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!).

They each have their own unique personality and I was soon enjoying my coffee with them in the garden most mornings. They did indeed provide all the practical benefits promised in my handy dandy guide to urban farming but there was so much more to them! Neighbourhood children (often with parents in tow) were lining up at our gate to come in and see the chickens. We met more of our neighbours last summer than we had in the 3 previous years we’d lived here.

The summer of 2010 turned out to be a hard one for food production. The torrential rains at the end of August wiped out our entire tomato crop, and the corn I had planted too late (after the chickens devoured the first planting’s sprouts) was disappointing but we had a bumper crop of beans, loganberries, zucchini, lettuce, Swiss chard, carrots and a delightful herb garden. By the time we started to feel like we were getting the hang of things, it was Thanksgiving.

The turkey was the best any of us had ever tasted. We spent Thanksgiving with our new urban farmer friends from the neighbourhood. It seemed only fitting that we would spend this celebration of the harvest with the people we had grown food and learned about chickens with. We picked up an organic 30lb heritage turkey from a local farmer and cooked up all the bounty from our respective backyard gardens. We reminisced about the tomato massacre, cracked bad poultry jokes and plotted new and adventurous ways to expand our local food experiences.

It’s only January but preparations have already begun for our Urban Farm 2.0. We have a new greenhouse and are building several new raised beds. We have an aquaponics system going in our basement (hydroponics meets aquaculture) and a table booked at a farmer’s market for the summer. In our efforts to become self sufficient, we’ve become part of a community. We hope that you’ll all join us in this adventure. Nothing really brings people together like food... especially when that food is grown locally!

Julia lives at Blenheim and West 43rd. She appreciates the support & patience of her neighbours on either side, who regularly share in her bounty.

To find out more about Julia’s life, visit her blog at www.cityfarmgirls.ca