This man should get a MacArthur grant.
This is brilliant, and I’m looking forward to this hour.
This show makes up for that silly one on the birthers.
Personally I think more positive shows on people doing good things like this are important. There is so much wasted land in Boston. This should be done here.

We have been turning our lawn into a vegetable and flower garden. Every year more of the lawn is torn up reclaimed for food and bee loving flowers. we are still trying to figure out how to get this work better to lower or food cost. So far we have been experimenting with different crops to see which do best in this area, Boston.

Kale and Collard greens are the hardest. I had some kale that survived the winter and came back. We were eating it in April.

Some beans do better then others as well. For me finding what will grow best and give the most food is my mission. I wish we could have hens for eggs but I think my neighbors would object. Also I fear my dog would spend most of his waking hours trying to figure out how to kill them. He’s good at keeping the rabbits away.

woops I meant to say he deserved the MacArthur grant.
Sorry. He should get another one.

Um…Putney there are tons of urban sustainable agriculture organizations in Boston. I used to work for The Food Project, which works in the Roxbury and Lincoln, MA. http://www.thefoodproject.org

Mieko thanks, I never new that the Food Project was out there.

I live near Roxbury and Mattapan so I’ll have to look into this.

Why didn’t On Point invite someone from the Food Project, or other local organizations (BNAN) in the Boston area to the show? I hope someone from these organizations calls in during the discussion.

Great mix of backyard gardening and farms here in the City of Newburyport.Plus personal fishing shellfish harvesting for food and fun.

Love it! I am so glad this is getting covered.

Hey Mieko! Glad to know you’re listening to this too!

One of the Food Project urban lot is behind 555 Dudley Street (their main office). They also have a farm up in Lynn. TFP is just one organization…and the movement is growing.

Cuba has an interesting urban agriculture system.

To bad the soil on the White House lawn is so contaminated from an herbicide sprayed during Clinton’s tenure that you can’t eat it anything grown in it. The First Lady has the right idea, except the did not test the soil.

This is something that should be brought up.
A lot of soil in urban areas are contaminated.
You need to test the soil first.

I currently live north of Boston in a very urban setting in Beverly, Ma. I have a degree in horticulture and live to garden! Me and my wife rent and have turned our small apt yard into an urban oasis and have become a bright spot in an otherwise non-descript street. We grow ornamentals alongside vegetables and most people stop and smile as they walk past our home! We have gotten away from nature as a species! There was a time when man new how to feed himself without the aid of the government or the grocery store and I believe that it should be mandated that everyone grows at-least part of their own food! This is a great topic and exactly why I listen to NPR! It just makes sense! We became a cultured population because of agriculture and it is in our blood, put your hands in the soil and see if you remember how to grow your own!

… for the time in my life I am growing tomatoes —on wheels == here in boston …
wheels because my yard is so shaded by trees .

as a one time irish farmer i take great pleasure in nurturing my mini garden…

I think you missed answering some of the “who, what, when and where” questions. Allen is a CEO. Does that mean he owns this farm? Where does the money for these investments come from? Who do the profits go to? Who runs the farm? How does the community participate? He said at the beginning that he gets youth involved – how? through the schools, through neighborhood organizations? And the bigger question – how do your guests think that the whole nation can be supplied with food through small scale farming and part-time farmers?

Don’t forget about backyard chickens! They are very much a part of the urban food movement and there is a nationwide burgeoning interest in keeping small flocks of chickens (3 to 15 birds) in urban and suburban environments. We live in Westwood and have 9 chickens. There is nothing like a fresh egg from your own backyard hens. Plus they eat bugs and give us fertilzer for the garden.

Check out Youtube where they have the old Victory Garden film footage. They tell you exactly how to start and to maintain your garden, and it is organic. I also belong to a CSA to help get greater variety and to help my local organic farmer to survive and get stronger.

Joanna how about you click on the link and read the info on the web site.

http://www.growingpower.org

From the web site:

In 1993, Growing Power was an organization with teens

who needed a place to work

Will Allen was a farmer with land.

Will designed a program that offered teens an opportunity to work at his store and renovate the greenhouses to grow food for their community. What started as a simple partnership to change the landscape of the north side of Milwaukee has blossomed into a national and global commitment to sustainable food systems.

Since its inception, Growing Power has served as a ”living museum” or “idea factory” for the young, the elderly, farmers, producers, and other professionals ranging from USDA personnel to urban planners. Training areas include the following: acid-digestion, anaerobic digestion for food waste, bio-phyto remediation and soil health, aquaculture closed-loop systems, vermiculture, small and large scale composting, urban agriculture, perma-culture, food distribution, marketing, value-added product development, youth development, community engagement, participatory leadership development, and project planning.

Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but in the 19th century, people use to keep farm animals in the cities and the problems with feces and animals running loose was part of the reason we have zoning laws. The stories of small children being attacked by pigs who either ran loose or got loose from the early 1800 are quite ugly. In the 1850s when they passed laws to get pigs out of the city, people tried to hide the pigs in their homes.

I have property in Allston — most of the open land is really nasty, so I grow vegetables in big pots–for almost twenty years all my kitchen scraps have been composited and put into the “vegetable” pots — just sand and compost to grow amazing stuff — plus gold fish in the rain barrel to eat the mosquitoes…

I live in South Florida and have grown tomatoes, broccoli and squash for the last 3 springs. Unfortunately with the heat and water restrictions, our growing season is extremely short, 1 harvest. I would love to grow produce year round. We do have citrus trees and pineapples too.

I guess we need to focus on getting ‘good’ dirt into our garden and we have started a small compost pile, but we need to do more. With an acre of land, we should be doing more with it than just cutting the grass.

Good gosh, these people are playing at farming. I want you to picture all the animals it takes to feed a community. I want you to think about how much fecal matter that would be generated. I certainly encourage people to grow vegeatables, but keeping animals is a joke. Nor does anyone on this show want to talk about slaughtering these animals.

…if the apple you pick up at the market says “from new zealand”, you can’t afford to buy it, no more what the price…

You can’t keep large live stock in the city of Boston.
That means no goats, sheep, or pigs.

Chickens are legal as long as you don’t have a rooster.
Roosters while they are a pain do protect the hens from small predators.

By the way having chickens in an urban environment can be risky. In my area of Hyde Park we have coyotes, possums, raccoons, and rats, and my dog. Keeping them would mean building a pretty good fort/chicken coop.

Ten years ago I worked on organic farms on empty lots and city-owned lots in the City of Providence. It required intense labor and committment. There were many highlights of the experience. At the end of the harvesting season we sold vegetables at an open air farmer’s market. It brought the community together and I will never forget the moments I shared with my farming co-workers. Teaching community members how to cultivate and maintain the land was a valuable and enriching experience that everyone should take part in. I am now a resident of Southern California and I hope that the program in Providence is continuing to thrive amidst these harsh economic conditions.

As someone who actually *has* chickens, I can say we also have to think about coyotes, possums, raccoons, rats, squirells, cats,dogs as well as HAWKS. A secure and well made coop will protect chickens from predators. And we have laying breeds, not meat birds, which are a genetically a totally different type of chicken. I compost the chicken poo then add it to my garden.

I had the privilege to coordinate and work with 3rd and 4th graders in the Roxbury,MA neighborhood. As Will said, most of these kids didn’t know where their food came from other than the supermarket. This was sad but over time we grew vegetables familiar to them and made healthy meals in the kitchen with them. Five years ago, PBS’ featured my group of students, from planting potatoes to harvesting and cooking, on the Arthur Show.

I now work in higher education as sustainability coordinator and its inspiring to see college students grow food on campus. Yale has an interesting garden that supplies food for its campus dining halls.
Interesting stuff going on with this food revolution.

Phyllis do you live in Boston?
Because where I live it would be real hard to have chickens. I want too but some of my neighbors are already eying us with as weirdo’s fro ripping up our front lawn and putting in raised beds.

I see you live in Westwood, very nice site and that chicken coop looks great.

I have friends in Vermont who have a large chicken coop and the only predictor that gets into it is the Fishercat.

We live in Westwood, which is right south of Dedham where 128 meets 95 south. The commuter rail is at the end of my street. The coop you see on our blog (the original one, not the new expanded one) is perfect for three birds and it’s intended for a small urban site. The plans are available on Ebay just search on “Playhouse Coop”. The run could be a bit larger for three heavy breed hens but otherwise its ideal for a small flock of 3 chickens. As for the neighbors….when you give them fresh eggs they will come around trust me! BTW – hens do not make any noice otehr than soft clucking, the average dog is more noisy/destructive.

I’m very excited about hearing this program and will do so when it hits the archive.

Allen spoke here hosted by the local private university in Appleton, Wisconsin. This was a couple months ago and I was very impressed with the number of activities that Growing Power does. Growing Power has 60 activities from it’s growing projects to its education activities and food distribution network.

Here too the university hosting Allen’s insightful and truly non-saccharine inspirational presentation shows how urban farming can be truly marketed efficiently.

Allen’s background includes not only sports but a stint at Procter and Gamble. The NY Times piece is well worth reading.

The urban farming which Allen has designed is built on a model that can be replicated. Growing Power has staff to accomplish this if people want to learn this self sufficiency.

Cuba was mentioned above. That kind of growing power is documented in a dvd called “The Power of Community” which is readily available.

Thanks OnPoint for recognizing Will Allen.

FYI in case you haven’t already seen this article, which appeared in the July/August issue of E – The Environmental Magazine:

“SPIN in the City
A New Form of Farming That Can Transform Cities”

By Miranda C. Spencer

Here’s a link to the on-line version:
http://www.emagazine.com/view/?4722

[...] LISTEN Tags: radio Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. [...]

What most interested me about the On Point discussion was Will Allen’s comment about the need to grow good soil in the city. His large scale composting project in Milwaukee should be replicated in other cities. So much food waste gets thrown into dumpsters (along with way too much cardboard and other recyclables). I’d love to see Boston have a large scale commercial compost and recycling system.

[...] Novella Carpenter offered advice on squatting urban land and growing food on the vacant lots during an interview with On Point, a Boston area public radio show. Carpenter says that many vacant lot owners are [...]

I question the caller from Connecticut reporting on growing “organic” veggies on brown fields like former gas stations, etc currently.

How do you define “organic” in the northeast? The organic farmers in California created CCOF(certified organic farmers) to establish ground rules before labelling anything organic. The mega-business farmers prevented the national/usda definition of “organic” to reflect the much more clean practices of the CCOF.

I loved this show and hope you will have more like it. Now I have to explain what “it” means. Not talking heads from opposing camps discussing issues which are not really debatable like global warming. Not authors who picked a very obscure topic so they would be original. I supposed “it” is visionaries who are actually doing something about our problems or proposing really original solutions.

A little off topic, but does anyone know the name of the artist and song that was played at the end of the clip?

Just viewed the movie FOOD INC.(too bad there is a limited theatre release) and it is a pity Mr. Allen was not featured in it himself. Hopefully there will be a sequel and he will be!
Peak oil is here now and we will no longer be able to truck out food thousands of miles away and that will require millions of new people learning to produce food in hopefully a sane humane manner.
The folks that will lose there employment in the airlines, auto, trucking, ect will find them here.
Thank you NPR and WBUR for this program.