Dear All, This comes from an organizer at Milwaukee's Outpost Natural Foods, recently encountering Community Growers(inspired by Will Allen's Growing Power), which connects urban artisans with urban farming. Erik Lindberg has been astonished at the yield Growing Power's compost affords.
>From Diana Sieger of Outpost: You're going to flip when you hear this - 146 steps across Capitol drive...then up a ladder is Outpost's next source for sustainably raised produce. Thursday we met Erik Lindberg from Community Growers when he brought Keith and his staff a sample of what he's growing over there on his roof top garden. We practically did cartwheels back to the store to tell everyone about it! (I wonder how many cartwheels it is if it's 146 steps?) Anyways, a million thank yous to Keith for hooking us up right away with a video interview - and photos for the signs that we'll have in the store featuring their produce. Erik has a little of this, a little of that as he figures out what grows best up there...we're just feeling pretty lucky we get to help him get the word out! Walkin' the talk yo. Diana watch the video interview: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLsAUS86J7E Growing Urban Farming Movement With Urban Artisans The arrival in Milwaukee of the Community Growers network of artisans, artists, urban agrarians, and sustainability theorists/activists in Milwaukee suggests serious consideration be given to projects that aim to connect the urban agriculture movement with the restoration artisans and their informal guilds in our big cities. See the front page story of this welcome development at... http://www.milwaukeerenaissance.com/Main/HomePage Urban Restoration Carpenter's "Victory Garden" Atop Commercial Building Complementarity of "Talented 10%" of Restoration Trades and Urban Agriculture Movement The "talented 10%" of our big city restoration carpenters, roofers, metal smiths, masons, and painters are predisposed to seriously consider and succeed in urban agriculture these days for many reasons. Resources Already Possessed by Restoration Trades *trucks and other equipment able to move lots of material, e.g. soil, composting leaves and wood chips from dumps, mountains of veggie wastes, etc. *time--lots of down time in the restoration trades throughout the year and even during the weeks and days of the normal work season, e.g. rain days *prodigious work ethic and quite often enormous physical stamina and power *competence in "small is beautiful" technological innovations and "yankee ingenuity" *backyards, empty neighborhood lots, and roof tops available for intensive growing,e .g. Milwaukee is ready to give 220 lots away gratis if our movement can demonstrate capacity *high tolerance for handling "yucky stuff" like compost breaking down *recent farming backgrounds in many artisanal extended families Opportunities for "Mighty Collaborations" Right At Your Front Door! Many of the key theorists and practitioners of the urban agriculture movement own old houses that will require them to connect with members of the restoration trades. Consider spending some time with your roofer, carpenter, mason, painter, etc., explaining and showing them the possibilities of intensive soil development with composting and worms and the high yields for use and market such rich soil in small places will afford. Many members of the artisan class these days are migrants from rural backgrounds with farm skills yet in extended families from down south, Mexico and other Latin American countries, eastern European and Eurasian migration streams. Urban farming has great promise to fill otherwise empty time as well as offer family members of your artisan classes a means of new use and exchange value. Connect Your Tradesmen w. Joe Jenkins, Josh Fraundorf, and Erik Lindberg Joe Jenkins, author of "Humanure," is the nation's foremost authority on slate roofs, i.e. also author of "Slate Roof Bible." Two of the founders of Milwaukee's Community Growers, Josh Fraundorf and Erik Lindberg, will combine for a couple of million of restoration projects in 2008. All three of these leaders of the trades are deeply committed to connecting their fellow artisans with the urban and organic family farm movements. Consider suggesting your favorite artisans send an e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] to initiate a conversation that might serve them and your community greatly. Also consider developing some grant proposals aimed directly at doing what is needed to marry the urban restoration trades with the food security movement. A number of Milwaukeeans in this effort would very much enjoy brainstorming this vision with you! The Marriage That Made Your City Some Kind of Holy Place Your city will start feeling like some kind of Holy City, when On cold winter or rainy spring or hot summer days Laid off construction workers And retired young elders will gather veggie wastes >From every neighborhood's food and cafe co-ops, Brewers yeast from the finest micro breweries, Wood chips from the city yard, Coffee grounds from Alterra roasters all over town. They'll deliver this precious cargo of potency To neighborhood gardens, edible school yards, And emerging at-home city farms and kitchen gardens, For composting food for a myriad of city worm ranches And neighborhood year round food growers. The kids in the hood will gather buckets of compost material >From just about all the neighbors, And simultaneously deliver their block's newsletters Filled with images and information to promote and defend Their increasingly connected neighbors, On higher and higher planes. Viva, the marriage of urban restoration artisans and the urban agrarian movement! Godsil -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20080620/78371a24/attachment.html _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: community_garden@list.communitygarden.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
