Sito di Fabrizio Bottini in italiano
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Urban farming tradition taking root in N.O. area
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Publishing date: 18.07.2010 |
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As already happened on other poor and not so poor urban areas all over the country, in the neighborhoods ravaged by Hurricane Katrina advocates aim to grow a local food economy. The Times Picayune, July 18, 2010
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As enthusiasm for urban farming continues to spread beyond its established stronghold in the West, hundreds of New Orleans residents are now growing their own produce, keeping backyard chickens and even experimenting with other livestock in a city whose laissez faire regulatory environment and long hours of sunshine make ideal conditions for a new breed of urban pioneer.
"There's a huge amount of enthusiasm for urban farming right now," says Alicia Vance, project manager at the New Orleans Food and Farm Network, a nonprofit established in 2002 to improve access to fresh food throughout the city.
Vance's organization leads community gardening classes, works with would-be urban farmers to establish raised beds and proper backyard growing conditions, and demonstrates animal husbandry techniques.
"It would be great if everyone on this block had some kind of animal and grew vegetables. We could be almost self-sufficient," said Frank Carter, an engineering technician who, along with his wife, Laura Reiff, trained with the farm network and keeps 12 chickens in a 60-by-50-foot pen in their back yard in Algiers. Their chicken breeds include Rhode Island Reds, Brown Leghorns and even a Buff Orpington -- ordered by mail from a breeder in Texas.
"The post office called us at 8 o'clock in the evening and said, 'We have your live chickens,'" Carter said. " 'They're peeping.' "
Carter and Reiff also grow their own peaches, grapefruit, peppers, watermelons, blueberries, tomatoes, persimmons, figs and bananas. They have a bee hive that produced 50 pounds of honey this year.
Dinner and a show
The chickens are "very entertaining to watch," says Reiff, although there is still some resistance among the couple's friends to taking the eggs. Some say they'll only eat white eggs, not the blue eggs from the Brown Leghorns. Others are concerned about cracking an egg open to find a chicken embryo, which is impossible unless a broody hen has sat on a fertilized egg for at least a month.
"They'll eat weeds, table scraps, over-mature vegetables -- they're the ideal backyard garbage disposal," said Philip Soulet, an art gallery owner who keeps a handful of chickens on a plot overlooked by Interstate 10, just north of St. Charles Avenue.
Soulet works with Parkway Partners, another urban farming nonprofit, teaching classes on raising chickens and growing vegetables to local students.
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