Yes! I am still alive. The lack of internet has been very frustrating.
I will write more tomorrow (I'm trying to upload pictures, but no luck). So I thought I'd post about this interesting story I heard on VPR's (Vermont Public Radio) "The Splendid Table with Lynn Rossetto" this weekend. This man is an inspiration, and I decided to buy his book (because I am a little skeptical - what does 10,000 people really mean?) But it's so much of what I want to do with life! I believe that everyone should have access to clean, healthy food, not just higher income people and families. And I think that something like this needs to happen in rural America too - just because you live in the middle of nowhere does not mean you farm. There are so many people and families who live rurally who do not have access, or are not education on clean, healthy food. Read on. Oh, and also, he's black. Say what!?
Will Allen is proving that
city farms work -- big time. He’s not conjuring up theories; everything
that he is teaching in cities across the country he learned over the
course of 20 years with his hands in the dirt, a little money in his
pocket and a survivalist’s smarts for innovating.
He grows food in ways
that few have seen before -- and he grows it sustainably. Allen’s 3-acre
farm sits in the poorest part of Milwaukee and now feeds 10,000 people a
year. It brought him a MacArthur grant and his neighbors good, healthy
eating. The story is in Allen’s book The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People and Communities. [Ed. note: Read an excerpt from Allen's book here.]
Lynne Rossetto Kasper:
It’s 1993, you’ve got a good job, you are driving through one of
Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods, and you see a collection of
broken-down greenhouses and a field of weeds. You decide to cash in your
401(k), buy them and become an urban farmer. Were you crazy?
Will Allen: I think
my wife thought I was crazy and probably some other folks as well. But
one of the things that I saw was a community that was densely populated:
It was in a location that was halfway between two freeways, five blocks
away was the largest housing project in Milwaukee, and the closest
retail grocery store was about 4 miles away. I looked at this as a place
where I could sell my farm produce.
LRK: You already had a farm and you decided to use this as the farm stand?
WA: Yes.
LRK: But instead you ended up producing 40 tons of food a year from those 3 acres.
WA:
You could quantify it in a number of different ways. We grow enough
food there to feed about 10,000 people in a very intense and integrated
food system. We grow about 150 different crops in an unusual way.
We started out as a
for-profit for the first 2 years. I was working with kids in the
neighborhood, teaching them about where their food came from. Some of my
friends said, “Why don’t you start a nonprofit?” I said, “No, I like
working with kids. If we start doing this nonprofit piece, I would need
help.” They volunteered to be the first board and do the administrative
piece, because I said, “I don’t want to sit in the office and write
grants.” That’s how we got started back in 1995.
WA:
We’ve grown from those early years to where we are today. We have more
than 20 farms and 110 employees, we have 15 regional centers around the
U.S., and we farm about 200 acres. We’ll be hiring another 150 people in
the next year or so and increasing our greenhouse year-round production
to more than 100 acres in and around Milwaukee, Madison and Chicago.
LRK: This is all urban farming that serves what are known as food deserts of major cities?
WA:
It’s really about serving everybody in a community because people are
not eating very good food that is shipped in. During the shipping
process, much of our food loses nutrient value -- a lot of times it is 7
or 8 days from the time it comes off the vine or the stalk before we
get it into our bellies. What we are trying to promote is local
agriculture, working with farms in the city. When I talk about urban
agriculture, I’m also talking about farms that are right on the fringe
of the city.
We are building hoop
houses -- which are a cheap version of an A-frame greenhouse -- all over
the place, wherever we can find land, whether it is asphalt, concrete
or hard-pinned clay.
But the key to this
whole piece is the fact that we grow soil -- we grow compost. So we
collect food waste from a number of different places and we have a
large-scale compost operation. We wouldn’t have been able to scale up
like we have done without growing this soil.
LRK: There was something about worms as livestock?
WA:
That’s what I consider them. I wasn’t the originator of that term,
actually; it came from Heifer International. Having cows and pigs in the
city isn’t very practical, so what they came up with were worms and
fish. The worms are a catalyst for breaking down food waste into worm
castings for fertilizer. Being able to grow fish allows families to have
protein in these food-desert areas.
LRK: What do you see as the major issues in food today?
WA:
I think the major issue is that, as citizens, we don’t know very much
about the food we eat. We just take for granted that it’s healthy. Over
the last 10 to 12 years we’ve had multiple food scares.
A local food system
makes a lot of sense to me, because the money stays in that community
and we can create thousands of jobs. We are losing rural farmland and
rural farmers. So what we need to do is not only grow soil, but grow
farmers, train farmers to be able to farm a different kind of way. Not
like our fathers and grandfathers farmed, but this new kind of farming
where you are thinking about square footage and growing in unusual
places inside the city inside buildings and on rooftops.
What’s driven me is to
be a part of ending world hunger. The United Nations stated in 2010 that
the only way to end world hunger is through local food systems. It
benefits everybody to have a local food system. My energy and the energy
at Growing Power goes into creating and quantifying these things
because people don’t believe that you can grow a significant amount of
food inside a city. It is not the total answer. It’s going to take a
renaissance of farmers as well as urban farmers to develop this
sustainable food system.
.
Today we had to move the 6 pigs out to the corral, where it's easier to load them. On Monday they are going to market. Animals are funny. The pigs were so excited to go outside, but they were so afraid of the grass. There is a little grass patch between the concrete pad that runs outside of the barn and the corral. You would think they'd be all happy to walk around on something soft. But nope. They'd much rather stay with what they know. We tried patiently to push the pigs out, the crew and I standing behind the pigs with boards, moving up as they moved closer to the grass. But they were not having it. We knew we'd just have to wait them out, until one brave little pig was curious enough to step on the grass. One finally was, but the others were still a little slow to follow. About 30 minutes later they all came on to the grass and we were able to close the gates behind them. Soon enough they went into the corral. They were very happy to sprint back and forth - they haven't had that much space to run in ever (unfortunately)! 
Some very sad news today. One of my favorite dogs passed away last night. I was told of the news this morning. Ava was a dog of my close friends, and I was able to become very close to her. She was a beautiful German Shepherd, and we formed quite a bond. Her owners would tell me stories about how she would suddenly start whining, jumping around, barking a little and they couldn't figure out why. Then about one or two minutes later I would appear. Whenever I went over to walk her, she would be so excited her teeth would chatter! Even after not seeing her for about 5 months in April and I went to walk her, it was like I had never left - she still remembered me. We had some wonderful adventures in the woods at the Farm and good, hard runs on the three mile loop around her house. I remember one time someone else had been watching her while her owners where away. One morning about three people came running to me to tell me that she was out. I ran outside and saw her immediately, walking up into the woods outside of the Main House. "Ava, come!" I yelled. She looked right at me and came running, so happy to see me, so happy to be roaming around. She followed me back to the house, where her dog sitter was a little surprised by her escape. I'm so grateful for the trust her owners had in me to let me take her out, and so grateful for Ava's trust in me. Shepherds are one loyal dog. I'm so sad about her death, I have been crying on and off for most of the day. I knew I loved her, but I guess I'm a little surprised by my emotion of her death. I suppose I felt in some little way she was my dog too. Now, more than ever, I know I need to get a dog of my own. I did talk to my roommate tonight who knew my bond with Ava. She's supportive of me getting a dog - woo woo! I just hope I can find one where my connection will be as strong as the one I had with Ava.
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