Photo: 1959 Martinsburg HS Bulldogs

As we wind down the year here at home&community inc, I’ve been doing that “year-end-review” thing…trying to understand what we’ve accomplished, learn from what we haven’t, and prepare for what is still to come!

One of the most instructive (and interesting) activities has been discovering our most viewed blog posts for 2011.

By far, our post on More SHAREcropping was the most popular.  Talking about how to re-appropriate the urban farming concept in low-income communities strikes a chord with folks.  And we’ll keep talking about it and doing it in the coming year.

Next most popular was Kissing Babies…  Looks like people wanted to check in on whether we were staying true to our goals!

Next was Spring Gleaning.  Most here really like that one; I’ve heard it’s because it gives everyone a chance to find local fruit in a way that they never considered!

And last, there was a tie between Paths of Desire and Gather, Eat, Grow, Repeat.  I think it’s no small coincidence that thinking about how we interact with our environment and how we interact with our community would be viewed in equal measure.

Next year promises even more good works!  We can’t wait to share our plans with you in the next several days.  Thanks to all our supporters and here’s to getting it done in 2012!

Meanwhile, while trying to come up with unique ways to raise funds to sustain our work, we had a brainstorm.  The raised beds we’ve already installed were easy to assemble and have proven to be durable over this planting season.  Why not provide them to the general public?

We decided to create a kit of parts for redwood raised beds.  They’re small enough to be accommodated on a condo balcony or small side yard.  They’re beautiful material…and while we can’t speak for the eventual craftsmanship, we have confidence in everyone who buys and assembles one (or two!).

Our goal is bring a little of our Community Food System Project to you.  And what better way to support us than by letting us encourage you to grow your own food?!  ← (hint: click that link for more info!)  As always, thank you.

One thing that’s become clear, there is always something to do…and a lot of it.  It can get pretty frustrating to have ideas and feel like you’re moving at a glacial pace to put them into action.  One ongoing effort that steadily (and quickly) grows is our list of community gardens in public housing.

Since the last update, we’ve added almost 40 more sites, including gardens in North Carolina, California, Oregon, Ohio, Tennessee and a few more in New York.  Here are a few of the notable examples.

The Rancho San Pedro garden, run by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, was completed just days ago.  There are gardens in Oregon, supported by the Housing Authority of Clackamas County, near Portland.   In Cleveland, Tennessee public housing residents are growing in their individual backyards with support from The Caring Place, approved by the Cleveland (TN) Housing Authority.

The Green Thumb Program encourages gardening and provides assistance to do so in public housing sites in Knoxville.   While the Geauga Metropolitan Housing Authority near Chagrin Falls, Ohio permits community gardens that feed a number of families.  Young people and the “Sunshine Crew” are raising produce to be shared by families in the public housing communities of the North Wilkesboro Housing Authority in North Carolina.

And while it’s not part of our census (because the food isn’t grown on the public housing site) we found a great model for a youth-staffed community farmers market supported by the Southhampton Housing Authority on Long Island.  Likewise, the Providence Housing Authority in Rhode Island partners with Farm Fresh Rhode Island to bring farmer markets to housing communities.  And they accept EBT (formerly food stamps).

So, like all things at Original Green, the list keeps growing!  And, growing is always good!

Desire line by Andrew Skudder

How are the memories that people hold shown in a place?  They might be revealed in the way people preferred to go instead of the paths that had been pre-built.  Sometimes it’s a shortcut, but often a way that is more interesting or efficient or safer or scenic. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a student of cities and urban form so a lot of what I do can be linked to some concepts learned in that area.  The Desire Path (or Desire Line) is one of those.  I often think about where the optimal paths are in any built environment.  They provide a type of direction people can trust, because they’ve seen others have used it.  They give us confidence to act.  I never thought, though, about how these ideas could be applied to our work building and planning urban gardens.

Are we building things that people want or will naturally come to? Are we making sure to consider the efficiencies, the scenic route?  Are we creating something that encourages others to follow upon it?  Are we thinking about the possibilities, and then moving towards the one(s) that everyone follows.  Are we setting up spaces that people want to be in, not where we want them to be?

Feedback is always helpful, but we also have to pay attention to what people are doing and the patterns that are developing.  And, we need to do this both before and after we provide a service or product.

A place to sit? Right next to a PVC pipe!

With some raised beds, I noticed a few things that tied the desire path concept to the work.  Where are people spending the most time in the garden? How are they navigating the beds? Where do they sit? Even in ones just completed, I’ve noticed residents sit on the corners – the area with the most surface area because of the top of the 4×4 post – even where there are chairs available.  It’s as if they want to be further connected to the task at hand…because it’s certainly not a comfortable perch.  I imagine that area will become sufficiently worn to the point that others will do the same on other corners.  So, we’ll take that into account on future beds.  Maybe a small platform on each corner is in order.  An easy, and simple fix that acknowledges natural behavior.

The PVC tubes installed to hold poles for netting have been sometimes used to hold sticks, with identifying information or crepe paper streamers. It isn’t a very sturdy re-use, since the sticks fall over and the PVC is on the interior of the bed.  But, what a wonderful alternative use of the structure!  What it means is that we should add a few PVC pipes on the exterior each bed just for people to engage in these types of creative uses. This we should do even beyond the garden art we’re already planning. We can’t imagine the universe of uses people will come up with, but are we allowing enough flexibility in the space? Enough for residents to develop those paths of desire?

We hope so.

Where are the paths of desire in your life?  Whether in your memory, your work, your environment.  Are they your own or shared?

Meanwhile, we’ve started building raised garden beds in private front yards!  We want all communities to be part of our system.  And, private sites in single-family-home neighborhoods can help raise the profile of what we do.

So, check out more of these beds at our Original Green photo album.  Want one?  You know you do!

One of the goals of the Community Food Plan is to provide job training for low-income residents, in garden development and construction.  Teaching people to build and maintain gardens has been considered a “down-the-road-when-other-parts-of-the-plan-are-firmly-established” kind of goal.  Well, it’s just like a plan to go and unplan itself…we are about to implement that piece, building our first raised beds on non-low-income housing, private property.

You might remember that one of our ongoing objectives is to develop linked, growing sites, at the neighborhood level.  Included in that work is encouraging a commitment to sharing, cooperation, community raising, resilience, and empathy among other things.  We’ve definitely been doing the latter, in an intangible way, through our quarterly face-to-face Slow Food events.  But our long-range plan has always included doing so on a more tangible level of food sharing across communities.  This means placing growing sites not just in low-income developments, but other private homes, too.   So, in the spirit of unplanning we engaged our first client, to shape a training program and further cement our commitment to promoting community sharing.

We’ll now install raised beds at a significantly lower cost to the property owner, in exchange for a commitment to sharing any produce overages and ultimately being included in our overall distribution system.  Now, the task is to complete the actual sharing strategy.  Yes, it was also down the list on our bullet-pointed, perfect list, but sometimes things just happen…

We thank everyone who donated.  Reaching our goal means we will receive funds to advance our Original Green Community Food System project at our two sites.  We think it’s also a great (early) Earth Day present for us and for the residents in South Los Angeles where we’ll start getting growing.

Here’s what’s going to happen now…

Some first steps have already been taken. We are grateful to be receiving help from Farmworks L.A. to plan our sites.  We’ve also connected with WINTER — an organization that provides non-traditional employment for poverty-level women — to work on site development.  We know an amazing, personable Master Gardener skilled in garden and crop planning who we hope will advise on our sites.  We have materials donations for our beds.

And the money? The money from this campaign goes directly towards site development and planting: irrigation systems, city fees, hardscaping, lighting and plants.

So tomorrow, for Earth Day, we’ll be enjoying the potential we’ve created.  We’ll be thinking about why we want to bring local food to residents…remembering that Local isn’t a four-letter-word.

Barry’s not a four-letter-word either, so click on his album for some aural affirmation…

We’re excited about our sites.  We hope you are, too!  Just think what they’ll look like with their beds, filled with all sorts of growing goodness.  The completed beds in the video are from work at the Nickerson Gardens public housing garden…owned by the city of Los Angeles.  We now have an opportunity to also create growing sites on privately owned land, which permits a bit more flexibility, consistency and autonomy.  We can’t wait to integrate these sites (and more) into a community food plan!

We’ve resisted formal fundraising for our organization for so long. After all, our work was (and still is) helping others get the resources to move forward with their work!  And we were (and still are) all about community building.  But, as we’ve delved into the details of our Original Green Community Food Plan, we’ve seen so many of our Twitter friends with great ways of integrating community building and food planning.  We also realized that this type of integration should form the basis for our first go at formalized online fundraising!  Yikes!  It’s been an education, and there have been a lot of models out there.  Have you checked out these friends?  You should!

@urbanfarmhub – for multiple contributors informing about urban agriculture and transformation of food systems.

@buylocalCA – for methods to build relationships between multiple actors in a community food system (growers, markets, consumers etc).

@DUGTweet – for ideas about what kinds of community resources to offer (along with neato note cards).

@UWFarm – for ways to integrate institutions of higher education into community food planning, and news about their new partnership that will train at-risk youth on their farm.

@StartSomeGood – for a great platform for helping us launch our first online fundraising campaign. Check out our video!

Our February Repeat

Our event last Saturday once again proved that groups can be really creative. Discussions about art, elementary school education, local yard sharing and homemade wine surrounded the main topic of urban farming and community food system work.

Gathering like this is one of several ways we can all participate in advancing urban agriculture and community food.  Brainstorming about it helps bring awareness and provide resources to interested folks.  We can also go foraging and take extra food to pantries. Another thing to do is to start growing. Even growing on a small strip of land or in containers is a valuable education into how things work and can promote sharing of extra produce. Start a yard share. If you like to garden…but don’t have space…and have a neighbor/friend who does have space but doesn’t know how or like to garden…take over their yard.  They’ll let you if you show them how great it can be.  Are they single? Maybe there’s a date in it for them.

Then, bring it all around full circle and have a neighborhood feast with the harvest.