Urban Agriculture: Breaking Ground!

As you can see above I have been engaging in a little Urban farming here and there.  As a follow up to my last post I wanted to share some pictures showing how a boring old back yard can be transformed into part of an urban patchwork farm.

New Initiatives in the Air: Young Urban Farmers-Community Shared Agriculture

 March 28 marked the groundbreaking event for the Young Urban Farmer's CSA project. Before I go any further I will define my terms and explain what exactly is a "CSA" and what exactly is a "Young Urban Farmer"


Ahem..I hope I have this right..


Young Urban Farmers is a small business started by Torontonion and fellow young person Christopher Wong.  YUF promotes food sustainability by returning ownership over your food in the simplest way imaginable; by planting the food in your own backyard!  Chris has set up a system compatible with all of that unused space in most people's backyard and offers a chance to engage with their space by setting up and maintaining family sized organic vegetable gardens.

Somewhere along the way Chris met Elaine Howarth and they discussed the idea of starting an Urban CSA.   first of its kind in Toronto.  !!


CSA stands for Community Shared Agriculture.  Traditionally CSAs have been set up so that eaters (usually a family) buys a share for a certain amount of money from a rural farm and in return receives a box of fresh produce every week spanning the entire growing season (approximately form June-October).  This has been a popular way for farmers to guarantee a certain amount of revenue for their growing season and build relationships directly with their consumers by bypassing food distributors.

The Idea of an Urban CSA borrows the concept of Pre-bought shares of their "farm" in return for a box of fresh produce every week.  However instead of the food being grown on a rural farm, the food is being grown right in the city!  In this case the food is being grown the backyards of homeowners who have graciously donated this space.  So the outcome is that Elaine and Chris and their army of volunteers   (that's us!) will set up meticulously calculated organic vegetable gardens in about 8 donated backyards across Toronto.  It is the hope that enough people will buy a share ( I believe its about $300 for the entire growing season) that this initiative will be a wild success!

There are several reasons that Toronto is ready for this initiative:
1. Local and Organic Food are in high demand and are often inaccessible.  Promoting Urban Agriculture directly links the need for good food with the possibility to get it in our back yards (and if we don't have out own backyard we can connect with organizations like YIMBY (Yes In My BackYArd) or the Toronto Community Garden Network)
2. Some of the most fertile land in Canada is right underneath my very house-- and yours!
3. As was very evident at the Youth Food Systems Fair I spoke about in the previous entry--there is a growing group of young people who are enthusiastic and ready to change the way our Food systems currently are. 
4.  The first step is the hardest! With the YUF-CSA getting off the ground, this idea will spread like wild fire--inspiring more and more people to see how possible it is to grow their own food !

so now that I have hopefully illustrated a clearer picture of this New Initiative I will hopefully be back with some pictures and details on more of the beginnings of this awesome project.

Yesterday I joined 6 other enthusiastic gardeners and spent 5 or so hours turning one family's boring backyard into a ready to plant urban farm.  We pulled up all the sod, built a composter, SERIOUSLY aerated the land and double-dug our way to producing 4/14 planting beds.

With an aching back and some serious battle bruises I look forward to ho-ing away at the rest of the lawns that make up YUF's Urban Farm!

Seedy Saturday (on a Sunday!) and Moosh Rolls

A large component of Food security is access to seeds.  Seeds are the start point of all food and the practice of seed saving is as older then agriculture I'm sure.   It may sound like a silly thing to be insecure--can't you just save seeds from last years plants?  The answer in many scenarios is a big sobering "NO". 

For probably the majority of Farmers in the world--especially in The United States (As my knowledge on the subject is limited) Seeds are something that have become engineered, patented and owned by major corporations.  That means that the seeds, the type of plant that grows from the seeds and the right to use/sell/save the seed is the now owned by companies and protected under heavy patents that allow these companies to sue/hassle/bully and make huge profits off of those that come into contact with their seeds.  So there are rules against farmers who use these "owned" seeds from saving them for next year or altering them, so that they are forced to purchase a whole new batch every year.  In fact! many of these seeds are genetically modified to provide only one year of growth and do not produce any reusable seeds form the harvest.    and thanks to things like wind, run off, rainfall and plain old mingling nature of NATURE--these patented seeds get mixed up everywhere--in all crops, and result in these large companies having legal rights to the places that they sprout up (which is everywhere!).

Sadly the ownership of seeds has resulted in large corporations having ownership over our food...in an alarming way!  It makes me wonder how they are changing the very DNA of our food and how these changes are affecting our minds, bodies and souls (not to mention our freedom).  

With all of this in mind, I was thrilled to attend an event called "Seedy Saturday" which was held on February 21 this year (falling on a Sunday).  This event is one of many ways growers can take back ownership over their seeds and their food on personal levels.  Being one of hundreds people to attend (maybe more...it was packed all day!) I was able to mingle with Toronto's inspiring organizations that are all gearing up for a fruitful spring.  There are so many exciting things going on this spring/summer.  Groups like the Young Urban Farmers who set up home vegetable gardens so that urbanites can produce their own food and connect with the process.   Or the Toronto Community Garden Network that offers support to those existing community gardens and potential for countless new ones.  

The event was full of useful FREE information, enough to inspire anyone to get digging.  I walked away with a whole bunch of seeds--herbs and sprouts and tomatoes... that I plan to get going as soon as we get through our last frost.  As well i walked away feeling excited for my own Community Garden that is currently being negotiated.  There will certainly more to report on my initiative to start a garden in my neighborhood as the process of finding land and people continues! 

After the event I didn't have too much time to prepare food for work so I made some salad rolls out of some Salad I already had Prepared.  i suppose these are Moosh Rolls...as I didn't follow any recipe and only tried to follow directions. 

Ingredients:

- Chopped and washed lettuce/lettuce mix

- 1 Yam

- 3 tsp brown sugar

- 1/4 red onion

- chopped walnuts

- 1 tomato chopped up nice and small

- Rice paper (sold at most grocery stores..I got mine at a Korean Market on the corner of  Bloor and Manning for $1.50)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven 400

2. Chop up yam into tiny cubed pieces 

3. Put on cookie sheet and sprinkle with brown sugar, chopped walk nuts and 1/4 cup of water

4. Roast together for 20-30 minutes--Check to make sure the yams do not get mushy!

5. take out and allow to cool

6. Wash and chop salad mix or head of lettuce

7. Chop and add tomato and onion and any other ingredient that you like in your salad

8. Follow the directions that come with your rice paper (you wet them for a certain amount of time until they are malleable) 

9. Add about a tablespoon of your salad in the middle of the rice paper. Fold in the short ends and then roll length wise.

10. Set aside to dry and them repeat.

Putting your salad into little rolls allows you to make your food portable--no fork and container required!