What’s in the ground:

So I’m experimenting with the idea of letting my garbanzo beans dry on the plant as opposed to trying to harvest fresh and then dry. This is a technique that can be used on many varieties of legumes such as black eyed peas, garbanzos, black beans. Basically you just let the plant brown and die with the pods on the stem and harvest the whole plant. This will reduce yield, but it’s easier than trying to gauge exactly when the beans are ready.

What’s going on in sustainability:

For the past week, I and some very passionate farmers have been using the forum we’ve created through the Philadelphia Urban Farming Network to advocate for the creation of Manatawna Farms in Fairmount Park. In a perfect world, this project is amazing. Ten half acre plots deep in the park where participants can experiment with growing technique, cooperative selling and tool sharing, and trying to make a profit solely from farming, without the help of educational grants.

But as exciting as this all sounds, it has not won over the surrounding neighbors who have started their own advocacy group and who have convinced a councilman to draft a bill that would outlaw commercial farming on the site.

In a meeting we had last week, after explaining the neighbors’ position, two issues came up. The first was that they didn’t want commercial agriculture on their land. The picture they painted was of large combines cutting down corn and being shipped out. It brought up the point that commercial is too often confused with industrial because people still believe that the industrial system is the only way to make money and that sustainable practices are just relegated to theory.

The second issue was land conservation. Right now it’s a hay field with little bio diversity. I made the point that an organic farmer, when using integrated pest management techniques like planting beneficial plants that attract beneficial insects and birds, is in fact a conservationist. We use plant habitats to attract wildlife that helps us grow vegetables.

After these explanations, we thought that we made some headway, but the battle is raging on. We’re basically facing people who don’t want this in their backyard. And aside from not seeing organic farmers as conservationists or more conscious business people than Agri-business, we need to show them that locally produced vegetables are not just some curiosity or theory. They are a viable  solution to a world strained by over consumption of fossil fuels and food insecurity. But as we are finding out, these pragmatic solutions to real problems are just looked at as idealism when faced with a lobby that just wants to have their way. It’s the age old adage of politics. Well, hopefully that ends now , this project gets going and we prove to Philadelphia that sustainable agriculture is possible and practical. Please help out in this movement anyway you can. If you are looking for some inspiration, please come out to the Rotunda on Thursday July 22 at 6:30 pm for Mariposa Coop’s showing of “The Future of Food.” I’ll be speaking afterward.

Until then, this is the note from the Urban Homestead.