Weather Forecast: Highs in the 70s, mostly cloudy
This week you'll to have the opportunity to explore models for community gardening and food forests through lending a hand in a developing food forest/community garden in the Kalamazoo area. If you've never heard of a "food forest" before, you are probably not alone. The first time I saw a food forest was when I traveled to Prague in the summer of 2011. Many of the public parks in the part of the city I was in were filled with productive fruit trees, with the fruit just hanging there, free for the picking. Wow, I thought, why don't we do that in the US? Imagine the possibilities for fresh, local, organic fruit available freely to everyone!
Well, turns out some people are working on it. Here are some examples:
These "guerrilla grafters" are breaking the law by turning ornamental fruit trees along city streets (fruit trees like pears that have been bred to produce pretty flowers but no fruit) into fruit-bearing trees by grafting wood from fruit-bearing varieties onto them: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/04/07/150142001/guerrilla-grafters-bring-forbidden-fruit-back-to-city-trees
In Bloomington, Indiana, one undergraduate's senior thesis sparked a community orchard project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=racgmc_l1jw
Bloomington Community Orchard 5 years later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBg-gDnmOxM
In LA, Ron Finley has created a food forest in a food desert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dhdAgLPMUQ
And there are many more community gardens and food forests being cultivated across the US.
WMU's Gibbs House has a food forest (though not a public one), plus a nice diagram on their website that shows how inter-planting fosters sustainable ecology in a permaculture food forest: https://wmich.edu/sustainability/projects/gibbs/food-forest
Finally, here are links to descriptions of the project we'll be working with this week:
http://www.vankalpermaculture.org/winchell-neighborhood-public-forest-garden-project/
http://www.vankalpermaculture.org/large-garden-space-available-in-kalamazoo/
Tuesday group, meet me at Fac Man at 12:40pm; Wednesday group, meet me at Fac Man at 1:40pm. You can follow me over to the land where we'll be working.
For your responses this week, I'd like you to imagine you were going to start a community garden or food forest in a neighborhood that you've lived in for at least one year of your life. This could be a neighborhood that you grew up in or a neighborhood in which you currently live. What problems could this community project help to solve? How might it enrich the lives of neighborhood residents? What challenges might the project encounter? What would it take for a community food forest or garden project to succeed and be sustainable in your particular neighborhood? What might be the first steps toward initiating such a project and ensuring its success?
I’ve been living in Washington DC for a few years. Within the community that I live in, it is very urban, where there are hardly gardens or rural areas present. I would love to start a garden on the community, in which everyone could have access to the garden. The garden would sit in a central area near residents. Each garden would be in different districts. The garden will provide free classes on how to garden. The classes would provide tips on how to grow food in their own homes. In addition, residents would be able to purchase fresh foods for a reasonable price. However, there will be a few challenges. This may include the lack of physical space provided that would allow foods to be grown. Additionally, like in many cities, some residents may not have time to attend garden classes because of work/ conflicting hours. Additionally, because of high populations of homelessness in cities (Like in Washington DC and NYC), theft of food resources may serve as a problem. In order for this project to be successful, the community involvement is crucial. This can involve communities such as the school community. In addition, grants and a provided space would also be helpful. One of the first steps to help to get the project going would be to reaching out to multiple community members about there idea proposal. Advertisement could be made through social media as well as requesting for the local news station t help spread the concept and how residents could be involved.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to plan a community garden for my home community in Maine, I would want it to reach and be available to our whole school district. Like I have mentioned before in class, my high school and middle school were district schools that took in kids from five neighboring towns. Because of this, and the rural type of environment, from the end of the farthest town to the other side (while still in our district), you could drive it in over an hour. Needless to say, our school district covered a lot of area. But I consider that whole district part of my community, because I went to several of those elementary schools growing up, and I lived in several of the towns. I also went to school with kids from all of those towns. So, back to the actual question at hand, if I were to start a community garden the first and biggest problem I would run into would be making a garden large enough in size, and convenient enough in location that it could provide food for my large district. I suppose one solution would be to set up several smaller gardens, however that may cause more problems because the towns would have to give up more land and area for these gardens. However, the area is fairly rural so I wouldn't be surprised if this was actually possible. Similarly to the Bloomington Community Garden, I imagine that my community garden would have an ample amount of volunteers and community members to get it going and upkeep it. I think a project like this would be very beneficial to my community because a lot of my community is made up from low-income households, and this community garden would help make these people more goof secure. I am honestly surprised something like this does not already exist. It makes me wonder why it doesn't exist already, and if it is merely the lack of initiative, or if there is another unseen problem that I am forgetting.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to establish a community garden in a neighborhood I've inhabited, it would be the one in which I currently live: the Vine neighborhood. I live across from Davis field and am always struck by the expansive open space that lies within such a tightly-packed neighborhood. The field is owned by Western Michigan University, which could either make it easier or more difficult to start up: easier because the school might be able to support and help sustain the efforts of the project and more difficult because they might not be willing to let go of any of the space. The field is so large, however, that even after sectoring off a portion of the land for a gardening project, there would still be sufficient room for athletics or other activities. Since there is so much open space, I would design a project similar to the seven-layer garden at the Gibbs House. The diversity of flora would help maintain the health of the garden and it would also produce a larger diversity of crops than a two- or three- layer garden. This project would help the neighborhood by supplying fresh fruit and vegetables to residents, who are mostly low-income families or students. In addition, it would develop a greater sense of community in the neighborhood, a sense of community that is currently driven by basement concerts. The amount of young people at these concerts makes them prime locations for disseminating information about the garden and getting it started up. The main problem I see with this method of spreading information is that it only targets relatively young individuals, which leaves out large sectors of the population. Families, couples, and single residents who don't attend these house shows could be reached by these show audiences through door-to-door information sharing.
ReplyDeleteOne of the big problems I see with the project is maintaining it throughout the years. Many community projects are started with productive passion, but they can often fizzle out when the creators lose interest or move away. The people initiating the creation of the food forest would need to ensure that they recruit enough people and that the recruitments are diversely enacted in every sense of the term. Once the food forest has been established for a few years, it would be easier to guarantee its success. Sustaining momentum in the early stages of a project is often the most difficult part, but if that could be overcome, I believe that the food forest would benefit every party involved.
If I were to have a community garden or food forest at my house in Kalamazoo on Lovell St., I would put it in the little patch of grass that is our front yard where it is accessible to the public. I would plant all types of vegetables, fruits, and flowers. I would also try to take into account the taste of the community, for example since people in Kalamazoo seem to adore tea I would plant some herbs to be used for tea. The area I live in is not close to a place where fresh food is sold and so the food garden could provide the missing link for my neighbors. Furthermore, the smell and sight would be pleasant enough to lift my neighbor’s daily lives. It takes a lot of effort for a community garden project to succeed. I would need to work hard to make the garden live and well, but if I put my passion into the garden it would likely succeed. I believe that just with any project, the first steps toward ensuring success of the garden would be to have specific goals, know what I’m planting, and to put considerable effort and time into it. One day I hope to have a garden of my own, but depending on where I live I am not sure how public it will be.
ReplyDeleteI live in a community where people have money and access to food anytime they want. However my high school that I attended was in a area where many students didn't have the same access as people in my neighborhood. I would want to build a garden or community in my high school so that the fresh produce could be used in the lunches the school prepares. The food that is served during breakfast and lunch is filled with sugars and fats and are overall not healthy for anyone to be consuming. I also think that with having a community garden in my high school it could teach people on how to grow their own food at home. It could also provide more information on nutrion and how to live a healthier life.
ReplyDeleteThis could be a problem since KPS in general is underfunded and programs and schools have been cut. It would take a lot of donors and fundraisers to help with this project and to keep it going. It would well take a lot of time and training for people to learn about how to grow and plant their own food. I think for a start their could be a field trip to the farmers market and people could buy food to cook for their class to have a potluck. Again this would take time, money, and good planing. But maybe this would strike an interest in some people to learn about farming.
As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up in a suburban city outside of Detroit. This means that I grew up accustomed to being surrounded by concrete, strip malls, and road construction. Our conversations last week made me think about accessibility, particularly in regards to transportation. Any sort of community project needs to be easily accessible to all. In my opinion, this means that ideally these projects should be in areas that people can walk to. In my hometown, this might be the biggest obstacle that we might face in trying to begin a community garden or food forest. While there are some open spaces in my hometown, I’m struggling to think of any that are in walking distance of my own neighborhood/immediate community. Just find a place to undertake such a project might be difficult. (Although the “guerilla grafters” video did make me think about the potential for planting trees along sidewalks!)
ReplyDeleteIn my own community, one of the only places that I can think where there would be room for these projects would be on the property currently owned by the public schools. Many of the schools that I attended growing up had open fields (that were typically used for recess/gym classes). I think that this could be both a strength and a weakness. Using land owned by the schools would enable children to get involved, both with the actual labor of tending to these gardens/forests, as well as learning about topics like food access. I’m thinking about how the foods grown through these projects could be incorporated into the meals provided in the cafeteria, and how students could be more involved in thinking about what they consume. At the same time, I think that this could make it more difficult for those in the community who are outside of the school system to get involved. (I know that there are all kinds of rules about who is supposed to be on school property, which makes sense from a safety perspective but might complicate this project.
I think that undertaking such a project in my hometown would be difficult, but rewarding. I’m wondering why I can’t think of any projects like this that already exist. I’d like to do some research about what other people within my community have tried to do.
If I were to start a community garden or food forest, I think it would have to be at the house I grew up in back in Ann Arbor. I love Kalamazoo, but don’t feel connected enough to the community where I currently live (off-campus) to be the right person for that job. As I’ve mentioned in class, my dad has always grown food for as long as I can remember, but it’s always only been a couple of plants or trees here and there, barely enough for our family of six to enjoy, much less extending it to neighbors or friends. On the street where I live, there are nine houses total and everyone has big yards and lives pretty part apart. While I know everyone who lives on my street, I would not say we share much of a sense of community. The distance between our houses and the fact that we have to drive to go pretty much anywhere means there is little opportunity for relationship building without concerted effort on the part of everyone involved. I think a food forest or community garden could help bridge that gap, and create more of a sense of community. Getting to know your neighbors and the people you share space with is always enriching and builds knowledge and empathy for one another. I think the biggest challenge to face would be the amount of work that would go into a project like that and how to evenly distribute the labor. I’ve seen firsthand how much my dad does to produce small quantities of food, and he has a lot of readily available resources, information, and experience with doing so. I think a lot of people are content with their ignorance of where food comes from and/or are also just so busy with their daily lives they don’t feel they have time to contribute to a project like this. I suppose a first step in beginning this type of work in any community, including your own, is to gauge interest and meet collectively with the hope that everyone is interested and invested in building more community.
ReplyDeleteI think that with any community project or undertaking, in order for your involvement to be authentic and useful, you have to share some connection to the place you're engaging with. With that said I think it would be disingenuous and unproductive for me to go into a community in Kalamazoo, that, by nature of my temporary/partial residency as student, is not my own and try to impose a community garden project. Something I'm struggling with, and have been since coming to college, is how to create these place based connections, so central to all work but especially environmental work, in a place that I've moved to. With all that said, I guess I would have to start my community garden in the neighborhood I grew up in in Portland. While Portland doesn't lack community gardens, there isn't one in the neighborhood where I grew up. I was lucky to have parents that had a garden and fostered in me an understanding of and excitement for growing. I've talked before about what a proponent of outdoor, experiential learning I am, and I think my neighborhood school could really benefit from a community garden as a learning tool and a way to engage people throughout the community in the learning of young people. I imagine such an undertaking through a public school would be challenging if only because public schools don't exactly have extra money to spend on non-necessities. It would also probably be difficult for teachers and parents to integrate such a resource into their curriculum and utilize the garden to its full potential. I do think though it would be a worthwhile endeavor that would benefit the community at large and especially benefit the education of students at Duniway Elementary.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the problems I feel in my neighborhood (Stuart) is the disconnect and isolation. I do not know my neighbors well although I have been living next to them for over a year now. I think having some type of community project will help to bring folks together. Similarly, for the families in the area, this place could serve as a way to expose children to nature and to get them some time out in nature.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I am being pessimistic, but given my current neighborhood, the challenges stand out more than potential benefits. First of all, most of the houses in the region are student housing- therefore the turnover rate is very high, with many people moving around during the summer. Therefore, it would be really difficult to maintain steady interest and have dedicated group of folks who would work on the project. Especially since many students move around during the summer when the garden/forest may require the most work, keeping a sizeable workforce would be a big challenge.
Similarly, because the community group itself is unstable, we must then address who gets to participate and benefit from the project. Do the folks who just moved to the neighborhood get to take the fruits from the tree without having worked on it? Would folks be interested in working on the farm if they knew that they would only be able to tend the garden/orchard during the off-season? At the same time, is it fair to deny someone an access to food just because they didn’t have time/body to dedicate to the farm/forest?
I think one way to overcome these challenges is for a core membership of dedicated families to co-own the farm, for long term sustainability. More folks from the neighborhood who maybe cannot commit for more than a few months could just sign up to help out on seasonal basis. The food that we harvest could be distributed among the members as well as to the people in the neighborhood depending on yield.
I spent most of my school years in a town called Fishers, one of the last largely developed suburbs of Indianapolis before the surrounding area turns more into farmland. Even though the majority of land turns into farmland just past my high school, a large portion of the suburban community between Fishers and downtown Indianapolis is significantly disconnected from the world of agriculture. Therefore, I think a community garden or food forest could be very useful in downtown Fishers or in any of the suburbs between Fishers and downtown Indianapolis. A community garden in these areas could help to reconnect suburban youth to agricultural food sources that may seem inaccessible even though they are right outside of town. This could help young people in the community to form a greater understanding of growing food even in developed or suburban areas and it could help teach them the skills necessary to start even a small vegetable garden in their own yards. Improved understanding of agriculture can help community members to better support local farms and shop for food more sustainably. There is plenty of land in Fishers that could be used for a community garden, but I think the greatest difficulty would be in finding a group or organization to take charge of the project and see it through. Another problem that could be encountered is in the selective nature of a small community garden for a large number of community youth. My school district alone has 2 high schools, 3 junior high schools, 3 intermediate schools, and 13 elementary schools. There are far too many kids in the area for everyone to become significantly involved in one small community garden and I would be afraid that the kids that do become involved would be the ones who already have an understanding or engagement with agriculture. I would hope instead that a large number of kids could become involved who maybe have never even thought about growing food before so that the community garden could help to teach them about agriculture. One solution might be to set up a rotation for all of the local classes to get some time in the community garden but this again requires a dedicated group to lead this process. Another solution would ideally be to have a greater number of community gardens- maybe one for each suburban development or neighborhood. In this case, if there was a garden for each neighborhood (like a neighborhood pool or neighborhood playground), residents would be able to walk to the garden and become more involved with the space and their immediate community.
ReplyDeleteOops, this is Clare, I forgot to put my name on the original post
DeleteAs I think about the neighborhoods that I have lived in and envision a community garden space in all of the neighborhoods, I could see the project as beneficial to all of the communities. However, the ones that stand out the most are the apartment community that I lived in Fayetteville, North Carolina for two years, and the neighborhood that I've lived in basically all of my life outside of K in Texas Corners, Michigan. The socioeconomic and racial characteristics of both of these neighborhoods are drastically different with the neighborhood in Michigan being predominantly Caucasian and of higher socioeconomic status. For the reason of access to food, I would choose to start a community garden in a patch of grass area in apartment complex in North Carolina. As I observed, this community lacked access to good, fresh food as the closest grocery store was Walmart, with little produce, down the street. The food that I often saw consumed was packaged and processed food. A community garden would allow for this community to have access to fresh and healthy food, and reduce the adverse health effects of a largely fast-food and processed food diet. In this way, it would also enrich the lives of the residents as they would likely feel better both physically and mentally. Furthermore, the community aspect of the garden would allow them to connect with each other and feel more at home in an apartment complex space, which can often feel less home-y. This complex also had a few incidences of crime while I was living there for those two years, and I believe that a community garden may decrease this crime because the sense of community and effort in the garden itself would increase human compassion. Challenges that this project may face would include finances for the garden, as well as the effort/work to keep up and manage the garden. I think one of the biggest challenges to start this project would also be motivating the community to really be interested in this project; the success of this project would be contingent on this. I think that education on food/nutrition as well as the benefits of having a community garden would help motivate the residents. This type of education/workshops would be the first steps toward initiating such a project.
ReplyDeleteI am thinking about my hometown as the location for this community garden. The average yearly household income in the neighborhood is $27,000. There are also certain parts of the neighborhood that are considered a food desert due to the lack of access to fresh produce. A community garden/food forest, depending on the size, could help with increasing access to fresh produce. Another problem that this garden could help solve is that of community connectedness. I have found that many people on my street and neighborhood have never said a word to each other. This community garden/food forest could help strengthen their sense of community. I also believe that his garden would provide a space where people could escape the concrete prison that are our neighborhoods. Improving people’s relationship with the earth, plants, and animals. I can think of many problems that this project would face. First off, there is little access to land in my neighborhood because it is fairly expensive. Second problem, what food belongs to whom? One of the main problems I had over at the Oak St. garden for the take what you need aspect of the garden was that just about anyone could take the food in your plot. I can see why people might get bothered if they are unable to reap the fruits of their labor because someone else took their food. Another problem is that of time, many people in my neighborhood work more than one job and may have children to take care of. All of that is a bunch of responsibility and a community garden might not be a viable option for people to participate in. I think that in order for a community garden project to succeed there needs to be sufficient land that people can use to grow fruits and vegetables. I also believe that everyone is capable of learning to grow their own food, but it may be more productive/efficient if there were resources for individuals who were interested in participating in the garden. The first step for the initiation of such a project is finding the community members who could support the project as it becomes established. The more people that we get on board the more momentum this project will gain.
ReplyDeleteIf I am going to start a food forest in my hometown, it would be a hard task for me to do so. Firstly, in China, all the land belonged to the government. For the people who ‘buy’ the house, they are actually rent it form the government, and usually that rent lease would last for 70 years. I don’t know what would happen if the lease ends. So even though I set up a food forest, it could probably only run for 70 years, and after that I am not sure whether I need to rent the land for my forest again, or hand in my forest to government. Secondly, a single person cannot buy a land, because all the land is brought by land agents, they develop the land and sell them to the citizens. Thus, if I want to set up a food forest, I need help form a land agent, which should be a really complicated process. Thirdly, the population in my hometown is huge, therefore, high demand lead to higher price. If I am not super rich, or having a huge fund, it could be hard for me buy the land for food forest on my own. In conclusion, I personally think the difficulty of set up a food forest is highly depending on government policy, so in my country, it is hard to do this job without the support of government.
ReplyDeleteIf the food forest is successfully created, it would help people to improve their body nutrition for sure, but the effect would probably not be so significant. Different form US, most people, especially parent grandparent generation, they cook and they prefer to buy the food from farmer’s market, which would be organic and healthy. However, most young generation don’t cook, and for the most of time they are eating in restaurant, so they will not care whether there is a new market, like supermarket, farmer’s market or a new food forest. So compared with creating a new organic food source (since there is already some sufficient source), it would be more effective to make a better education on food.
The community project can solve variable issues. Maybe just to reconstruct a part of plants. Plants are always everywhere in the neighborhood and no one cares it. Sometimes the plants just grow without any limits and it may has negative effects on ecological balance.For the project I will first start to "clean" plants in the neighborhood. Clear some plants that already died and may hinder the balance of other plants. The project will makes the whole neighborhood looks nice.
ReplyDeleteI want to start it in a neighborhood I just lived for one year in QingDao. It is a city includes many western style architectures. It is close to the sea coast and the ground height is low. It is more like a traditional western style neighborhood. But the thing is One house probably live many people and divided in several units. So the neighborhood supposed to have more neighbors than it looks like. The issue is people think the plants near the house is none of their business because the house is not only belong to them. The project will promotes the whole neighbors be aware of the "garden" is an important part of the neighborhood. The biggest challenge is it will be hard to let everyone aware it initially. So at first may only a few people join the project. Hopefully when more people see the effects of project and they will join it later.
Oh dear. Out of all the places where I have lived, I don’t know if any of them can feasibly host a garden where we can harvest something edible (as opposed to some horribly mutated tomatoes). Air pollution and chemical run offs are rampant, and even if something grew, I’m not sure if I would want to eat it. Root vegetables will absorb all the chemicals. Leaf vegetables will be covered in thick layer of fine dust from the smog. And the orchard trees (if we grafted them) will be reduced to twisted trunks that are already so common in China. Every year the city goes through the trees in the city and cuts of all the branches until all that remains is just the trunk. I believe it’s a safety precaution but they basically strip the tree of its leaves, so I applaud the trees for staying alive. I couldn’t answer this post before my Wednesday excursion time, and to be frank, going out on Wednesday made me a sadder because I know I can’t have something like that at Wuxi or Shanghai. So those places are out of question on multiple levels.
ReplyDeleteUntil I read some of the other posts, I did not think of Kalamazoo as a community where I can start a food forest. Maybe because Kalamazoo seems to have high food accessibility when compared to the places I listed above? But while Kalamazoo may be more environmentally friendly, that doesn’t mean we have room for improvement (and it’s totally a food dessert). I know couple people above said since the turnout rate is so high (with people graduating), starting a food forest might be difficult. Our house foster cats, and we might be here for only a year, but because the shelter has a very set guidelines on the process, we were able to foster six cats so far. If there’s an individual or a group who can envision a long-term plan, lay down the plan, and instruct the willing college students what to do. Like with anything in life, having continuity and maintaining the plan trajectory will be key. I personally don’t think starting the project will be hard.