urban farming-organic process within community – by linda

It is hard for me to begin to share my story about the urban farm project without first sharing the story of the land we are blessed to be farming on. There is a beautiful herstory/history of community activism here, it’s about the tending of community space by a group of folks in the Cascade neighborhood, and it continues to grow. The whole of the area, currently used for food production, rainwater collection and the Garden of Happiness is situated on half a city block. Amongst the gardens is the Cascade People’s Center, a small single story community center. The other half is a park. One full block of community gathering space!

i moved to this neighborhood eight years ago, and it has been a blessing to be a part of this community- a chance for so much learning! After about a year living here, i felt ready and committed to dig my roots deep into the soil.

i will go deeper into the herstory/history about the P-patch and Garden of Happiness in another writing.

In 2000, i began working with Jill Lance on the Giving Garden, an area of soil that is around 1500 square feet. We worked with youth in the neighborhood to build beds, amend the soil and plant food that would be for the community and neighborhood food-bank. We established a raspberry patch, and nurtured three apple trees that were donated to the project. Ben and JoJo, two fellow P-patchers rounded out the team. We worked together the first two years planting, tending and harvesting this patch of earth. Jill left the project when she and her partner rode their bicycles across country (Seattle to Northeastern Canada!).

The project has evolved with some new dedicated people tending to the growing of food. Harvey does most of the Giving Garden orchestration now, JoJo continues to be a part of the harvest and transport food to the food-bank, i focus my attention on the ‘fruit orchard’ with Harvey. The fruit orchard came out of a vision through an on-going community conversation. We had established the raspberries, planted cuttings from a red currant that grows in the P-patch, tended to the three apple trees, which after three years, were beginning to produce fruit.

A city project to ‘re-model’ the park next to the gardens, left an area that connects the p-patch to park open for community involvement. Seeing this opportunity, we began to plant an orchard of community fruit trees! Six different varieties of plum, two Asian pear, two Peach, Blueberries!!!, currants, salmon-berry, artichoke, and various herbs. One of the Peach trees was planted at the parking entrance to the Cascade People’s Center, while the other is readying for it’s second winter in what is now the urban farm project.

The intention for establishing this fruit orchard is to continue the process of reclaiming urban soil, to nurture and plant edibles that can be eaten by critters and humans, for FREE! This inherently connects us to the source of our food, encouraging that source to be a local one.

i see this as a revolutionary action, to grow our food in the urban core, although there are truly few wild-spaces left on this earth, we can, with wild synergy, break through asphalt and concrete to scatter seeds, the rest is up to the organic process, we are but a small piece of the greater coming together of the elements!

The Farm sits on a small patch of land shared by a rainwater catchment tank that was installed by the group working to transform the People’s Center into an environmentally focused learning center. Because the site had been recently transformed from a parking lot-alley way, the first year the focus was to amend the soil a bit. We planted sunflowers and pumpkins. We continued to build the soil through that winter by planting rye grass and clover (the rye grass flourished, the clover-not so well, but i am not surprised it being our first year).

We planted six varieties of garlic this fall and are in the process of bedding the garden down for the second winter, after a successful first season of growing veggies!! This first year we were able to water the area, using captured rainwater until about August, i think the use of rainwater is one of the keys to the success of the season.

Working with the children that attend the free after-school program at the People’s Center is such a blessing. We get together once a week to work on various farm related projects. Last year, the children, through a group process decided what they wanted to grow in the garden- pumpkins, sunflowers, soy-beans, three varieties of corn-heirloom black, yellow and pop-corn, tomatoes, swiss chard, peas, and bush beans.

It is so beautiful to witness the kids eating freshly harvested raw beans!!! We planted fall bearing raspberries, followed by blueberries and a golden variety of raspberry.

i will add that currently there are five of us, besides the kids, that are committed to this project- Tim, Maria-Jose, Chris, Stephanie and Myself.

This will be an ongoing uncovering of truth, tending to this patch of earth, i am truly thankful for every aspect of this unfolding.

Thanks for taking the time to read this story. Linda