Hello everyone.
I hope you are bundling up
well during the cold weather we're having (if you are in Southwestern Ontario, I mean ... -18C for London overnight!). And if
you are cocooning inside, I hope you have lots of seed catalogues. I just received two from Vesey's out of PEI. The one is of
bulbs and plants - and has a gorgeous poppy on the front. I'm actually afraid to look inside it and be
tempted! I love poppies.
(In case you want a list of
good sources for seeds, check out the resources page of Community Gardens
London - www.communitygardenslondon.ca - where there is a list that includes a
place from most of the provinces. An
alter ego of mine maintains the website.)
I hadn't meant to start
talking about seeds. I was just looking
over the City Farmer website (www.cityfarmer.info) and was excited by the
variety of topics that turn up there: urban agriculture ideas and projects from
so many different places. The dozen or so articles
most recently posted (thursday evening) by the amazing Michael Levenston are:
Seeds of Change®, a U.S. seed company (heritage and organic focus) and maker
of nutritious organic foods just awarded twelve (12!) $10,000 grants to
community groups to carry out community based gardening or sustainable farming
projects. www.seedsofchange.com
There is a proposal in Detroit to by a group called RecoveryPark to turn a 3 acre
site into an urban agriculture [social enterprise] project to fund its
addiction treatment programs.
Cultivating Community, Harvesting Health – Community
Gardens to Urban Farms is the
positive title of The American Community Gardening Association's annual
conference to take place in Seattle
in August.
http://www.communitygarden.org/
A film about food in Austin,
Texas explores the idea of what it would be like if an
entire city could feed itself with healthy, local, organic food. A big dream and people are trying to make it
reality.
http://www.farmcitystate.com/donatepress.html
A beautifully illustrated
calendar - all vegetables! -
National Center for
Appropriate Technology, together the [U.S.] National
Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA) are calling for papers on
Innovations and Trends in Sustainable Urban Agriculture. There's going
to be a special issue on "Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems."
National Sustainable
Agriculture Infomormation Service: ATTRA - www.attra.org
National Centre for
Appropriate Technology: NCAT - www.ncat.org
Barry Thomas Becht and Binah
Godisall are a writer- artist team writing children's books in a series called
Seven Kind Kids. They've just done one
titled The Community Garden.
(I'm looking for their own website, so I don't put in a link to the Amazon conglomerate)
(I'm looking for their own website, so I don't put in a link to the Amazon conglomerate)
from Local Food supported by
the Big Lottery Fund. It will use it for its Islington Combined Harvest project
to try to produce high quality local produce for people in the area. The café
will host tastings and children will be invited to learn about food production
and agriculture.
Linked by Michael Levenston
The Canmore Community Garden in Alberta has plots for 100 gardens. There's a new video out (from Verge
Permaculture, I think) about the garden and one of its founders, Crystel
Vultier. Vultier also started the Farm
Box project which sources local and organic food right from the farmers and
distributes to 130 families weekly.
the video is right on City
Farmer: http://www.cityfarmer.info/2013/01/20/canmore-community-garden-in-alberta/
Information about Canmore Community Garden: http://canmorecommunitygardening.org/
At the Moritzplatz in Berlin, a busy roundabout in the centre of bustling
Kreuzberg, well over a thousand supporters have helped the site to grow “from
an ugly vacant lot to a paradise”. Over 500 different types of herbs and
vegetables are growing here.
Linked by Michael Levenston
St Werburghs City
Farm is 34 years old
Two popular lion-haired
rabbits have been returned to St Werburgh’s City Farm after they were stolen in
a New Year’s Eve break-in. Vandals damaged animal pens, CCTV units and security
lights at the Farm’s charity centre during the raid at 9.45pm. Following an appeal for information in The Post,
police say they received an anonymous tip off from the community. The rabbits
were then recovered from an address in Easton where the suspect was arrested.
The Badger Rock Middle School currently has 100 sixth and seventh-graders but will
expand to 150 students next year. Students learn in a state-of-the-art building
on Madison’s south side. The Center for Resilient Cities hosted
a grand opening celebration on Sept. 18, 2012.
Makers and Eaters
Unite: 100 farmers, 1 city
Fresh City is a city farm. We incubate farmers that change lives
by farming the city for a living. Heading into our third growing season we are
confident that our model is scalable. We want to expand our member farmer
program so that each neighborhood has a farm and a farmer. We are confident
that we can have 100 farmers growing 1,000,000 pounds of produce in Toronto within the next two years. But we need your help.
National Conference
“Enhancing Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture for sustainable livelihoods”
14-15 February, 2013
14-15 February, 2013
Planning for the
Business of Growing Food in BC’s Towns and Cities
Complete Report on-line. ...written
to help planners, engineers, and administrators ... to gain a better
understanding of the potential, pitfalls, and best practices for growing,
potentially raising, and selling food within town boundaries. Strategies and
approaches outlined in the Guidebook provide local governments with tools to
proactively plan for urban farming. This resource has been developed in
collaboration and consultation with urban farmers, municipal staff, academics,
and advocates.
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