[Akroncooperative-news] Fw: Community enCompass adding hoop houses to lengthen urban farm growing season

Mon Nov 30 16:08:43 GMT 2009

Isn't it amazing what administrations and community groups with vision and dedication can accomplish?

Lawrence A. Parker
Managing Director
The Akron Cooperative
234-525-0543
http://www.akroncooperative.com/

Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.

Austin Texas adopts a resolution to promote urban farms and community gardens

On a chilly Saturday morning, a steady stream of Austin residents lured by the promise of fresh organic vegetables trickled into east Austin's Boggy Creek Farm, where tables of butternut squash and bell peppers greeted them.

A dirt path led visitors behind the market stand, where they found a three-acre plot of winter crops including beets, arugula, carrots and leeks.

Farms in the middle of major cities are not a common sight, but a recent City Council decision could make it easier for Austin residents to start their own farm like Boggy Creek.

Mayor Hazen Pingree and the Potato Patch Plan of the 1890's

During the second summer of the depression (1894) Pingree launched his "potato patch plan," which, as a work relief measure, has been described as one of the original contributions of the nineties. The Mayor's scheme envisioned the cultivation of vacant lots by the city's unfortunate, who were, in many cases, but a few years removed from a peasant agricultural economy of Europe. Since Detroit's poor commission was near insolvency and the city treasury almost empty, Pingree called upon the churches to contribute funds for the purchase of ploes, implements, and seed. "the Mayor proposes to find out if those elegant churches are only for show or for doing some real good," a Pingree aide told a reporter.

Detroit Thrift Gardens of 1931 - The Depression Years

The outstanding popular success of the Mayor's Unemployment Committee (MUC) and, in the opinion of the mayor, "perhaps" its "most important undertaking," was the Detroit thrift-garden program. The suggestion that the MUC undertake this activity came from Murphy himself, who had been reading George Catlin's The Story of Detroit and had been impressed with the account of Hazen Pingree's famous "potato patch plan" and the manner in which a substantial number of welfare families in Detroit during the depression years 1894-1896 had grown a portion of their food on vacant lots donated to the city for that purpose. The MUC decided in March, 1931, to undertake a similar program of "vacant lot gardening."

Community enCompass adding 'hoop houses' to lengthen urban farm growing season

Community enCompass is taking the concept of the urban garden to the next level. Officials call it urban farming.

Playing off the successful half-acre garden plot that grew last summer on a vacant lot owned by Goodwill Industries, the Christian community development organization in Muskegon's McLaughlin Neighborhood has created the McLaughlin Grows Urban Farm at Iona and Sophia streets.

With the help of the Community Foundation for Muskegon County and its Richard and Marilyn Witham Fund, the urban farm is adding "hoop houses" to extend the growing season year-round. The idea is to create business opportunities during economically tough times.