What’s in the ground:

If you got a good jump on the growing season, you should be harvesting all of your root vegetables by now. It’s important to keep up on your harvest because radishes and beets can get pretty nasty if left in too long. You should now be sowing your next succession of crops so you can have your roots all season long.

What’s going on in sustainability:

Over the past week I’ve found myself in many discussions concerning access to resources for urban gardening. After a few meetings with city officials, many people in the farming community had moments of self reflection regarding the path resources are flowing into urban ag. The core discussion is important and should be had. No single community should monopolize resources. It’s getting to that equitable model that’s the tricky part. Here’s what I have to offer to get us there.

As those of you who read this blog know , Erica Smith and I have created a model for youth development and urban ag production called Youth Growing Cooperatives. Our first one is already under production at 46th and Market in West Philly. Our goal is to use our resource network to create urban farms and staff these farms with college age youth from the community who have either been involved with agriculture programs in school or are interested in urban ag.

After a lot of work, we put together an amazing group of youth. I must admit that I’ve had my anxieties over this model working, and we’ve just begun the season, so time will tell if this truly sustainable and profitable. But even in its inception, I feel that there is a lesson to be learned.

Powerful and impacting projects all start with the realization of where resources are flowing and how to best direct them back into communities by reinvestment. That’s where Erica and I come in. But when it comes to sustaining the project, the only way is to create stakeholders in the project and give them real ownership. Just this past week Erica and I and the Enterprise Center used our resources to get bike trailers for the cooperative. Yesterday I helped one of our coop farmers put the trailer together and told him that he could now cart the produce to market rather than driving him there, which was what Erica and I had done the past four weeks. When I said this there was no fear or hesitation in his eye. this is an opportunity he’s been waiting for.

And that’s what the coop can produce, farmers who are not waiting to be told what to do, but who have a real vested interest in their own labor to pay there wages. They have the same voting rights and the same access, and they take full advantage. And just like in the conversation first mentioned about whose community or whose resources, in this model we see it as our community and our resources, and each of us playing our part to complete the system the best we can. I think we’re doing a pretty good job, but I guess the season will tell.

Until next this is the note from the urban homestead.