Dear Betsy,
Oddly enough, there is an article in today's New York Times about that very
subject: "A Garden Flourishes Among Chicago's Projects." A farm in the
Cabrini Green housing project supplies produce to many of the top
restaurants in the Chicago area as a sustainable ag. program. Here's the
text:
August 25, 2003
A Garden Flourishes Amid Chicago's Projects
By MONICA DAVEY
CHICAGO, Aug. 24 - The buffalo mozzarella at Fortunato, a tony restaurant in
this city's Wicker Park neighborhood, is flown in from Naples, Italy, but
some of the tomatoes tucked beside the cheese come from a place far closer.
Though the diners here know nothing of it, the gourmet tomatoes are grown on
the unlikeliest of farms, in a lot beside Cabrini Green, long one of the
nation's most notorious public housing projects.
On the little North Side lot, tomato plants and sunflowers poke up into a
horizon that on one end includes Chicago's downtown skyline and on the other
reveals the remaining towers of the deteriorating housing development. The
tiny fenced farm draws stares from the people who live here.
"Looks like home to me," Mattie Dix, who is 72, said admiringly, as she
gazed through the fence the other day. "Alabama."
But others seem puzzled by the farm, even skeptical. "That won't be there
long," said Jerome Taylor, who grew up in Cabrini Green four decades ago. "I
don't even know what they are doing here, but there's no way this will
last."
Actually, Mr. Taylor is right. It will not last, nor was it ever meant to.
But at a time when Cabrini Green and the rest of the city's high-rise public
housing developments are coming down, and when whatever will come next is
not yet complete, a farmer has stepped in with his own dream.
Although city gardens are hardly a new concept, what makes this one
different, aside from its especially urban setting, is that its produce has
become a popular commodity for some of the city's finest restaurants.
Worlds away from Cabrini Green and worlds away as well from the expensive
restaurants that now feature his vegetables, Ken Dunn grew up on a farm in
Kansas.
He moved here in the 1960's to study philosophy at the University of
Chicago, and has spent much of the past 30 years wandering the city trying
to transform it into a place that recycles its waste, reuses its old
machinery, composts its scraps and creates an alternative economy that is,
in his eyes, both sustainable and just.
Mr. Dunn, who is 60, wears dirt-caked work boots and a plain baseball cap
and has a small puff of hair beneath his bottom lip. His philosophy has a
pragmatic edge.
"The back-to-nature movement did intrigue me," Mr. Dunn said last week, as
he sat on a stack of hay in the lot beside Cabrini Green and accepted the
mud-covered rocks presented to him, one after the next, by his 2-year-old
son, Soren. "But it intrigued me with the full knowledge that the world
would arrive with bulldozers some day."
The city-owned land near Division Street and Clybourn Avenue is ultimately
to be used for mixed income housing and businesses. But for now - as the
city waits for a development deal - the land is empty, and the city has
allowed Mr. Dunn's nonprofit organization to build a temporary organic farm
on a lot that is smaller than an acre, no charge.
Alicia Berg, the city's planning and development commissioner, said she
viewed Mr. Dunn's idea as an innovative experiment, and one that matches
Mayor Richard M. Daley's desire for the "greening" of Chicago. The city has
recently agreed to let Mr. Dunn expand the farm onto a second acre, just
south of the current farm. A mound of dirt awaits.
"To a certain extent, it looks out of place," said Walter Burnett Jr., who
grew up in Cabrini Green and is now the alderman for the ward that includes
it. His memory of the land from years past was bleaker: a vacant lot and
lots of weeds.
Mr. Dunn has hauled in rich dirt and wood chips. He uses no chemicals. He
admires bumblebees as the best pollinators. He has a compost pile
decomposing nearby, steam rising.
And while his organization, the Resource Center, is nonprofit, Mr. Dunn and
his partner, Kristine Greiber, by no means view these crops as a way for
rich buyers to give charity for something grown in a rough neighborhood.
"This is not a hobby," Mr. Dunn said. "This is a real product, and part of
that is that it must make money. To make a permanent change in society, it
has to function in the existing economy, being able to bring its benefits
while paying its bills."
Razor wire tops the fence that surrounds the farm, and though Mr. Dunn and
Ms. Greiber will sell to locals who stop at the gate for lowered rates, they
charge steep prices to restaurants. Their 30 varieties of prized,
fragile-skinned heirloom tomatoes, for example, go for $3 to $3.50 a pound.
The farm can produce about $45,000 in vegetables in a year, Mr. Dunn said.
Chefs in some of the city's best-known restaurants, meanwhile, are well
aware of where these vegetables are grown, and interested in many of Mr.
Dunn's thoughts about food and waste and sustainable living.
"But I don't do anything here as a do-gooder thing," said Bruce Sherman,
chef at the North Pond restaurant in Lincoln Park, who favors Mr. Dunn's
beets, onions and specialty lettuce. "As a cook, this is about the quality
of the products - first and foremost, it tastes good and looks good."
George Bumbaris, executive chef for the Ritz-Carlton, prefers the tomatoes,
which sometimes arrive still warm from the sun.
"To me, this sounded a little weird in the beginning," Mr. Bumbaris said of
Mr. Dunn's farm. "But when we brought the tomatoes in the kitchen - well, I
didn't grow up on a farm, but I know what a tomato should taste like."
Best,
Claire Henry
Hollenback Community Garden
Brooklyn
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2003 1:00 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: community_garden digest, Vol 1 #1525 - 4 msgs
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: community gardens ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
2. Re: (no subject) ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
3. Statistics on successful youth gardening programs (Deborah Mills)
4. Restaurants Buying Local (Betsy Johnson)
--__--__--
Message: 1
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 10:28:05 EDT
Subject: Re: [cg] community gardens
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fiona,
There is a wealth of information on the ACGA website for you to read on
myriad subjects. It's an awful lot of material, but should help you come up
with
many of the answers that you need. <A
HREF="http://www.communitygarden.org/";>
American Community Gardening Association</A>
Please feel free to query the listserv further - that's what it's for.
Best wishes,
Adam Honigman
Volunteer,
<A HREF="http://www.clintoncommunitygarden.org/";>Clinton Community
Garden</A>
<< Subj: [cg] community gardens
Date: 8/25/03 11:31:52 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Fiona White)
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dear Sir,
I am the co-ordinator of a project in Australia which involves the
development of community gardens as part of an agri-tourism and community
harmony
initiative. We have 26 - 50 acres of land which will be divided into
alotments.
The town we are in is Armidale NSW which is 5 hours north of Sydney and is
home
to the University of New England.
We have a high indigineous community here with large numbers of youth
unemployment, crime, drug addiction, teenage pregnancy and so on. The aim
of the
gardens and the facility is to bring community together from all spectrums,
provide means of teaching basic living skills, provide programs such as
early
intervention and parenting skills and the like.
I came across your sight and wondered if you could provide me with more
information on the gardens, how they function, their management, courses and
community participation programs that are run, the history of the project
there,
the success of the project, what expertise has been required in order to
oversee
its success, the involvement of the local community, the effect it has had
on
youth and early and crime intervention and what elements ensure its success.
I appreciate your time with this matter, I understand my questions are very
broad, however I am writing initial plans for the development and seeking of
funding for the project and your assistance and expertise in this matter
would
be greatly appreciated.
Kind Regards,
Fiona White
Tilbuster Station
11312 New England Highway
Armidale NSW 2350
612 6771 3480
612 0402 553 173 >>
--__--__--
Message: 2
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 11:20:21 EDT
Subject: Re: [cg] (no subject)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Shane:
1) As an ACGA board member, you should be familiar with the St. Louis
Whitmire Study out of Gwenne Hayes Stewart's Gateway Greening outfit and a
nearby
University: <A
HREF="http://stlouis.missouri.org/gatewaygreening/WhitmireStudy.htm";>Whitmir
e Study</A> . The Whitmire is an amazingly useful collection of
quantifiable information on community gardens and the neighborhoods they
serve,
dealing with research on neighborhood stability, crime reduction, etc.
2) The link between crime reduction and community gardening seems to be
acknowledged internationally. Here is the community greening page from
Sydney,
Australia's Royal Botanic Garden website:
<A HREF="http://www.rbgsyd.gov.au/education_kids_zone/community_greening";>
Royal Botanic Garden Sydney - Community Greening</A>
This paragraph from that page is particularly interesting:
" By promoting communal gardening in public housing estates, and on nearby
community locations, we make a significant contribution to improved social
cohesion, crime reduction and public health in both urban and regional New
South
Wales."
You may want to to contact the Royal Botanic Garden directly to query their
methodology. I would suggest, however, that you please use the word,
"please"
somewhere in the text of your query - the word, oddly enough, remains
standard usage in most English speaking countries, and its absence may be
considered
"odd".
3) This is a pdf link to a seminal paper: " Environment and Crime in the
Inner City: Does Vegetation Reduce Crime?" by Kuo & Sullivan. <A
HREF="http://www.herl.uiuc.edu/IMAGES/scientific_article_CC.pdf";>Kuo &
Sullivan</A> . It is
often cited in public greening and planning discussions - you should make
yourself familiar with it.
Best wishes and good luck in your search,
Adam Honigman
Volunteer,
<A HREF="http://www.clintoncommunitygarden.org/";>Clinton Community
Garden</A>
<< Subj: [cg] (no subject)
Date: 8/25/03 11:29:31 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Listserve)
To all
I am Looking for as many studies as I can find that show a link to
community
gardening/greening and crime reduction. It can be through one specific
garden
or a University study. Preferablly, it will have crime stats prior to the
instalation of a garden and the after affects. If anybodys knows of some of
these would you please reply. I do have some already and I know there is
Flint
Michigan study and the one coming out this fall that was discussed at the
ACGA
conference in Chicago. I would still like to find any others that may be
out
there.
Thanks for any help you may be willing to lend.
Shane Siwik
>>
--__--__--
Message: 3
From: "Deborah Mills" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2003 08:49:09 -0700
charset="iso-8859-1"
Subject: [cg] Statistics on successful youth gardening programs
Hello everyone,
It's been a busy this year and even though I haven't participated on the
list server too much I have enjoyed the conversation. It's kind-of like an
old friend always showing up when you need them the most.
Now we finally have a few $$'s to move forward with the CSA farm project at
our new Juvenile Justice Center (JJC) in Ventura County, California. Of
course we are going after additional money and we need a few statistics to
help us obtain our goals. What I am looking for is the positive results that
gardening programs have on youth-at-risk. I'm sure I have seen some
direction before on this list server but my mind can be like a sieve at
times.
Any help and guidance would greatly be appreciated. Thank you all in
advance,
Deborah Mills
Green Cure
--__--__--
Message: 4
From: "Betsy Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "Betsy Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 10:30:45 -0400
boundary="----=_NextPart_000_000B_01C36AF3.F1E527B0"
Subject: [cg] Restaurants Buying Local
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I would appreciate learning about any restaurants in your cities/area
who are buying produce from community gardens and local farmers. Please
reply directly to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Thanks, Betsy
Betsy Johnson, Executive Director & ACGA Board Member
Chefs Collaborative
262 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02116
617-236-5200
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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<p class=3DMsoNormal><font size=3D2 face=3DArial><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>I would appreciate learning about any restaurants in =
your
cities/area who are buying produce from community gardens and local
farmers. Please reply directly to <a
href=3D"mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]">[EMAIL PROTECTED]
</a>.</span></font></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><font size=3D2 face=3DArial><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><font size=3D2 face=3DArial><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Thanks, Betsy</span></font></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><font size=3D2 face=3DArial><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><font size=3D2 face=3DGaramond><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Garamond'>Betsy Johnson</span></font><font size=3D2 =
face=3DGaramond><span
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Garamond'>, Executive Director =
& </span></font><font
size=3D2 face=3DGaramond><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Garamond'>ACGA
Board</span></font><font size=3D2 face=3DGaramond><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Garamond'> Member</span></font></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><font size=3D2 face=3DGaramond><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Garamond'>Chefs Collaborative</span></font></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><font size=3D2 face=3DGaramond><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Garamond'>262 Beacon Street</span></font></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><font size=3D2 face=3DGaramond><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Garamond'>Boston</span></font><font size=3D2 =
face=3DGaramond><span
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Garamond'>, </span></font><font =
size=3D2
face=3DGaramond><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Garamond'>MA</span></font><font
size=3D2 face=3DGaramond><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Garamond'> </span></font><font
size=3D2 face=3DGaramond><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Garamond'>02116</span></font></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><font size=3D2 face=3DGaramond><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Garamond'>617-236-5200</span></font></p>
<p class=3DMsoNormal><font size=3D2 face=3DGaramond><span =
style=3D'font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Garamond'><a =
href=3D"mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]">[EMAIL PROTECTED]
</a></span></font></p>
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12.0pt'> </span></font></p>
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______________________________________________________
The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's
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out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org
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End of community_garden Digest
______________________________________________________
The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's
services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out
how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org
To post an e-mail to the list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription:
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