacks filled with an inert growing medium.

Hydroponic farming necessitates precise management—including careful measurement of nutrient concentrations and adjustment of flow rates. Due to its chemical nature, hydroponics has traditionally been harder to manage organically than soil-based agriculture; hydroponic growers need to know precisely how much of various nutrients are being added to the growing solution, and that’s easier to do with synthetic fertilizers. Michael Christian, president of American Hydroponics in Arcata, California (www.amhydro.com), one of the leading suppliers of hydroponic equipment, told EBN that the hydroponic farming movement has so far been less focused on organic methods. That is beginning to change, though, particularly in Europe.

 http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm/2009/1/29/Growing-Food-Locally-Integrating-Agriculture-Into-the-Built-Environment/ 

Leave a Comment

Growing Food Locally: Integrating Agriculture Into the Built Environment (PART 1)

February 13, 2009 at 5:01 pm · Filed under Green Building and Design, Sustainable Agriculture ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Eli Zabar’s bakery and market on East 91st Street in Manhattan seems like a classic New York market. On my half-dozen visits over as many years, I’ve reveled in the gorgeously displayed vegetables and fruits, the vast array of cheeses, and the wide assortment of breads and pastries baked next door. But Zabar’s market, the Vinegar Factory (named in reference to a prior use of the property), is anything but typical. The sprawling facility connecting multiple buildings demonstrates an unconventional dimension of agriculture: farming that is intertwined with the urban landscape.

In 1995, Eli Zabar, renegade scion of the famous West Side Zabar family, whose markets have been serving New Yorkers for 75 years, began building greenhouses atop his two- and three-story brick buildings on the Upper East Side. These greenhouses, covering nearly a half-acre in area, are producing greens, tomatoes, berries, andeven figs that are sold—not cheaply!—in his market downstairs.

Zabar is ahead of the curve, a pioneer in a trend that is likely to grow dramatically in the coming years. I’ve long been fascinated by the potential for integrating agriculture into the urban landscape—the sea of flat roofs and empty lots in our larger cities. This article looks at the motivation to turn to urban and suburban areas for food production, then examines how to do this, including some of the ways food wastes are being turned into nutrients to grow vegetables, eggs, meat, and fish in our towns and cities.

The Case for Building-Integrated Food

The spike in energy prices in 2008 forced a lot of people to rethink the 1,500-mile journey that, according to author Bill McKibben, an average bite of food travels in the U.S. from where it is grown to where it is eaten. Shipping a head of lettuce from California’s Salinas Valley to New York takes 36 times as many calories as that lettuce contains. According to Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute, we consume two-thirds as much energy to transport food as we use to grow it.

Beyond energy cost, there are additional vulnerabilities in our conventional food-production system. Prolonged drought in California, the start of a new La Niña climate pattern that may exacerbate drought, and inadequate long-term flows in the Colorado River all point to a future with possible water shortages in California’s primary vegetable-producing regions. These vulnerabilities are reviving interest in growing food locally.

The closer to home that vegetables are grown, the healthier they are likely to be. Vitamins in fresh produce break down over time, and some vitamins may never fully form in fruits like tomatoes that are often picked green and artificially ripened in transit. The same goes with taste; vine-ripened tomatoes are far tastier than their machine-harvested brethren from hundreds or thousands of miles away. There may also be health benefits to smaller-scale production. In huge agribusiness operations, Salmonella outbreaks and other contamination problems become national problems affecting thousands of people. According to McKibben, four companies slaughter 81% of the nation’s beef, and a single Ohio farm produces three billion eggs per year. At a smaller scale, any problems that do come up are much more contained, with smaller impacts on the food supply.

Finally, growing food closer to home can help to build awareness of—and appreciation for—food production. Many children growing up today have no relationship with farming; they have never seen a head of lettuce being grown, picked a tomato from the vine, or watched chickens scratching in the soil. Such awareness will help to build respect for the Earth and environment on which we all depend.

Farming and Gardening Vacant Land in Our Cities

City Farm grows lettuce and other produce on top of two feet of rich compost on vacant property in Chicago. An impermeable layer of clay isolates the food from potentially contaminated soil beneath.

Most American cities have a lot of vacant land. A 2000 study by the Brookings Institution, Vacant Land in Cities: An Urban Resource, reported that 70 major American cities averaged 15% vacant land area. Geographically, cities in the South had the most vacant land (19.3% average) and the Northeast the least (9.6%). A movement has been growing slowly for several decades to use that land productively.

This land can be used both for nonprofit and for-profit agricultural operations and community gardens. Provided here are a few examples out of the hundreds that can be found around North America.

Commercial farming operations

Back in 1968 in Chicago, Ken Dunn recognized the potential that vacant land offered for localizing food production and achieving social goals, and he launched City Farm. The farm is one project of the Resource Center, a nonprofit organization Dunn founded that runs a host of programs devoted to building community and strengthening local economies (www.resourcecenterchicago.org). Dunn grew up on an Amish-Mennonite farm in Kansas and has worked to bring to Chicago the Amish philosophy of nourishing and protecting soil, plants, animals, and community. City Farm began “mostly as a social justice project,” Dunn told EBN. Over four decades the organization has farmed a varying area of unused land—currently about two acres (0.8 ha)—using a unique model of farming that protects food from being contaminated by the soils below.

“Almost everything in urban areas is contaminated to some level,” Dunn said. He convinces owners of sizeable urban sites (typically one acre or larger) to “loan” the land to City Farm for several years. A site is graded and compacted, then an impermeable four-inch (100 mm) layer of local clay (typically sourced from construction sites as a waste product) is laid down on top of the existing soil. City Farm then puts down safe, uncontaminated compost on top of the clay, creating growing beds that are 24 inches (600 mm) deep. The farm is established in this compost, 1,000 tons of it per acre (2,200 tonnes/ha).

Because of the thick bed of rich compost and the impermeable layer beneath, City Farm almost never has to irrigate.

City Farm has ensured that the compost is safe—free of herbicides often used on lawns, for example—by controlling exactly what gets composted. City Farm collects food waste, including meat and dairy, from 18 restaurants in the city. Until recently, the organization composted this organic matter itself, using a massive 15-yard (12 m3) hopper and grinder. This composting operation was spread over an acre of land City Farm owned with rows of compost 15 feet (5 m) deep. In 2008, due to red tape from the City of Chicago, City Farm had to close down its own composting operation, and it now trucks the food waste it collects 80 miles (130 km) to a commercial composting facility in Indiana. The organization hopes soon to be able to produce its own compost again—and regain full control over the quality.

To support its operation—and pay a living wage to its three full-time employees—City Farm sells heirloom tomatoes, salad greens, and other produce to 20 restaurants for top dollar ($3.50/pound for tomatoes and $20/pound for greens). At the same time, farm stands sell produce at more affordable prices to local residents.

While City Farm is currently farming only two acres (0.8 ha), significant expansion is likely in the next year with several contract gardens for specific restaurants and a hospital. The hospital, which had to delay construction of a new building due to tight credit markets, is negotiating with City Farm to custom-farm the one-acre (0.4 ha) site and provide all of the produce to the hospital (which will be able to serve more nutritious food to its patients). Even with this likely expansion, though, Dunn is frustrated that their penetration remains so low in a city with 20,000 acres (8,000 ha) of vacant land. “We could farm 100 more acres every year if people took us seriously,” he said.

SPIN Farming

Dan Bravin and Martin Barrett own City Garden Farms in Portland, Oregon. It is one of dozens of businesses throughout North America that are implementing the “SPIN Farming” model of farming enterprise (SPIN for Small Plot INtensive). In 2008, they farmed a dozen small plots, ranging in size from 500 ft2 (46 m2) to 3,000 ft2 (280 m2) around the city, with total planted area of about a quarter-acre (0.10 ha). The land is in backyards of Portland residents who offer it freely.

City Garden Farms sells its produce through a CSA (community-supported agriculture) program. (In a CSA, members pay a seasonal fee in exchange for a weekly delivery of produce.) The farm recouped its startup costs in 2008—about $11,000 spent primarily on a rototiller, seeder, co-linear hoe, and wheel hoe. “It’s not a year-round, full-time employment income,” Bravin told EBN, but with some growth in the farm area and in CSA members from the current 50, the farm should soon provide a living.

The SPIN Farming business model was developed by Wally Satzewich and Gail Vandersteen from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. In the 1980s, they were farming 20 acres (8 ha) of irrigated farmland 40 miles (60 km) north of Saskatoon, but they lived in the city and kept a couple of small plots there for salad crops. They found that they could grow three crops a year on the intensively managed plots in the city and deliver fresher food to their markets. After six years, they sold their larger property and moved their farming totally into the city.

In the years since, they’ve perfected an intensive, standardized, small-plot farming technique based on standard rows governed by the width of their rototiller. Most such operations are managed organically with extensive use of compost. The approach can be used in both urban and suburban areas, the primary limitation being the availability of sites with full access to sunlight.

Satzewich continues to operate a sub-acre farm that is spread over 25 residential backyard plots in Saskatoon, but he and Vendersteen also produce educational guidebooks about SPIN Farming. They have teamed up with Roxanne Christensen, the co-founder and president of the Institute for Innovations in Local Farming in Philadelphia, to promote SPIN Farming in the U.S. Christensen told EBN that 2,200 people have purchased the SPIN Farming guides and, based on the members of an active SPIN farmers email support group, she estimates that there are about 300 SPIN farmers, mostly in the U.S. and Canada, though also in the U.K., Ireland, Australia, and the Netherlands.

Dan Bravin, here using a seeder, farms a dozen backyard lots in Portland, Oregon, using an approach referred to as SPIN Farming.

At City Garden Farms, Bravin has standardized beds that are 2′ x 25′ (0.6 x 7.6 m), and he estimates that each can earn about $100—or $300 per year if three crops are grown on it. His approach is to harvest an entire bed, then prep and reseed that bed. He describes the SPIN Farming approach as very similar to what has been done in Havana, Cuba, since the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in the island nation losing access to cheap fossil fuels.

Community gardens

Along with various models of commercial-scale farming in urban areas, community gardens have also been growing in popularity. There are thousands of grassroots community garden initiatives throughout North America. Some involve just a few individuals sharing growing space on land owned by a city. Others are more extensive, with multiple garden plots on land owned by a nonprofit community gardening organization; some are on private land.

Nuestras Raices in Holyoke, Massachusetts, is a network of community gardens and farm enterprises in this economically depressed western Massachusetts city of 44,000, 40% of whom are Puerto Rican and with unemployment rates as high as 31% in parts of the city. Nuestras Raices (Spanish for “our roots”) was founded in 1992 as an outgrowth of the La Finquita community gardens in the city (www.nuestras-raices.org). La Finquita today includes 31 family garden plots, including one for the Broderick House, a homeless shelter, while the umbrella organization, Nuestras Raices, has blossomed into a diversified economic- and community-development organization that includes eight different community garden networks, two youth gardens, a women’s leadership group, an environmental justice initiative focused on toxic pollution in the city, a green jobs program, and the four-acre (1.6 ha) Tierra de Oportunidades Farm along the Connecticut River, which was purchased with support from the Trust for Public Land.

Since 1980 the Southside Community Land Trust in Providence, Rhode Island, has worked with low-income inner-city residents to convert vacant land into 11 community gardens that are being farmed today by 220 families.

In Detroit, another area suffering from extremely high unemployment rates, the nonprofit group Urban Farming has emerged as an important resource in the struggle to address poverty and hunger. The organization, launched in 2005, manages or oversees more than 50 community gardens in Detroit, and it has expanded nationwide with hundreds of gardens in New York, Newark, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and other cities—more than 400 sites total (www.urbanfarming.org). Urban Farming partners locally with corporations as well as youth groups, senior centers, churches, schools, and other community-based organizations with the mission to “eradicate hunger while increasing diversity, motivating youth and seniors, and optimizing the production of unused land for food and alternative energy.” Harvested food is mostly distributed through local food banks, though neighbors are welcome to pick food for free, according to founder Taja Seville.

http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm/2009/1/29/Growing-Food-Locally-Integrating-Agriculture-Into-the-Built-Environment/

Leave a Comment

Sustainable Urban and Vertical Farming

January 28, 2009 at 1:00 pm · Filed under Sustainable Agriculture ·Tagged , , , , ,

Urban Agriculture Blooms

Urban Farming Grows Up

Comments (1)

Biodynamic Agriculture

January 24, 2009 at 9:00 pm · Filed under going green, Sustainable Agriculture ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Biodynamic agriculture, a method of organic farming that has its basis in a spiritual world-view (anthroposophy, first propounded by Rudolf Steiner), treats farms as unified and individual organisms,[1] emphasizing balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants, animals as a closed, self-nourishing system.[2] Regarded by some proponents as the first modern ecological farming system,[3] biodynamic farming includes organic agriculture’s emphasis on manures and composts and exclusion of the use of artificial chemicals on soil and plants. Methods unique to the biodynamic approach include the use of fermented herbal and mineral preparations as compost additives and field sprays and the use of an astronomical sowing and planting calendar.[4]

The development of biodynamic agriculture began in 1924 with a series of eight lectures on agriculture given by Rudolf Steiner at Schloss Koberwitz in what was then Silesia, Germany, (now in Poland east of Wrocław). The course was held in response to a request by farmers who noticed degraded soil conditions and a deterioration in the health and quality of crops and livestock resulting from the use of chemical fertilizers.[5] An agricultural research group was subsequently formed to test the effects of biodynamic methods on the life and health of soil, plants and animals. In the United States, the Biodynamic Farming & Gardening Association was founded in 1938 as a New York state corporation.

In Australia the first biodynamic preparations were made by Ernesto Genoni in Melbourne in 1927 and by Bob Williams in Sydney in 1939. Since the 1950s research work has continued at the Biodynamic Research Institute (BDRI) in Powelltown, near Melbourne Australia under the direction of Alexei Podolinsky. In 1989 Biodynamic Agriculture Australia was established, as a not for profit association. It has well over 1100 members and has local and regional groups throughout Australia. It publishes the biodynamic journal News Leaf quarterly and is the largest organic growers association in Australia.

Today biodynamics is practiced in more than 50 countries worldwide. The University of Kassel has a dedicated Department of Biodynamic Agriculture.[6]

Biodynamic method of farming

Biodynamic agriculture conceives of the farm as an organism, a self-contained entity with its own individuality. “Emphasis is placed on the integration of crops and livestock, recycling of nutrients, maintenance of soil, and the health and well being of crops and animals; the farmer too is part of the whole.”[7] Cover crops, green manures and crop rotations are used extensively. The approach also attempts to consider celestial (i.e., astrological) influences on soil and plant development and to revitalize the farm, its products, and its inhabitants.[8] Seeds are planted at certain lunar phases.[9]

Treatment of pests and weeds

Biodynamic agriculture sees the basis of pest and disease control arising from a strong healthy balanced farm organism. Where this is not yet achieved it uses techniques analogous to fertilization for pest control and weed control. Most of these techniques include using the ashes of a pest or weed that has been trapped or picked from the fields and burnt. A biodynamic farmer perceives weeds and plant vulnerability to pests as a result of imbalances in the soil.
Pests such as insects or field mice (Apodemus) have more complex processes associated with them, depending on what pest is to be targeted. For example field mice are to be countered by deploying ashes prepared from field mice skin when Venus is in

Seed production

Biodynamic agriculture has focused on open pollination of seeds (permitting farmers to grow their own seed) and the development of locally adapted varieties. The seed stock is not controlled by large, multinational seed companies.[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_agriculture

Leave a Comment

Eat Local – Community Supported Agriculture

January 23, 2009 at 1:00 am · Filed under going green, Sustainable Agriculture ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Intro to Community Supported Agriculture

CSA – Farmer Shares Info About Her CSA Program

Leave a Comment

Organic and Biodynamic Farming

January 22, 2009 at 11:00 pm · Filed under going green, Sustainable Agriculture ·Tagged , , , ,

THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN Official Trailer

Biodynamic Farm Montage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ8arrB_MzU&eurl=http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5414944924665429435&postID=2291378926865877032

Leave a Comment

Could genetically modified crops be killing bees?

January 17, 2009 at 9:00 pm · Filed under environment, Sustainable Agriculture

With reports coming in about a scourge affecting honeybees, researchers are launching a drive to find the cause of the destruction. The reasons for rapid colony collapse are not clear. Old diseases, parasites and new diseases are being looked at.

Over the past 100 or so years, beekeepers have experienced colony losses from bacterial agents (foulbrood), mites (varroa and tracheal) and other parasites and pathogens. Beekeepers have dealt with these problems by using antibiotics, miticides or integrated pest management.

While losses, particularly in over-wintering, are a chronic condition, most beekeepers have learned to limit their losses by staying on top of new advice from entomologists. Unlike the more common problems, this new die-off has been virtually instantaneous throughout the country, not spreading at the slower pace of conventional classical disease.

As an interested beekeeper with some background in biology, I think it might be fruitful to investigate the role of genetically modified or transgenic farm crops. Although we are assured by nearly every bit of research that these manipulations of the crop genome are safe for both human consumption and the environment, looking more closely at what is involved here might raise questions about those assumptions.

The most commonly transplanted segment of transgenic DNA involves genes from a well-known bacterium, bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which has been used for decades by farmers and gardeners to control butterflies that damage cole crops such as cabbage and broccoli. Instead of the bacterial solution being sprayed on the plant, where it is eaten by the target insect, the genes that contain the insecticidal traits are incorporated into the genome of the farm crop. As the transformed plant grows, these Bt genes are replicated along with the plant genes so that each cell contains its own poison pill that kills the target insect.

In the case of field corn, these insects are stem- and root-borers, lepidopterans (butterflies) that, in their larval stage, dine on some region of the corn plant, ingesting the bacterial gene, which eventually causes a crystallization effect in the guts of the borer larvae, thus killing them.

What is not generally known to the public is that Bt variants are available that also target coleopterans (beetles) and dipterids (flies and mosquitoes). We are assured that the bee family, hymenopterans, is not affected.

That there is Bt in beehives is not a question. Beekeepers spray Bt under hive lids sometimes to control the wax moth, an insect whose larval forms produce messy webs on honey. Canadian beekeepers have detected the disappearance of the wax moth in untreated hives, apparently a result of worker bees foraging in fields of transgenic canola plants.

Bees forage heavily on corn flowers to obtain pollen for the rearing of young broods, and these pollen grains also contain the Bt gene of the parent plant, because they are present in the cells from which pollen forms.

Is it not possible that while there is no lethal effect directly to the new bees, there might be some sublethal effect, such as immune suppression, acting as a slow killer?

The planting of transgenic corn and soybean has increased exponentially, according to statistics from farm states. Tens of millions of acres of transgenic crops are allowing Bt genes to move off crop fields.

A quick and easy way to get an approximate answer would be to make a comparison of colony losses of bees from regions where no genetically modified crops are grown, and to put test hives in areas where modern farming practices are so distant from the hives that the foraging worker bees would have no exposure to them.

Given that nearly every bite of food that we eat has a pollinator, the seriousness of this emerging problem could dwarf all previous food disruptions.

About the writer:

John McDonald is a beekeeper in Pennsylvania. He welcomes comments or questions about the bee problem at mactheknife70@hotmail.com.

Author’s Postscript:

The e-mail responses to my original article whether genetically modified crops be killing honeybees that had been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, was universally positive from laypeople and beekeepers. Most researchers, however, rejected the idea out of hand.

I concluded the article with the suggestion that matching colonies should be sited in farm and non-farm regions in order to determine whether, indeed, agricultural practices were the basis for the die-off. (The new die-off has been virtually instantaneous throughout the country, not spreading at the slower pace of conventional classic diseases.)

When it appeared that others weren’t interested in this experiment, I undertook to do my own investigation at my own expense. Because my own bees had died the previous winter, it was necessary to establish new colonies. I established eight colonies in new wooden hives in order to prevent disease transfer from the old hives in case there was a pathogen remaining.

The new colonies arrived late in May because of cold weather at the nursery where they are grown and required the feeding of sugar syrup continually until the hives were in their experimental locations on July 6. Two locations were chosen to fill the need for farm and non-farm sites: one here in Centre County, Pa., in a valley with rolling farmland; the other in Forest County, Pa., adjoining the Allegheny National Forest, an area with no agriculture within foraging range of honeybees. I chose the date of placement to avoid any possible exposure of the bees to Centre County corn pollen. Corn flower tasseling started on July 19.

At both sites the flowers of goldenrod provided ample pasturage, with the honey flow commencing in the middle of August and tapering off by the second week in October. Medium-depth empty honey storage supers (a super is the part of the beehive used to collect honey) were put on the hives at this time in addition to the three brood chambers already there. By the simple expedient of lifting the hives from behind, progress could be roughly monitored.

This monitoring showed that the hives of the farmland bees, while numerous, were not gaining weight. Meanwhile, the non-farm colonies steadily gained weight. This part of the experiment was terminated Oct. 14 with the removal of the honey storage supers, with these results: The farmland bees had not even started to work in the honey supers and will require extensive feeding before winter sets in. The non-farm bee colonies produced, in total, nearly 200 pounds of extra honey in addition to about 150 pounds per hive stored in the over-wintering brood supers. These colonies will be left in place to see whether the die-off of last season is repeated. These results should encourage new research to determine what factor or factors are present in farm country to cause such a discrepancy in honey production.

Editor’s note:

John McDonald’s well researched article is an attempt to show that there is enough evidence to warrant investigating the role that genetically modified crops might have played in the large bee die-off observed the previous fall and winter. He also suggests that the role of genetically modified crops be investigated as a possible cause of the collapse.

source: www.agoracosmopolitan.com

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18206234
http://persianoad.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/nvironmental-destruction-and-biotechnology-could-genetically-modified-crops-be-killing-bees/

Leave a Comment

Cities May Sprout Vertical Farms

January 17, 2009 at 5:00 pm · Filed under Sustainable Agriculture

Proposed high-rise greenhouses could help solve a looming food crisis, professor says.

Farming would seem to be a horizontal occupation. Iowa corn or Kansas wheat pokes up from flat fields that stretch to the horizon.

That’s why the idea of “vertical farms” seems ripe for humor. When its biggest advocate appeared on the faux news show “The Colbert Report” earlier this year, comedian Stephen Colbert prefaced the interview by guessing it would have something to do with corn that grows sideways or perhaps “Chia blimps” that float overhead.

Such teasing hasn’t deterred Dickson Despommier, the Col umbia University professor of public health. He sees putting crops into skyscrapers as a better way to feed a hungry world. Professor Despommier’s website, verticalfarm.com, features architectural concepts of high-rise buildings that could grow fresh produce in urban areas while at the same time being much more environmentally sustainable than conventional agriculture. [Editor’s note: The original story misspelled Dr. Despommier’s first name.]

The trouble is, he concedes, none of the beautiful drawings would work exactly as shown. “They all look pretty,” he says. “[A]t least it means they’re thinking in the right direction.”

What’s needed before millions of dollars are spent to construct or renovate an existing 30-story building into a vertical farm, Despommier says, are prototypes just a few stories high. They should be built at leading agricultural universities and tinkered with until the concept is proved. “Once it does, drive it out of the showroom and take it home,” he says.

While Despommier has won admirers around the world for his innovative thinking, skeptics still wonder how he’s going to handle the problem of solar energy – bringing necessary light to the interior and lower floors of his agri-towers. “As soon as you go vertical, you compound that problem of getting that [solar] energy to the plant,” says Gene Giacomelli, director of the Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Dr. Giacomelli likes the audacity of vertical farms, but says a lot of problems must be solved first. Despommier, he says, “is a forward thinker. He’s challen ging all of us to try to make it happen.”

The challenges also include finding and training indoor “farmers” who can operate what is likely to be a complex system. “There’s nobody at the moment,” Giacomelli says. The technical problems aren’t insurmountable – crops are being grown indoors at the South Pole, albeit at great expense, he says. But, he adds, “There are many more ways to fail [at indoor agriculture] than to grow a crop correctly and succeed.”

The world is going to need vertical farms because conventional agriculture can’t handle what’s to come, Despommier says. By mid century, the world is expected to add another 3 billion people, pushing its population close to 10 billion. Feeding all those extra mouths will require finding an area of agricultural land larger than Brazil – without cutting rain forests needed to stabilize the world’s climate.

Heading skyward, under the controlled conditions of an indoor greenhouse, has many advantages, Despommier says. “You can control nothing outdoors, and you can control everything indoors,” he says. That means no floods, wildfires, hailstorms, tornadoes, or droughts. Plant diseases and pests are more easily controlled, too, meaning less need for herbicides and pesticides.

And indoor agriculture is more efficient. One indoor acre of strawberries can produce as much as 30 outdoor acres can. In general, indoor acreage is four to six times more productive, in part because of the year-round growing season. “Outdoors, you might get one crop [per year]; indoors, you might get four or five crops per year,” Despommier says.

By bringing high-rise agriculture to urban areas, transportation costs are eliminated, and the produce is fresher.

The problem of bringing light to the plants could be solved through artificial lighting, powered by solar, wind, or other methods, Despommier says. All cities have a huge source of unused energy: human sewage. It could be burned to create a significant energy source.

“It’s not a perpetual [motion] machine because you’ll have to supplement from the outside,” he says. But the energy requirements would still be lower than those of conventional farming, with its use of heavy machinery, fertilizers, and long-haul transportation.

Critics remain far from convinced. “The notion of filling a building [with plants] and artificially supplying the light for the plants … from any kind of energy system is one of the weirdest ideas I’ve ever heard of,” says Richard Register, author of “EcoCities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance with Nature.” “It’s not serious agriculture. It’s just not…. It’s an intellectual plaything.”

A better answer is to develop, over time, more compact, energy-efficient cities along the European model, he says. That would free up land near urban areas for conventional agriculture with “100-percent-free solar energy” falling on it. Urban community gardens and high-intensity conventional commercial gardens could also supply part of the need.

Despommier’s students, in fact, first looked at using rooftop gardens to feed Manhattan. They found that farming on flat rooftops could supply only about 2 percent of the island’s food needs. That’s when Despommier hit upon using some of the city’s abandoned buildings to create vertical greenhouses.

He received further inspiration from a children’s book his wife gave him. “Old MacDonald Had an Apartment House,” by Judi Barrett, tells the story of an apartment building supervisor who fills his building with vegetable plants and farm animals as tenants. While Despommier doesn’t see cows or pigs moving into vertical farms anytime soon, he thinks aquaculture could be part of the mix.

“You can start with mollusks – mussels and clams,” he says. Shrimp, striped bass, catfish, and flounder are other possibilities – or chickens, ducks, and geese. “This will have to be done in a way that’s agreeable to consumers, so consumers will set the standard,” he says.

The first working vertical farms are likely to be built outside the United States, Despommier says, where the need is greatest. He’s received interest from Shanghai, China, and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and is currently on a trip to India to address the Indian Institute for Architecture in Bangalore.

Next spring, a class at the Massa chu setts Institute of Technology will look into the idea. Some 15 to 20 seniors majoring in civil and environmental engineering will form teams and create design projects to see just how vertical farming might be accomplished.

“The potential for doing something is great, but frankly I don’t know yet what’s going to happen,” says Herbert Einstein, the engineering professor who will conduct the class at MIT. “If there’s something viable, hopefully we’ll know more by the end of the spring term.”

http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/12/24/cities-may-sprout-vertical-farms

Leave a Comment

How You Can Start a Farm in Heart of the City

January 13, 2009 at 6:00 pm · Filed under Organic Gardening, Sustainable Agriculture


By Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen, Process Media. Posted January 9, 2009.

Sick of flavorless, genetically modified, pesticide-drenched frankenvegetables? It’s time to start growing food in your back yard.

Imagine sitting down to a salad of peppery arugula and heirloom tomatoes that you grew yourself. Or a Sunday omelet of eggs laid that morning, served with a thick slice of fresh sourdough, butter and apricot jam — all homemade, of course. Or imagine toasting your friends with a mead made from local honey. Where would you have to move to live like this? A commune in Vermont? A villa in Italy?

My husband Erik and I have done all of this in our little bungalow in Los Angeles, two blocks off of Sunset Boulevard. We grow food and preserve it, recycle water, forage the neighborhood, and build community. We’re urban homesteaders.

Though we have fantasies about one day moving to the country, the city holds things that are more important to us than any parcel of open land. We have friends and family here, great neighbors, and all the cultural amenities and stimulation of a city. It made more sense for us to become self-reliant in our urban environment. There was no need for us to wait to become farmers. We grow plenty of food in our backyard in Echo Park and even raise chickens. Once you taste lettuce that actually has a distinct flavor, or eat a sweet tomato still warm from the sun, or an orange-yolked egg from your own hen, you will never be satisfied with the pre-packaged and the factory-farmed again. Our next step down the homesteading path was learning to use the old home arts to preserve what we grew: pickling, fermenting, drying and brewing. A jar of jam that you make of wild blackberries holds memories of the summer, and not the air of the Smucker’s factory.

When you grow some of your own food, you start to care more about all of your food. “Just where did this come from?” we’d find ourselves asking when we went shopping. What’s in it? At the same time, we began to learn about cultured and fermented foods, which have beneficial bacteria in them. Few of these wonder-foods are available in stores. The supermarket started to look like a wasteland.

A little history

The idea of urban farming is nothing new. Back in the days before freeways and refrigerated trucks, cities depended on urban farmers for the majority of their fresh food. This included small farms around the city, as well as kitchen gardens. Even today, there are places that hold to this tradition. The citizens of Shanghai produce 85% of their vegetables within the city, and that’s just one example of a long Asian tradition of intense urban gardening. Or consider Cuba. Cubans practiced centralized, industrial agriculture, just as we do, until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Overnight, Cubans were forced to shift from a large, petroleum-based system to small-scale farming, much of it in cities. Today, urban organic gardens produce half of the fresh fruits and vegetables consumed by Cubans.

The United States once was a nation of independent farmers. Today most of us do not know one end of a hoe from the other. In the last half of the 20th century, a cultural shift unique in human history came to pass. We convinced ourselves that we didn’t need to have anything to do with our own food. Food, the very stuff of life, became just another commodity, an anonymous transaction. In making this transition, we sacrificed quality for convenience, and then we learned to forget the value of what we gave up.

Large agribusiness concerns offer us flavorless, genetically modified, irradiated, pesticide-drenched frankenvegetables. They are grown in such poor soil — the result of short-sighted profit-based agricultural practices — that they actually contain fewer nutrients than food grown in healthy soil. Our packaged foods are nutritionally bankrupt, and our livestock is raised in squalid conditions. The fact is that we live in an appalling time when it comes to food. True, we have a great abundance of inexpensive food in supermarkets, but the disturbing truth is that in terms of flavor, quality and nutrition, our greatgrandparents ate better than we do.

There is a hidden cost behind our increasingly costly supermarket food. The French have a term, malbouffe, referring to junk food, but with broader, more sinister implications. Radical farmer José Bové, who was imprisoned for dismantling a McDonald’s restaurant, explains the concept of malbouffe:

I initially used the word ‘shit-food’, but quickly changed it to malbouffe to avoid giving offense. The word just clicked — perhaps because when you’re dealing with food, quite apart from any health concerns, you’re also dealing with taste and what we feed ourselves with. Malbouffe implies eating any old thing, prepared in any old way. For me, the term means both the standardization of food like McDonald’s — the same taste from one end of the world to the other — and the choice of food associated with the use of hormones and Genetically Modified Organisms as well as the residues of pesticides and other things that can endanger health. — The World is Not for Sale by José Bové and Franois Dufour

So what are the strategies urban homesteaders can follow to avoid malbouffe? Farmers’ markets, co-ops and natural food stores serve as good supplements to the urban homestead, but we’ve found that growing our own food, even just a little of it, rather than buying it, not only results in better quality food, it has changed our fundamental relationship to food and to the act of eating itself. Now, now not only do we know our crops are free of pesticides and GMOs but we discovered an entirely new world of taste and flavor that big agribusiness had stolen away from us. Growing your own food is an act of resistance. We can all join with José Bové in dismantling the corporations that feed us shit.

We’ve also shifted from being consumers to being producers. Sure we still buy stuff. Olive oil. Parmigiano reggiano. Wine. Flour. Chocolate. And we’re no strangers to consumer culture, not above experiencing a little shiver of desire when walking into an Apple computer store. But still, we do not accept that spending is our only form of power. There is more power in creating than in spending. We are producers, neighbors, and friends. Think you don’t have enough land to grow your food?

Change the way you see land.

Before you start thinking that you have to move somewhere else to grow your own food, take another look around. With a couple of notable exceptions, American cities sprawl. They are full of wasted space. As a homesteader, you will begin to see any open space as a place to grow food. This includes front yards as well as backyards, vacant lots, parkways, alleyways, patios, balconies, window boxes, fire escapes and rooftops. Once you break out of the mental box that makes you imagine a vegetable garden as a fenced-off parcel of land with a scarecrow in it, you’ll start to see the possibilities. Think jungle, not prairie. The truth is that you can grow a hell of a lot of food on a small amount of real estate. You can grow food whether you’re in an apartment or a house, whether you rent or own.

Do you have 4′ ? 8′ feet of open ground? If you don’t have a yard, do you have room on a patio or balcony for two or three plastic storage tubs? If you don’t have that, then you could get a space in a community garden, a relative or neighbor’s house, or become a pirate gardener, or an expert forager — some of the tastiest greens and berries are wild and free for the taking.

Think you don’t have time? Think again.

We homestead at our own pace, to suit ourselves. Some things, like bread baking, have become part of our regular routine. Other kitchen experiments, like making pickles, come and go as time allows. More ambitious projects, like installing a greywater system, take time up front, but save time once implemented. It’s unlikely that we spend any more time on our food-producing yard than we would on a traditional lawn-and-roses-type yard. You can set up your urban (or suburban) farm so that it takes minimal time to keep it going — we talk about ways to do that in this book.

Sometimes, when life gets too crazy, we don’t do anything beyond the barest maintenance, and eat a lot of pizza. Nothing wrong with that.

Besides saving time, with the exception of a few ambitious projects, like converting to solar, everything we talk about in this book is also cost-effective. Homesteading is all about reusing, recycling, foraging and building things yourself. Seeds are cheap, composting is free. Nature is standing by, waiting to help. And as oil prices continue to rise along with the cost of food, learning to grow your own may be one of the wisest investments you can make.

The paradigm shift

Urban homesteading is an affirmation of the simple pleasures of life. When you spend a Saturday morning making a loaf of bread, or go out on a summer evening after work to sit with your chickens, or take a deep breath of fresh-cut basil, you unplug yourself from the madness. Many of us spend a lot of each day in front of a computer. Homesteading hooks us into the natural world and the passing of the seasons, and reminds us of our place within the greater cycle of life.

Our style of homesteading is about desire. We bake our own bread because it is better than what we can buy. We raise our own hens because we like chickens, and we think their eggs are worth the trouble. Erik bicycles everywhere because that’s a thrill for him. There’s mead brewing in our guest bedroom because you can’t buy mead at the corner liquor store — and because fermentation is the closest thing to magic that we know.

Maybe you aren’t so into gardening, but would like to brew your own beer. Maybe you’d like to tinker with a greywater system for your house. Maybe you want to make your own non-toxic cleaning products. Try it! Start by doing just one project, one experiment, and you may well unleash the homesteader within.

The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen

http://www.alternet.org/story/118483/?page=2

*I have added italics.

Leave a Comment

Older Posts »
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.