Fall for Garlic, Surprise Spring

Several beds of healthy, fantastic garlic will be ready for spring! Are you wondering how wonderful garlic is for you? Check out the resources below! When its fresh, local and organic you really focus all of the awesome good nutrients into it so that you need less of it to improve your health.

FoodCycles for “A” Soil Education

Vince McDermott did a short video on what FoodCycles does and gives you a pretty good tour of the grounds.

Making Opportunities for City Farming

There’s a city farming/urban agriculture conference called “Opportunities for Action: An Urban Agriculture Symposium” taking place in Guelph, Ontario on Friday, November 20, 2009. The event aims to inspire and find ways to move city farming forward. You can register at Backyard Bounty or contact Shannon Lee Stirling.

Sky Vegetables Take Roofs to New Heights

Sky Vegetables takes a slightly unique twist in rooftop gardening by covering all the administrative stuff, having others put in the equipment and make its money only from the sale of vegetables. What’s good is that it aims to use proven technologies like solar to help it take off. At the same time its pretty high up there on the technology needs and not very affordable for communities to implement without major government and business investment. That’s probably one of the big criticisms for vertical farming towers that Dickson Despommier envisions too.

New York Has 10,000 Acres of Farmland

Backyard farming – City of Toronto has 5000 ha (2500 acres) of rooftop space alone, Downsview Park has at least 500 acres – in Toronto there’s a huge amount of space to use – even using a bit would make TO a greener, more food secure place.

Eat This Recession for Breakfast

How can city and country farming be the key to fixing the economy? How can it give a real alternative to the way we eat, live and work? Dr. Wayne Roberts gives you the whole 9 yards.

How bald chickens help troubled kids

Christen Shepherd, a gal who always wanted to be a farmer, runs a rescue farm. The farm is a safe haven for animals coming out of factory farms — this includes bald chickens, goats, hogs and pot-bellied pigs. What’s amazing is that these animals help extremely troubled kids feel happier.

Calgary woman fights to raise chickens

Looks like Toronto Chicken ain’t alone in fighting to raise chickens in a city. A Calgary gal and CLUCK are fighting the same fight on the West side of Canada. Even with more people going hungry, rising food bank use, increasing food waste and what not these brave souls are meeting stiff resistance from the powers that be. Apparently trying to be independent and sensible just ain’t allowed.

How to Screw Your Food Supply …

What’s fascinating is that we’ve grown the same 3 crops (corn, wheat and rice) over and over again for the last half century. Unfortunately we’ve forgotten to keep extra varieties just in case something goes wrong — like a bug that figures out how to eat corn for breakfast, dinner and lunch (and then leaves you with nothing). Alas, people have forgotten that putting all your eggs in 1 basket is a bad idea. Guess that ties nicely to our current economic crisis doesn’t it?

Throw a Local Food Party within 30 km.

FoodCycles prepares coleslaw, kale salad, the veggies platters, roasted vegetables and pumpkin and cornbread for the Friday, Oct 2 launch party using vegetables grown right in Parc Downsview Park at FoodCycles city farm (http://foodcycles.org).