Keith and I met at Johnson’s Backyard Garden when Travis and I started as interns. Keith was halfway through his internship. He had come back to the States after a stint in Jamaica with the Peace Corps. He was then and he remains one of the most dedicated, hardworking people I’ve met.
I grew up in the countless miles of suburbs that surround Los Angeles. In that place I learned that food comes from grocery stores. The cows down the street (Chino’s once lucrative dairy industry) simply gave our city its reputation – an olfactory impression that wafted to the wrinkled noses of our closest neighbors. It was a city of CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) and I learned absolutely nothing about them, save for the fact that they smelled horrid and brought with them a pestilence of flies every summer.
My childhood and rearing are a classic case of urban disconnectedness. The cycles of life that sustain the city are invisible, happening far away and arriving packaged in cellophane and styrofoam with no trace of the people or animals who touched them and made them. The connections all tend to be severed. Food is thought to come from grocery stores, not farms. The materials required for life are all perceived to come from retail establishments, never from the soil or spirit of the earth. Add to it the lament that we as a society are daily losing acres of farmland, and a wide path is paved for the introduction of a new kind of farming.
Urban Patchwork Neighborhood Farmsis an Austin,Texas based not-for-profit [501(c)3] neighborhood farm. With the support of our neighbors (in land, capital, and sweat), we grow delicious and wholesome food in the neighborhood, for the neighborhood, and by the neighborhood.
We started just over a year ago — July 4, 2009 — when Paige Hill and her neighbors and friends broke ground in the Crestview neighborhood in north Austin. It was, and is, a declaration of independence from our current food system. Urban Patchwork (UP) now endeavors to cover the city with a patchwork quilt of interconnected neighborhood farms.
When we look around the city we do not see a loss of farmland to development. We see potential everywhere in pockets of negligence and pointless aesthetics — i.e., vacant lots of dirt and weeds, and acres and acres of resource-hungry grass lawns — all ready to be planted and brought to life. These vacant lots and lawns ARE farmland; they are just not being used as such.
We come into a neighborhood and seek individuals and families who have the desire to reclaim the farm soil of the area surrounding their home and turn it into a healthy food source for the neighborhood. Borrowing the front and back yards of these (our) neighbors, we break into and through the traditional urban landscape to heal the soil and sustainably feed the people. Among other things we grow vegetables and raise chickens (for eggs) year-round. We do this to make fresh, wholesome, local and delicious food accessible to as many in the neighborhood as we can. And we do this because we need more farmers, and farmers need good jobs.
We are engaged in training up a new class of farmers. We want to see the vocation of farming grow by the hundreds of thousands (the millions even!). Farmers are responsible for feeding the nation, and yet, how many of us even know our farmers? The health and vitality of a populationdepends on healthy soil; healthy soil depends on the vitality of our farmers. With all that we have in us we are moving to establish a place within each neighborhood for a farmer to be known and trusted. Out of her, and his, abundant agrarian livelihood will grow the very (delicious) food that will sustain that neighborhood, and that will ultimately breathe health and life into all our veins — into our city. It all comes down to the health of the soil, and health of the soil depends on good farmers dedicated good farming.
As we see it, we need to band together, for a farmer cannot do this alone. In order to be good stewards of the urban space that has been left to our care we must all participate in the making of food. To do this, we invite each neighborhood to support the efforts of their neighborhood farmer, working together to heal the soil, and to give to it its proper care. This is a much more full definition of a “Community Supported Agriculture” (CSA) than merely a vegetable subscription/delivery service.
It takes a special (crazy) kind of person to dedicate one’s life to agriculture. The risks are abundantly omnipresent. Crop failure lurks around every corner – bugs, bugs and more bugs; abusive and inconsistent weather; reckless dogs, and more; — all seem to be out to get us. The unique business model of UP presents even more challenges because we’ve abandoned the ease of a centralized system so that we might be couched in a multitude of neighborhoods. Add to this our down economic times and a highly mobile society, and the permanence of what we do in each yard comes into question. Will we have to swim upstream forever?
No. Someday soon urban agriculture will be written into the design and intent of every neighborhood, new and old. We are hopeful. Working outside with plants, with animals, with the soil, and with our neighbors and friends, makes our souls come alive. We can begin and end each day with a smile because we love this job and are passionate about doing it well, about doing it together.
Come pay us a visit this fall and take home some of our food. Keep an eye on our website to stay up to date with what we’re up to. And keep your eyes open for an Urban Patchwork farm coming soon to a neighborhood near you. Inquiries, questions, comments and other remarks can be sent to info[at]urbanpatchwork(dot)org — Thanks for reading!
About the author: Keith McDorman is the Farm Manager of the Urban Patchwork Neighborhood Farm in the Crestview neighborhood of Austin, TX.
Keith and I met at Johnson’s Backyard Garden when Travis and I started as interns. Keith was halfway through his internship. He had come back to the States after a stint in Jamaica with the Peace Corps. He was then and he remains one of the most dedicated, hardworking people I’ve met.
I grew up in the countless miles of suburbs that surround Los Angeles. In that place I learned that food comes from grocery stores. The cows down the street (Chino’s once lucrative dairy industry) simply gave our city its reputation – an olfactory impression that wafted to the wrinkled noses of our closest neighbors. It was a city of CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) and I learned absolutely nothing about them, save for the fact that they smelled horrid and brought with them a pestilence of flies every summer.
My childhood and rearing are a classic case of urban disconnectedness. The cycles of life that sustain the city are invisible, happening far away and arriving packaged in cellophane and styrofoam with no trace of the people or animals who touched them and made them. The connections all tend to be severed. Food is thought to come from grocery stores, not farms. The materials required for life are all perceived to come from retail establishments, never from the soil or spirit of the earth. Add to it the lament that we as a society are daily losing acres of farmland, and a wide path is paved for the introduction of a new kind of farming.
Urban Patchwork Neighborhood Farmsis an Austin,Texas based not-for-profit [501(c)3] neighborhood farm. With the support of our neighbors (in land, capital, and sweat), we grow delicious and wholesome food in the neighborhood, for the neighborhood, and by the neighborhood.
We started just over a year ago — July 4, 2009 — when Paige Hill and her neighbors and friends broke ground in the Crestview neighborhood in north Austin. It was, and is, a declaration of independence from our current food system. Urban Patchwork (UP) now endeavors to cover the city with a patchwork quilt of interconnected neighborhood farms.
When we look around the city we do not see a loss of farmland to development. We see potential everywhere in pockets of negligence and pointless aesthetics — i.e., vacant lots of dirt and weeds, and acres and acres of resource-hungry grass lawns — all ready to be planted and brought to life. These vacant lots and lawns ARE farmland; they are just not being used as such.
We come into a neighborhood and seek individuals and families who have the desire to reclaim the farm soil of the area surrounding their home and turn it into a healthy food source for the neighborhood. Borrowing the front and back yards of these (our) neighbors, we break into and through the traditional urban landscape to heal the soil and sustainably feed the people. Among other things we grow vegetables and raise chickens (for eggs) year-round. We do this to make fresh, wholesome, local and delicious food accessible to as many in the neighborhood as we can. And we do this because we need more farmers, and farmers need good jobs.
We are engaged in training up a new class of farmers. We want to see the vocation of farming grow by the hundreds of thousands (the millions even!). Farmers are responsible for feeding the nation, and yet, how many of us even know our farmers? The health and vitality of a populationdepends on healthy soil; healthy soil depends on the vitality of our farmers. With all that we have in us we are moving to establish a place within each neighborhood for a farmer to be known and trusted. Out of her, and his, abundant agrarian livelihood will grow the very (delicious) food that will sustain that neighborhood, and that will ultimately breathe health and life into all our veins — into our city. It all comes down to the health of the soil, and health of the soil depends on good farmers dedicated good farming.
As we see it, we need to band together, for a farmer cannot do this alone. In order to be good stewards of the urban space that has been left to our care we must all participate in the making of food. To do this, we invite each neighborhood to support the efforts of their neighborhood farmer, working together to heal the soil, and to give to it its proper care. This is a much more full definition of a “Community Supported Agriculture” (CSA) than merely a vegetable subscription/delivery service.
It takes a special (crazy) kind of person to dedicate one’s life to agriculture. The risks are abundantly omnipresent. Crop failure lurks around every corner – bugs, bugs and more bugs; abusive and inconsistent weather; reckless dogs, and more; — all seem to be out to get us. The unique business model of UP presents even more challenges because we’ve abandoned the ease of a centralized system so that we might be couched in a multitude of neighborhoods. Add to this our down economic times and a highly mobile society, and the permanence of what we do in each yard comes into question. Will we have to swim upstream forever?
No. Someday soon urban agriculture will be written into the design and intent of every neighborhood, new and old. We are hopeful. Working outside with plants, with animals, with the soil, and with our neighbors and friends, makes our souls come alive. We can begin and end each day with a smile because we love this job and are passionate about doing it well, about doing it together.
Come pay us a visit this fall and take home some of our food. Keep an eye on our website to stay up to date with what we’re up to. And keep your eyes open for an Urban Patchwork farm coming soon to a neighborhood near you. Inquiries, questions, comments and other remarks can be sent to info[at]urbanpatchwork(dot)org — Thanks for reading!
About the author: Keith McDorman is the Farm Manager of the Urban Patchwork Neighborhood Farm in the Crestview neighborhood of Austin, TX.
