So, you live in a city and want to have an urban farm. Well, thanks to Mitchell Joachim, Terreform ONE’s co-founder, urban dwellers may be able to grow their own vegetables in a pod-like farm soon.

The Urban Farm Pod, a digitally fabricated Pod, allows families to grow food and provides a beautiful, hangout green space. Find out more about the Pod by watching the video below.

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The post Grow Greens and Hangout in the Urban Farm Pod [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

Elaine Brown is a seasoned activist. Brown chaired the Black Panthers from 1974 to 1977 in Oakland, Calif. While Brown left Oakland nearly 30 years ago, she returned in 2010 to helm a new cause that’s near and dear to her heart: Turning a vacant lot into an urban farming company that will hire former offenders.

Brown’s project, the Oakland & the World Enterprises, was founded last year and is in its first stage of growth. So far, Brown has established the “for-profit West Oakland Farms.” The “Farms” contains 40 raised beds that are growing tomatoes, peppers, kale, squash, corn, and more. The next step is to add “a juice bar, fitness center, grocery store, and tech design space, along with affordable housing on the city-owned property under the umbrella of the nonprofit organization,” Civil Eats reports.

While Brown is off to a great start, she needs to raise about $30-40 million to fund the entire project. So far, she’s only earned about $300,000, which has come from county funding and grants.

Brown stresses that while she’s creating a farm, she isn’t “in” the farm business. Her goal is to create great opportunities for “black men and women who are poor and lack the education, skills, and resources to return to a community that is rapidly gentrifying without economic avenues for them in mind,” reports Civil Eats.

The main population she wants to reach, though, is the prisoners who are re-entering society. Brown thinks that prisoners can succeed if they are allowed to become self-sufficient, self-determined, and empowered.

Currently, Brown’s farm employs 10 former inmates “on a part-time, rotating basis,” explains Civil Eats. She pays them about $20 an hour. And because Brown isn’t a farmer or a cook, she’s recruited the kelp of Kelly Carlisle, a Master Gardener.

So far, the farm is performing quite well and even has a culinary client: the Pican Restaurant. The Pican is a southern-influenced, black-owned restaurant.

Related on EcoSalon

So You Want to Live in a Tiny House and Be a Farmer? Our Obsession with Lifestyles Most of Us Will Never Commit To

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Image of Oakland from Shutterstock

The post Ex-Black Panther Elaine Brown Has a New Kind of Activism appeared first on EcoSalon.

EcoSalon reviews a new documentary about urban farming.

Do you feel overwhelmed by all the negative stuff happening in the world? Want to create sustainable change but aren’t sure how to tackle massive issues like social inequality, insufficient education, food deserts, consumption, waste, and unemployment? Yeah, me too. But those feelings fell away when I watched “Growing Cities,” a new documentary about urban farming by young filmmakers Dan Susman and Andrew Monbouquette.

The movie opens with short introductions by Susman and Monbouquette. Like many of us, they used college as an excuse to flee their hometown. Natives to Omaha, Nebraska, the pair fled to the coasts to find themselves, and others who wanted to change the world. After discovering their passion for sustainability, food, and film making, they decided to return home, but only long enough to gather supplies for their next adventure: a nationwide a road trip to meet the men and women who are challenging the way America grows and distributes its food.

Urban farming may seem like a cliche term batted about by people who can afford to shop at Whole Foods, but Susman and Monbouquette’s adventure proves that the reemergence of city-based farms is much more than a yuppie past-time. The film follows their journey to San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Detroit Milwaukee, Boston, New York, Atlanta and back again. At each stop, they meet hardworking community members who’ve chosen to dig in (literally) rather than surrender their neighborhoods to blight, violence, or poverty.

Watching “Growing Cities” exposes the viewer to many different styles of urban farming. You’ll see folks growing food in vacant lots, front yards, on rooftops, and in abandoned buildings. Some of these urban farming operations are brand new while others are decades old, remnants of the Victory Garden era–a time when growing food was endorsed by the government and considered the most patriotic act one could perform, aside from enlisting.

As hungry as it will make you to see all the fresh fruits, veggies, herbs, and even eggs and fish growing on these urban farms, the food isn’t even the most inspiring part.

What I loved most about “Growing Cities” was the way that it demonstrates how urban farming can be the simple, sustainable answer to many of the problems plaguing our society. Cities that grow their own food are also growing economic security, healthier citizens, a stable job market, an educated and multi-skilled workforce, and perhaps more importantly, a sense of pride and accountability for the environment around us.

The film was released last fall at film festivals, and is beginning community screenings this spring. The creative team invites you to host-a-screening for Earth Day or to kickoff the gardening season. Doing so will share the “Growing Cities” journey with an America that believes in a more sustainable, just, and healthy future for all!

I highly encourage you to watch, but be warned: a side-effect of this movie is that you’ll immediately want to get your hands in the dirt.

Related on EcoSalon

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Images via Growing Cities

The post Movie Review: ‘Growing Cities’ Will Make Urban Farming Your New Obsession appeared first on EcoSalon.

A lack of lush, rolling hills doesn’t mean organic farming is out of the question.

More humans are moving to cities than ever before in history. This trend is only expected to continue, with 70 percent of the world  population expected to live in cities by 2050. This will require drastic changes in how we develop our urban areas, and how infrastructure is planned.

According to some experts and forward-thinking designers, cities of tomorrow will see a resurgence of farms: not the vast tracks of crop land we currently associate with the word, but sophisticated urban farms that use closed-loop technology to make organic farming vertical instead of horizontal.

FarmedHere is a Chicagoland-based vertical farm that many consider to be the nation’s largest. Housed in a 90,000 square foot post-industrial building in Bedford Park, IL, the urban farming company grows fresh, vibrant produce that’s free from the bugs, diseases, pesticides, and weather-based challenges that plague outdoor farms.

The facility uses a combination of aquaponic and aeroponic growing technologies–often stacked on top of each other–to grow USDA certified organic greens. “Aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture (raising fish) and hydroponics (raising plants with nutrient rich water) in the same water system,” explains the FarmedHere website. “Aeroponic growing systems are an innovative way to hydroponically grow plants by keeping their roots in a nutrient rich mist. The aeroponic mist most efficiently supplies roots with all needed nutrients, required hydration, and adequate amount of oxygen.” This system ultimately allows the organic farming operation to recycle 97 percent of its water.

FarmedHere’s harvest goes directly from the warehouse farm to local restaurants and grocery stores. Instead of traveling more than 1,ooo miles from farm to table, the herbs and greens grown at FarmedHere typically travel less than 20.

And that’s not the only thing to love about this abundant organic farming operation secluded in a nondescript warehouse: FarmedHere recently became a zero organic waste facility by converting all of its organic waste into compost. The compost is then used in landscaping, horticulture and agriculture at other urban farms across Chicago.

Related on Ecosalon:

Foodie Underground: Should We Care About Organic?

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Image: FarmedHere

The post FarmedHere: Zero-Waste Organic Farming Of The Future appeared first on EcoSalon.

The best of the week at EcoSalon, hand-picked for your clicking pleasure.

Think river towns are on the wane? You could be right – but only in the popular media. With their new competition and partnership with American Rivers, Outside magazine wants to remind people that river towns haven’t gone anywhere, and they’re just as charming (and environmentally conscious) as ever.

Mark Twain is credited as saying golf is “a good walk spoiled.” In fact he probably didn’t say it at all, but for critics of the sport, it has remained a rallying cry. How many of them have the environmental cost uppermost in their minds? As Allison Ford discovers, golf remains a water-guzzling monster, and it’s getting thirstier each year…

Anyone who is anyone has an embarrassing pair of flares in the closet, kept for sentimental value but utterly unsuitable for the light of day. But lo! Are they due for a comeback, as this history of flared pants gently suggests? Should I jump the fashion gun and strut proudly down the street in those tan bell-bottoms that lurk in my wardrobe? Will I? Not a chance.

Lazy, warm evenings are upon us, complete with the tantalizing smells coming from next door’s barbecue. So fight back! Practice your July 4th outdoor entertaining skills with these 11 essentials for a bash to drive your neighbours crazy.

Finally, know the name Natalie Coughlin? Yes, she was the swimmer decorated so handsomely with medals at the 2004 and 2008 Olympics. What you might not know is that’s she’s a keen urban farmer – check out our interview with her on the subject.

The post The Friday 5: Out & About Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

On competitive swimming, chickens and honeybees.

Swimmer Natalie Coughlin, 29, was the most decorated female athlete at both the 2004 Athens and the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In Beijing, she became the first U.S. woman to medal six times during a single Games, giving her a lifetime total of 11. She hopes to add to that number this summer at the 30th Olympiad in London.

Besides swimming, Coughlin’s passions include food, gardening, and the five chickens she keeps in her backyard in Lafayette, California.

Avital Andrews from Sierra magazine interviewed Natalie to find out more about her gold-medal habits.

SIERRA: What do you mean when you call yourself an “urban farmer”?

Natalie: I grow a lot of my own food and have replaced a lot of our landscaping with edibles. We have 10 citrus trees, seven seasonal vegetable beds, and five chickens for eggs. We’re considering honeybees next. For a while we were thinking about goats but realized that would have been ridiculous and too much to handle between our two dogs and five chickens and my travel schedule.

SIERRA: When will you decide about the bees?

Natalie: I’ll probably wait until after the Olympics and then dive into that project. Right now we have several mason bee houses, to give them a refuge and encourage them to come pollinate all our fruits and vegetables. I definitely notice a difference this summer, versus the previous summer — a lot more of our flowers are turning into fruit.

SIERRA: How did you pick up gardening as a hobby?  

Natalie: When I was a kid, I had a 90-year-old neighbor — she could stick anything in the ground and it would grow and flourish. We’d always play in her garden. I still have the colander that she used to make potpourri from her roses. A lot of people in my life have had backyard gardens so when I was looking to buy a home, that was one of the requirements. I think it was just a desire to learn more about the seasons and about where food comes from.

The post Natalie Coughlin: An Olympic Swimmer and Urban Farmer appeared first on EcoSalon.

Because life is sexier when you grow things yourself.

Looking for that perfect mate to beekeep and raise chickens with? Kick things off with one of these pick up lines and you might be co-homesteading before you know it.

1. Your eggs are so big.
2. So what CAN you feed your chickens and better yet, what can you hand feed me?
3. Those wood shavings look so soft and comfortable, like a bed.
4. Are you as loud as your chickens?
5. Speaking of raised beds…
6. Your broccoli heads are so big!
7. So roosters are also called cocks? That’s funny.
8. I’ve never seen a Standard so big. Impressive.
9. That honey is thick and runny on your fingers. Mmmmm…
10. These mason jars fit perfectly in my hand. I bet you would too.
11. This compost soil is so dark and rich… like I like my men.
12. I’d like to raise your barn.
13. Can I interest you in some of my compost?
14. No one installs a fence post quite like you.
15. You smell as good as a bundle of lavender tied with twine.
16. I love making pickles, do you?
17. I bet we would brew good beer together.
18. Do you prefer Merlot or Cabernet? Because I think we should start making our own wine.
19. Is this farm table sturdy enough for me to throw you down on?
20. If you were a pea, I would gladly shell you on the back porch.
21. Do these plums feel ripe to you?
22. Can I strum my banjo and sing you to sleep?
23. Want to help me germinate my seeds?
24. That white linen summer dress you sewed yourself would look great on my floor.
25. If you were a berry, I would bottle you up as jam and enjoy you all winter long.
26. Want to make pies together?
27. My cast-iron skillet could really use some love. Can you help?
28. I’d like to make you my backyard bounty.
29. Your heirloom tomatoes are the juiciest I have ever tasted.
30. What’s your ideal harvest season?
31. You would be the perfect fruit of my labor.
32. I can only imagine what’s underneath that bee suit.
33. You just made me as red as a beet!
34. Why drive when you could ride on my handlebars to the farmer’s market?
35. What do you say to a little foraging in the woods?
36. I’d love to preserve this moment.
37. I’ll trade you a juicy cantaloupe for some of your cucumbers.
38. I want to LEED certify you!
39. I wish I could harvest you at peak season.
40. Your organic garden or mine?
41. You don’t look so baaaad standing there with all those goats.
42. When I’m canning with you, this urban blight just fades away.
43. I know this might sound cheesy, but I love everything artisan about you.
44. You’re like a sweet honeybee stinging my heart.
45. Our love could be like heirloom vegetable strong.
46. What do you say we get out of here and free range somewhere green?
47. You sure do know how to handle your chicken coop wire.
48. How about I wear these Carhartts and we plant seeds together?
49. Would you like to be served warm home baked bread with hand churned butter in the morning?
50. How big does your squash grow?

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Image: Zimbio 

The post Pick Up Lines for the Backyard Homesteader appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnThe film “Truck Farm” proves that small scale urban farming efforts are part of the solution.

I’ve seen Truck Farm pop up around the web over the last year, in fact I remember when it was up for a NAU’s 2nd annual Grant for Change. But beyond some cool looking photos of a garden in the back of an old, black, Dodge truck – the kind of photos that make their way onto green and design blogs and give you a general feeling of goodness – I didn’t really have a grasp of what Truck Farm was. Until last week.

Packed into an auditorium with hundreds of other people at Mountainfilm in Telluride, I didn’t know what to expect. Can you really make a 48 minute film about growing a garden in the bed of a truck?

After a presentation on food the day before by the film’s directors, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, I knew that it would be smart and funny and most likely touch on some of the things in which I believe strongly. What transpired was one of the best films I have seen in awhile. Sewn into the story of a Brooklynite transforming the bed of his truck into a garden are glimpses into how we start changing our food policy, from the ground up.

Watch the trailer for Truck Farm here.

Truck Farm is quirky and humorous, yet it hits on the themes that we so often discuss when it comes to food: thinking about where our food comes from, the importance of reconnecting to what we eat, building community and being part of an underground movement that feels empowered to make change.

Along the way, the acclaimed Marion Nestle takes a bite of the Truck Farm‘s salad and smiles, gourmet chefs pay for truck grown herbs, even if the bounty is small, teens at a community garden donate a pepper plant to be put in the bed, and after taking the truck on a school tour, children are inspired to start building gardens in whatever objects they can find.

But Truck Farm itself is only the beginning.

There’s a point in the film when one of the chefs interviewed points out that he loves the concept, but he’s still not sure if it’s part of the global solution to food issues.

But what if it is the solution?

Since the success of the Brooklyn Truck Farm, individuals around the country have started their own versions. Even strolling through Telluride I saw one parked downtown, and in Denver you can buy Truck Farm produce at the farmers market. The number of urban farms and their capacity have increased exponentially. We may not be solving the problems of the global food supply with these efforts, but they’re certainly heartening.

Efforts like these prove that there is a group of people out there that are truly concerned with where their food comes from and honoring the connection to what they eat. Above that, they’re willing to think creatively about what it’s going to take to encourage entire communities to move in that direction.

Cheney and Ellis remind us that the demand is there; that in urban spaces, restaurants want locally grown goods, be it from a rooftop farm or the back of a truck. And if the demand is there, we need to start thinking about increasing the supply, from window gardens to planters of herbs.

With two food related films under their belts (Cheney and Ellis are also the brains behind King Corn), the duo knows the importance of educating and empowering food leaders. Enter their FoodCorps national service program, an initiative with visionary “volunteers for a yearlong term of public service in school food systems,” a place that we know desperately needs help. Run as an AmeriCorps program, in its first year Food Corps has placed leaders in ten states to start seriously working on building gardens, connecting kids to farmers and more.

As Ellis says, when it comes to changing the food movement, “gardens are such a powerful place to start.” Makes you want to go build a garden in your truck doesn’t it?

If we all take the steps to grow some of our own food, even if it’s a small amount, then we become part of the solution, and the more of us that do it, the bigger our movement becomes. And maybe then, we can start talking about this as being part of a global solution. After all, couldn’t we all use a little more “think globally, act locally”?

Images: The Tasty Buzz, Truck Farm

The post Foodie Underground: Truck Farm appeared first on EcoSalon.

A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Places & Spaces: Canvas Hotel is a visual vacation, never mind a cyclist’s dream hideaway. Based in Southern Norway, the adventure starts the moment you arrive.

Lady Gaga on EcoSalon? In Shade Grown Hollywood: The Conscious Mind Of Lady Gaga, writer Kathie Butler says “Lady Gaga is on the way to becoming an icon of post-feminist sexuality. But is she a confident cultural attaché to our own fantastical fantasies? Or she is more of a mouthpiece of modern times, a voice raging against homophobia and discrimination?” We explore Lady Gaga, aka Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta’s level of consciousness.

With Japan still reeling in the wake of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake that sent a 30-foot wall of ocean water onto the Fukushima-Daiichi plant on the coast of Japan, we find ourselves asking if there are more viable options than nuclear as we watch radiation leaking from core reactors. In The Nuclear Option, writer Stephanie Rogers reviews the pros and cons.

In her weekly Green Plate, writer Vanessa Barrington’s column Is Urban Farming The Next Green Cottage Industry? asks if urban farming is a viable career for our younger generation and a dependable source of food for city dwellers.

This week, our editor’s column The Insider’s Guide To Life: Bite Me dives into female bullying, giving important tools to empower one to bite back. Ost writes: “Who on earth are these people? Tina Fey called them Mean Girls, and they are everywhere, no matter how grown up we get. Naively, I had approached my very first bully with the plucky optimism of a community fundraiser. Soon, she needed me and my reliable niceness, and when you get to that point it’s a short trip to toast. I was but the earnest wheat germ, she, the flaring toaster.”

EcoSalon was just nominated for Best Style Twitter Feed! Like us enough to cast a vote? Then go here!

The post The Friday Five: Vol. 5 appeared first on EcoSalon.

A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Ruin porn is a nasty thing and yet our objectification of all thing crumbling and abandoned is strong. Detroit, the largest city in the state of Michigan is the American automobile industry’s main squeeze. How can the home of Motown music legacies and Motor City mechanics be in such decay? You Know It When You See It takes a closer look.

Mobile social platforms are hot right now and a sustainable fashion app? Right up our alley. Writer Rowena Ritchie interviews GreenGlamGo founder, Clarissa Nicola, about her company’s new green fashion finder app in Sustainable Fashion? There’s An App For That.

We’ve seen too much of Charlie Sheen of late, but when it comes to celebrity consciousness, a star can take a cause a long way. George Clooney – who is certainly easier on the eyes – has a long and storied list of social activism. “Despite his involvement in bringing the Darfur genocide to light, he considers it ‘the greatest failure of my life’ – because little changed after he and his father smuggled cameras into a refugee camp to bring to light the horrors committed against an entire nation.” In Katherine Butler’s column, George Clooney Vs. Charlie Sheen: Welcome To Shade Grown Hollywood, we look at Hollywood without the rose-colored sunglasses.

We launched the new series Places & Spaces this week, and they all depict amazing representations of those idyllic places we all dream of and hope to go to. Shelter editor Leigha Oaks takes us on a visual vacation, first stop: Juvet Landscape Hotel.

The Hyde Amendment was passed in 1976. If you’ve never heard of it, Hyde ensures that federal money is not used to fund abortions on military bases, in Planned Parenthood facilities or anyplace else. “Anti-choice politicians and activists have spent a lot of time over the last few months making sure that there’s confusion about how government dollars are used to fund abortions. Here’s the quick answer: they’re not,” explains Libby Lowe. In Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…And Don’t You Dare Get Pregnant, we learn the most intrusive employer of all might just be the U.S. government.

All right, we can’t resist one more…

Has your gardening habit yielded yet another bumper crop of squash or greens you can’t give away fast enough? Plenty of people have the same problem and they’re turning the veggie surplus into a profitable cottage industry. In The Green Plate: Is Urban Farming The Next Green Cottage Industry? we get the update on how the urban farming legalization trend is sweeping the country, and putting green not just in our mouths, but in our wallets.

Image: Michael Ruiz

The post The Friday Five, Vol. 4 appeared first on EcoSalon.