Urban Farming
by Julia Smith
Photos by Sandra Steier
My son gave me a sign he had hand carved for Christmas. “Dog Gone Farm,” it reads, in jaunty red letters (inspired by our fence jumping dog). With the sign hung proudly on the front door, it was official. We were farmers. We grow fruits and vegetables, build soil, and raise chickens, which wouldn’t be unusual if it weren’t for the fact that we do all this in the middle of the city. We have joined a small but growing number of urban farmers who are working to produce healthier food in a more sustainable way that builds community resilience and we’re having a great time doing it. Our property already had several fruit trees on it when we moved in and we learned from the neighbours that the former owners had been passionate gardeners. Neither of us had any gardening experience but a couple of years after we moved in we shared the yard with a neighbour who didn’t have a garden of her own. She taught us a lot and we grew a little bit of corn, carrots and some tomatoes. Turns out that these were only gateway drugs as by the end of the summer we were completely hooked. Our kitchen was already overflowing with tomato seedlings last spring when I first caught wind of the proposed backyard chicken bylaw for the City of Vancouver. There was a chapter on chickens in “The Urban Homestead” (the book that was quickly becoming our bible), which I promptly devoured. Turns out, chickens are a great addition to a backyard garden. They provide fresh eggs every day, wonderfully nutrient rich fertilizer, and are voracious hunters of slugs and other garden pests. So it was for all the most practical reasons in the world that we became backyard chicken farmers. No one was more surprised than me to discover how truly fond I would become of these feathered dinosaur cousins (chickens are the nearest living relative to the T-Rex!). 28
DunbarLife Magazine | February 15 - April 15, 2011
