As I sat in the room (3:15pm Student Union, Lobo A, Saturday Oct 15) I watched a growing wisdom emerge (pun unintended?) from the Urban Agriculture: Theory and Practices Workshop! After a while, A sign-up sheet went around the room as there was an awareness something pretty damn compelling was coming forward.
Why doesn’t suburbia take the same effort and resources, and grow vegetables instead of front lawns? An urban farmer could sharecrop a neighborhood’s front lawns.
Agriculture has always failed because the soils get salted. Cisterns are essential, to catch rain and then flush the soil.
When gas was cheap, it was easy to let California grow our food…the times are a changin…
There’s an alley gorilla gardening effort already happening in Albq…
CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture)are usually aimed at the wealthier segment of our society. If people got involved in the growing and harvesting of their front yard food, the price would come down.
The amount of work required to farm, requires more participation. Could we make gardening a way of life, compete with TV, so neighbors would get the chance to learn how much they enjoy getting involved with their food, working in the earth, composting their food scraps, recycling their water?
There’s 10,000(20,000?) different plants eaten around the world, and we Americans eat 160. Big opportunity to have way more abundance.
A new Charter School (Nuevo?) wants to do Urban Villages in Albq, school lunches grown on site.
I found myself wondering, could we really supply all of our food and meat from the neighborhood lawns and regional farms?
All of these ideas were so impactful, I was like a deer frozen in a car’s headlights, until 4:00 the next morning. I woke and saw how it could all go together.
An existing Albq suburban neighborhood could decide to “renovate” itself. the street front yards would become a sharecropped garden, neighborhood wide composting, cisterns everywhere, affordable housing for the farmers, a store/restaurant/commercial kitchen/pub for value added products, canning, baking, etc. and a greater sense of
community are essential.
The Neighborhood Renovation would meet more than people’s food needs. From what I know, senior citizens want to downsize in their neighborhood and stay active. Smaller homes would be created in the renovation. A cluster for assisted living would also be created, with living quarters for assisted living, health care providers. In this way, the neighborhood becomes a great place to retire, and seniors, who have time, can easily stay active, contributing,
learning to farm with the guidance of the master gardener.
This neighborhood renovation plan would need buy-in from the existing neighbors. A brochure showing an existing streetscape, with drawings of the 2, and 4 year evolutions would demonstrate the potential value to be achieved.
Likely neighborhoods would be canvassed, in an attempt to find one open to renovation. An alternative would be to find an infill site, and design from scratch, clustering homes, to maximize the open space.
I experienced all the wisdom in the room at the Bioneers Urban Agriculture as having the capacity to make the urban farming real. Many were currently doing it, and learning first hand the challenges.
I’ve completed my first development, 16 homes on 2.5 acres in Santa Fe, and I’m looking to go beyond a residential community in my next projects.
I have dreamed, for years, of being a part of more sustainable community, something other than sprawl. I even named by construction company Village Development of America (ViDA!) as I want to be a part of alive, abundant, mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhoods.
I have the fantasy that when gasoline gets to be $4.50 per gallon, the Suburbanites will start rioting, demanding mixed-use neighborhoods.
Even though I’m in Santa Fe and sometimes Albq seems really far away, I’d love to help put the planning and pro-formas (financial plans) together, and work with a talented, committed group to make it real!!