Grid Magazine March 2020 [#130]

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Vertical Gardening, feel the biophilia?

Who’s land?

Our land!

The fight for a more equitable food system

p. 25

p. 14

MARCH 2020 / ISSUE 130 / GRIDPHILLY.COM

T O W A R D A S U S TA I N A B L E P H I L A D E L P H I A

SAVING SEEDS Owen Taylor of TrueLove seeds wants to know, “What seed tells your story?”

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www.weaversway.coop

Monthly Maker Eppchez Yo-Sí Yes Philadelphia, PA darbgarb.com @darb.garb TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF I am a performance artist, designer and change agent committed to stewardship of our planet and equity through story making. I am a proud queer mongrel, a Cuban, and Jewish Quaker. In 2017, I began designing wearable art objects to further conversations around gender self-determination, called Darb Garb. I received a 2018 Art & Change grant and the 2019 Art & Technology Residency from The Leeway Foundation, and have been prototyping designs and developing fabrication processes at NextFab since 2018.

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON? Currently, I’m designing an alternative chest binding garment that works with the body to create affirming pectoral shapes, prioritizing comfort and lines that are unobtrusive under any shirt style. To accomplish all this, I’m not only working through many iterations of my pattern, but also experimenting with what materials can best meet these demands.

WHAT ARE YOU GOALS? I want to empower gender expansive people to dream about what clothing should be able to do for us and create solutions that really work to help people shape-shift into themselves. I am growing this project into a thriving workers-cooperative; a revolution in self-determination and sexual agency.

Discover more stories nextfab.com/grid #nextfabmade

NextFab is a network of collaborative makerspaces.

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EDI TOR ’S NOTES

by

alex mulcahy

Inside, Looking Out managing editor Alexandra W. Jones associate editor Timothy Mulcahy copy editor David Jack Daniels art director Michael Wohlberg intern Francesca Furey writers Kirtrina Baxter Bernard Brown Francesca Furey Constance Garcia-Barrio Randy LoBasso Claire Marie Porter Meenal Raval Gennifer Rollins Lois Volta photographers Linette Kielinski Albert Yee illustrators Sean Rynkewicz Lois Volta published by Red Flag Media 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 215.625.9850 G R I D P H I L LY. C O M

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should rebel? Or do we just need yoga classes at the office and walking workstations to remedy our unhealthy work conditions?

Any environmentalist will tell you that a sense of awe for, and connection to, the natural world is the best way to protect it.

Before they protect, people need to love.

And true love has to be grounded. Owen Taylor started his company, Truelove Seeds, after being smitten by the act of seed saving, and understanding how that relates to the continuation of culture and the preservation of heritage. (He was also smitten by his husband, Chris Bolden-Newsome, who, in 2011, graced our cover for Grid #23.

I’m fairly certain they are the first couple to be featured separately on our cover.) Bolden-Newsome works at Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden. Its name is derived from a Ghanaian word which means, “It is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.”

Here’s another jaw-dropping statistic to ponder. Indigenous people are 5 percent of the global population, but protect 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity. What is the wisdom that they possess? In the time of climate change, when our global industrial economy is annihilating the natural world, it’s extremely important to have a broader sense of history. Humans lived a long time without causing mass calamity to the ecosystem. We can, as a species, allow ourselves to return to something we risk leaving behind. We can rediscover our roots, and build our bridge to the future, with a handful of seeds.

ALEX MULCAHY Editor-in-Chief alex@gridphilly.com COV E R P HOTO BY L IN ETTE K I ELI NSKI

P O R T R A I T BY J A M E S B O Y L E

publisher Alex Mulcahy

n our story about vertical gardens on page 25, there is a statistic that astonishes me: Americans spend an average of 87 percent of our time indoors (and an additional six percent in cars). I ran my own numbers, and, even with a daily 60-minute bike commute, I am worse than average. Now that I have gotten out of the habit of a midday run, I spend about 96 percent of my life indoors.

Even if you add 30 minutes in for a run, that would only boost my outdoor time by two or three percent. Sure, those numbers improve in the Spring and summer, when the days are warmer and my kids are playing in the alley when I arrive home, and before I can even put my bike in the garage, I’m recruited for a wiffle ball game. Even then, my best day probably maxes out at three hours, or 12.5 percent, of outdoor time.

It doesn’t seem like that much.

There are days when it gets to me, and I feel like I’m living in a prison. Sirens, car horns and the thunderous rattling of large trucks are the soundtrack in Chinatown, and the nearest green respite is the lawn at Independence Mall. I find myself wandering off the path there just so I can feel the Earth beneath my feet.

So one very logical conclusion is to address the large amount of time we spend indoors by improving them. At the forefront of this movement is the WELL Building Standard, “a performance-based system for measuring, certifying, and monitoring features of the built environment that impact human health and wellbeing, through air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort, and mind.”

But wait, 87 percent of our lives are indoors? Doesn’t that seem utterly insane? Do we really need to endure jobs that require us to sit so long we need smartwatches to remind us to get up and walk around? Aren’t the health ramifications of sitting in a chair, slouched over a computer, so obvious that we

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Stoneleigh: a natural garden, Villanova, PA | 42 acres Photo by Mae Axelrod M ARCH 20 20

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by

lois volta

DEAR LOIS,

I’m always fighting with my husband about chores. Is gender equality in the home possible?

I

consider myself to be someone who promotes mutual respect, gender equality and adequate maintenance of the home. This might seem relatively straightforward. However, ask any woman, anywhere, if these ideals are realistically attainable, and the answer is a resounding and emphatic “no.”

The way that women have been socialized to feel solely responsible for domesticity is a source of trauma and conflict within families as well as the larger society.

Our conception of home tends to follow us no matter where we live. Through our habits, behavior and beliefs about ourselves, it’s like our past homes chase us into the present. Eventually, it all catches up to us.

The importance of a healthy home for our mental health, feelings of safety and overall well-being should not be taken lightly.

In our homes, we forge our futures, as well as the futures of the individuals who dwell there and that of our families as a whole.

We can choose to live in ways that mitigate conflict rather than perpetuate it.

The amount of arguing and social deconstruction between couples—the energy it takes to elevate our homes to egalitarian principles—is, at times, flat-out unbearable.

Many (perhaps nearly all) women are absolutely tired of attempting to convince men that our socially programmed domestic roles are bogus. How long do we have to wait until cavalier attitudes toward domestic equality become socially unacceptable?

Thankfully, we have demonized catcalling and degrading pats on the posterior. Can we now stand together in saying it is not 4

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okay to call a woman a relentless nag when she simply wants the systemic burden of housework to be lifted?

Viewing our interpersonal relationships in a larger, gendered cultural context, it is easy to see how the fight for domestic equality might not seem worth the effort. Often it is easier in the short term to accept inequality than to remedy the underlying problem.

Movement toward mutual domestic respect and fairness quickly ushers in conflict. Additionally, when we attempt to get to the bottom of problematic issues in the home, we find that we relive our past experiences of home along with the gendered expectations we learned to internalize as children. When women stand up for a rational investigation of truth and the principles of conduct and

equality, the response should be one of solidarity and comradery between the sexes.

All too often, this is not the case.

We know that our homes are where we establish safe spaces, positive mental health practices and upstanding behaviors for ourselves and future generations, so we must take this issue of domestic gender inequality more seriously. It is inconsistent to advocate for gender equality outside of the home but not within it.

Why can’t we work together across all genders to make healthy homes in pursuit of the goal of gender equality at large? If we want gender equality out in the world, we need to be practicing it within our homes.

Question why we, as a society, encourage women to leave abusers more often than we reprimand men for misconduct. Let’s consider that resistance to domestic equality is part of a cycle of systemic oppression. We should focus on helping women advocate for themselves, in an uncompromising attempt to push out the toxic masculinity.

We should encourage men to abandon their privilege to join the fight against the oppression of women, specifically through the fair treatment of the women in their lives.

Every time I stand for gender equality in the home I try to remember these key rules: We are human, and our anger has the potential to create its own trauma; speak

P O R T R A I T BY J A M E S B O Y L E

TH E VO LTA WAY

IL LUSTRATIO N BY LO I S VOLTA

GROW LIKE A BOSS™ with

kindly and walk away from conflicts that are going nowhere.

We are not alone in feeling tired and unequally yoked by society. Know that the problem is far larger than you and your family.

Most importantly, every time we stand up Born from working on for the well-being of our homes, we stand organic farms, our soils up for all women. Don’t be afraid of change are earth-friendly to the or troubling the water. core. From starting seeds I also have good news: The people who to container gardening to resist you in your desires for equality do not planting a raised bed, we have to be subject to your ideals. They can have the perfect organic leave and you will be fine. Remember rule No. soil for you. This spring, let’s 2, you are not alone. In order to have harmoGROW LIKE A BOSS together! nious homes, we must respect each other’s voices, efforts and labor. Let’s make home a place of restoration, refuge and comfort.

If we believe that our purpose in life is to Our products are: make big waves out there in the world, we Peat-Free Locally made in Chester County, PA! 100% Organic might miss the radical energy of acting locally. This urge to build the “biggest thing” is OrganicMechanicSoil.com not who we are; we are part of a community that relies on us for individual actions. Within this, the largest goal and smallest task are OM_ThirdPageAd-Updates.indd 1 2/14/17 equal, as our purpose in life is to share, love and be loved. Here, the home and the world are reciprocal proxies; they are identical spheres of purpose.

For most men, this new way of being does come with drawbacks. He will have to do things he may not like, like cleaning the bathroom. He’ll have to do these jobs for himself, others and the little ones who Eric Hurlock Digital Editor will need to learn these things for their fuLancaster Farming, Host, Industrial ture. If this feels overwhelming, he doesn’t Hemp Podcast need to worry; there are people he’s close to, perhaps who he even lives with, who have extensive experience in these matters and would be happy to share their knowledge.

PA’s burgeoning hemp Women, take heart; change is coming. industry. Clean water.

Forgiveness and love are the foundation Increasing the minimum wage. Marijuana legalization. of any home, and this is the way of the fuPA Power & Policy is ture. Don’t be afraid to call upon and stand award-winning journalism alongside one another. Let’s address mental on the issues affecting health and gender-based conditioning with Pennsylvanians. empathy. We don’t have to accept that hisInform your opinion. tory repeats itself. We can change together.

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Policy for $3/month.

lois volta is a home consultant, musician and the founder of Volta Naturals. loisvolta. com. Have a question? Send it to thevoltaway@ gmail.com

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9:37 AM

EN ERGY

by

meenal raval

As Sexy as Solar Everyone can use technology—and common sense— to shave down energy use basket. So we’ve saved energy, and find it more convenient.

Some efficiency options have a cost that can be recouped from reduced energy bills—often within a year! There’s an upfront cost to the list below, but these changes will save you money quickly: ➤

Think of conservation as using less power.

Conservation options often have zero cost and save you money. Here’s some tips that cost you nothing:

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Turn off the lights.

Turn down the thermostat when nobody’s home.

Move lamps and TVs away from the thermostat.

Hang the laundry to dry.

Lower the temperature on your water heater.

Use the microwave or toaster oven instead of the oven.

Wash clothes in cold water.

Defrost your refrigerator.

Use blinds, shades or curtains to block the sun in the summer and welcome it in the winter.

Turn off your computer and printer.

Run the dishwasher and washer/ dryer at night.

Don’t leave your cell phone plugged in all night.

Use a ceiling fan.

Efficiency is about being smart.

I noticed that we often left the basement light on as we traveled from the garage to the first floor, arms laden with groceries. So we installed a motion sensor at the bottom of the basement stairs. The light comes on as we enter the basement from the garage, and even when we walk down with a laundry

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Replace your light bulbs with LED bulbs.

Use smart power strips.

Learn to use a caulk gun and seal drafts.

Clean or replace filters regularly.

Set a timer so outdoor lights only operate from dusk to dawn.

Install a programmable smart thermostat. If you have an erratic pattern of coming and going, these thermostats learn your patterns, and adjust the heat accordingly.

Get appliances with Energy Star rating. Select the most efficient one, preferably one that is electric instead of fracked gas.

Get double-pane windows.

Upgrade your HVAC system.

Insulate your home and ducts.

If you can, go solar!

Gas and electric bills both show total usage.

The gas usage is in hundred cubic feet (ccf), and the electric is in kilowatt-hours (kWh).

Start looking at these each month, and see what conservation and efficiency ideas you can implement to lower these annual numbers. Give yourself a year. After these annual numbers have dropped and stabilized, you may be ready to take that final leap to clean renewables. In our region and on your own home, the most viable is rooftop solar.

My solar-powered, frack-free home is fully powered by the 22 panels on our roof—and they recharge our electric car, too.

meenal raval is a catalyst for the Sierra Club’s Ready for 100 campaign and Solarize Southeast PA, which assists those transitioning away from fossil fuels like coal, oil and gasoline.

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here are many ways to save energy at home. But how does one prioritize? Everyone has heard the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” mantra when it comes to how to dispose of the stuff in your life. But have you heard of “Conservation, Efficiency, Clean Renewables?” It’s my golden rule.

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bike talk

Down for the Count The census data used to determine whether to build better bike lanes by randy lobasso doesn’t tell the whole story

A

few months ago, some colleagues and I headed out to 11th and Federal streets in South Philadelphia on a warm November day to get some insights on the new, if controversial, bike lane. While the two-way protected bike lane, stretching from Bainbridge to Wharton, had recently been striped, physical protections had not yet been installed.

Lots of people were biking on it anyway, including a mom and two children headed home from school. The kids stopped to speak to me and said they’d used the lanes every day since they’d been installed.

It was the highlight of my day. Not only because I hope to ride a bike with my own child to and from school one day, but because all three of them felt safe enough using this new infrastructure to do so. Before this protected bike lane was initiated, it was rare to see a family riding along 11th Street— with its potholes, trolley tracks and faded bike lane stripe—on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, for families like this and the people designing and implementing new infrastructure on our streets, the U.S. Census Bureau does not count them as bikelane users. In fact, the only data the census collects regarding bicycle transportation is

in regard to participants’ work commutes.

As policy director of the the League of American Bicyclists, Ken McLeod wrote in a blog post this past September: “Bicycle commuters are only counted in the data if they use a bicycle as their primary mode of travel for their commute to work. The survey does not count bicyclists who use a bicycle for less than the majority of their trip (e.g. a short bike ride to a transit stop), bicyclists who use a bicycle for less than the majority of their work week, or bicyclists who do not use a bicycle to get to work but bike for other trips.”

Despite this, census numbers often end up determining both national bike-friendliness rankings of cities and whether more bike infrastructure is built, although they don’t represent the full extent of the bicycling population.

Work Commutes Often Assume 9-to-5 Hours Although some of the most consistent bike traffic can be seen during rush hour in places like Center City and along Spring Garden Street, rush hours are changing as fewer people are working regular 9-to-5 careers.

Forty percent of Philadelphians are reverse commuters, meaning they travel outside the city for work (and are very unlikely to ride a bicycle). Most U.S. workers now work in the service industry, and of the top 10 most popular jobs, eight are in the service sectors, where shift times are often inconsistent.

Leaning heavily on census data to make biking infrastructure decisions prioritizes those with jobs over parents who use bikes to commute back and forth to school with kids, notes Michelle Lee, a tech entrepreneur and cyclist in Philadelphia.

“They have a slightly different set of concerns and needs, and that’s gendered, too,” she explains.

Young cyclists are also neglected.

“Children on bikes aren’t commuters,

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but their trips are just as important,” tweets Richard Masoner, a Santa Cruz-based biker who regularly tweets about transportation policy under the username @cyclelicious.

“Ditto college students riding or walking to class, non-employed spouses running errands or schlepping kids around.”

Even bike messengers and food-delivery workers who work for ever-expanding appbased businesses like Grubhub and Caviar are rarely considered when building out protected infrastructure, and, too often, they’re seen as a nuisance on the street.

U.S. Census Data Is Openly Flawed The Detroit Greenways Coalition has often lamented that a high number of cyclists in its city are overlooked by the “bike friendliness” ratings of organizations such as Bicycling magazine, the League of American Bicyclists and PeopleforBikes.

As the coalition explained in a 2019 blog post: “National groups largely base their bike friendliness rating on the number of workers whose primary means of transportation to work is bicycling, which is from the Census Bureau’s ACS [American Community Survey].”

Detroit ranked poorly in these three groups’ lists in 2018—while the league gave it an honorable mention, it failed to crack the top 50 of Bicycling magazine’s list and fell in at No. 145 in PeopleforBikes’ list.

The coalition attributed this in part to the population tracts and households that are designated as Hard to Count (HTC) by the U.S. Census Bureau. A whopping 71 percent of Detroit is considered HTC. While many people may be biking in Detroit, the census can’t get in touch with them, so the city as a whole is not considered bike-friendly, and fewer national and statewide organizations are working together to make the city a more bike-friendly place because of this.

In Philadelphia, 54 percent of our population live in HTC census tracts, according to an academic study by Boston Indicators; and about 30 percent of the population failed to return completed census forms in 2010.

Those HTC areas are also areas of highest poverty in the city and include areas of West Philadelphia, North Philadelphia and Lower Northeast Philadelphia.

What About Everyone Else?

According to the 2017 National Household Travel Survey, census data only accounts for about 20 percent of bicycle trips, which means using such data as a baseline for creating more bikeable spaces neglects various careers, genders, entire communities and people who may use a bicycle for means other than getting to and from a job.

The U.S. Department of Energy reports that 60 percent of all vehicle trips are less than six miles.

Many, if not most, of those short trips could easily be replaced by a bicycle, which would be good for the health of our communities and the environment, if only we had the data that would support making it safe to do so.

Instead of building infrastructure just for the people who work, or just based on how many people are already getting to work via that infrastructure, we should be looking at ways to increase bicycling as a means of traveling around our neighborhoods, running errands and staying healthy without having to drive to the gym.

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street stories & curbside characters

Finding Beauty Artist decorates trash receptacles along stretch of Girard Avenue with by constance garcia-barrio flowers and plants

S

erena niesley recognizes a miracle, however humbly garbed, when she sees one.

In the winter of 2013, not long after graduating from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Niesley, now 30, a painter, poet, designer and videographer, found herself in a slump.

“I was out of work and getting depressed,” she recalls.

When she decided to take daily walks to freshen her spirits, she kept coming across “red round things” growing on bushes in the woods in Fairmount Park and vacant lots near her Brewerytown home.

“I learned they were rose hips,” she says.

“Their color lifted my heart, and their vitamin C content boosted my immune system.

Nature was offering me what I needed for physical and emotional health.”

Niesley took the rose hips as a blessing and encouragement in that tough time and paid earthy homage to them.

“I started weaving rose hips into wreaths,” she says. “I sold some, but mostly I gave them as gifts and decorated my home with them. I hadn’t made much art in the year after graduating from art school, but the rose hips inspired me to create again.

Making the wreaths opened me back up to creating all sorts of art.”

Many plants can have a healing say in our lives, even in the city, Niesley believes.

“Sometimes, I start a walk by asking for guidance,” she says, “and it comes through as it did with the rose hips.”

Treasuring plants’ gifts may infuse Niesley’s genes.

“My family definitely had farmers in the past,” says Niesley, who grew up in Washington Boro, a village on the Susquehanna River in Lancaster County. She remembers her grandmother having a vegetable garden.

“My mother grew vegetables, too,” she says. “I remember helping with the weeding, and preserving vegetables after the 10 GR ID P H IL LY.CO M M A RC H 2020

harvest, cutting and freezing sweet corn, canning tomatoes and grapes. My grandma would come over to help, and the whole kitchen table would be covered with pipinghot corn on the cob, waiting to be sliced off and frozen.”

Nature wove through her childhood in another way.

“My family [and I] would go for hikes or nature walks, usually on Sundays,” Niesley says. “I learned the names of lots of birds and plants. Many of their names imprinted on me from learning them at such a young age, and I surprise myself sometimes by remembering them.”

At first glance, Philly’s Brewerytown, a beer-making powerhouse in the 19th century, founded by German immigrant Otto C. Wolf, seems an unlikely spot for Niesley to have landed after college. However, her Lancaster County heritage has flourished in this fast-gentrifying neighborhood.

Niesley’s art includes wedding certificates, birth certificates and house blessings in Fraktur, a decorative art style and calligraphy brought to Lancaster County by the Amish and Mennonites who began settling there in the 1720s, drawn by William Penn’s Holy Experiment.

“I took classes under Emily SmuckerBeidler at the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society,” Niesley says. “My work was already folk-influenced, and I wanted to both deepen that element and connect with my roots by learning Fraktur. I was inspired by how community-focused an artform it is. Often, artists didn’t even sign their work because the family or community milestone was the important part, not the identity of the artist.”

In 2017, Niesley embraced Brewerytown’s tradition by designing two bottle labels for Crime & Punishment Brewing Co.’s first bottle release.

“The two beers, Raskolnikov and Sofya, were named after characters from

Dostoevsky’s famous novel, whose title also gave the brewpub its name,” Niesley says. “I researched Russian folk art styles for inspiration for the labels.”

Niesley further declared her presence and passion about plants using the last thing one might expect: public trash cans.

Her exuberant flowers and spills of dark berries may have led the Fairmount Community Development Corporation to choose her images to adorn trash cans on Girard Avenue between 26th and 31st streets, a stretch with little greenery.

“In 2016, the CDC invited artists to submit designs,” Niesley says. “The project was really exciting.”

Many of her paintings were of people in nature, or flowers and plants.

“I tried to choose images that were inspiring but relatable. I don’t pretend that seeing snowdrops or pinecones, in painting or in nature, can resolve your life issues, but I don’t discount a spiritual connection, the possibility that images on one of my trash cans on the street can give someone just the right lift at the right time,” Niesley says.

“I’m deeply interested in humans and nature and the connection between the two, and the mystery that plays a part in how they commune,” she adds.

The idea of art on the street, accessible to everyone, also enthused Niesley.

“I like that you can’t help but see it,” she says. “A friend of mine said, ‘I went to throw out dog poop, and there was one of your designs [on the trash can].’”

Hewing to her belief in widely accessible art, Niesley favors printmaking.

“I’ve sold paintings, but I’ve decided to emphasize prints because I can make more of them and sell them at affordable prices,” she says. “I want to get my art into people’s lives and houses.”

Eager to nudge a wider audience toward an awareness of nature and its constant renewal, Niesley made a calendar entitled P HOTO G RAP HY BY AL BERT YEE

I’m deeply interested in humans and nature and the connection between the two, and the mystery that plays a part in how they commune.”

— serena nie sley “What to Look For.” The abundant flowers, seeds, bugs and berries are “meant to be a way to remind you, simply, to slow down and look—at the trees, at the plants growing up in the sidewalk, at the wispy seeds riding on the air.”

The calendar includes plant identification and an interactive map. You can find it at serenaniesley.com/calendar.

In the future, Niesley may return to school for tools to use the alchemy of art and nature to work toward human wholeness.

Artist Serena Niesley stands by one of her designs. You can find her work on the trash cans that line West Girard Avenue in Brewerytown.

“I may eventually study psychological counseling,” she says, “to seek a way to braid nature, art and conversation into deeper healing. That’s a pipedream, but meanwhile, I’ll continue to seek fresh ways to bring art and healing into the lives of people around me.”

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the blacker the berry

Free the Land Black and Brown community members push the city to take steps toward equitable farm and garden ownership

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kirtrina baxter & gennifer rollins

n october of 2018, members of Soil Generation, a Black- and Brown-led grassroots coalition of farmers, community farmers and gardeners took to the streets of Philadelphia in the name of food and land security.

They marched up and down Market Street, proudly proclaiming, “Whose Streets? Our Streets! Whose Land? Our Land!” Protestors carried pitchforks and signs that read “Free the Land,” angry about land dispossession, though comforted to be among soil friends. There were neighbors pushing children in strollers, comrades in motorized wheelchairs and hijabbed teens, all chanting and sinuously moving toward the same cause: community control of land.

Sonia Galiber, a Soil Generation organizer, explains that the action was a way to protest that Philly farmers aren’t in control of 14 GRID P H IL LY.CO M M A RC H 2020

nearly half of the city’s estimated 470 farms, which are often set up on abandoned lots.

“After years of relationship building and researching how power, land and resources flow through the city, our coalition identified three goals to address threatened gardens,” Galiber says. “End the 10-year tax abatement; stop sending active gardens to sheriff’s sale; and provide gardens real security and pathways to ownership.”

That day served as the midpoint in the grassroots organizing work of Soil Generation and the long call for better land solutions for growers in Philadelphia.

At that time, ending the tax abatement was not a welcome issue in City Hall, and among activists, it was seen as a far-reaching goal. However, advocates for schools had already been pushing for this change.

They joined forces with housing and land

advocates recently as part of the Alliance for a Just Philadelphia. The pressure worked.

In 2019, an important election year, City Council had no choice but to tackle the issue of tax abatement.

The protest made an impact, and today Soil Generation organizers and policy leaders are digging in with the City of Philadelphia to work on Philadelphia’s first Urban Agriculture Plan—a long-term program to support community gardens and urban farms across the city.

“In little over a year, we have seen a big change in our City Council, with a tense election forcing the city to deal with land issues,” explains Lan Dinh from VietLead, a community advocacy organization for Vietnamese and Southeast Asian immigrants and refugees. “We finally saw some movement on the 10-year tax abatement.”

Working alongside Philadelphia Parks & Recreation and the urban planning firm Interface Studio, Soil Generation members now have partners in their pursuit to ensure racial equity and community at every level of this plan.

Changing historically inaccurate

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Members of Soil Generation protest city policies that cause land dispossession and food insecurity.

narratives around Black people’s relationship to land and their foodways are part of the current paradigm we seek to shift, and doing so is a critical step toward reclaiming our histories, building self-determination and ultimately gaining food sovereignty.

Altogether our demand to have control of these farms and gardens helps set the stage for a future where community ownership of food and land is possible, and the threat of land insecurity is low, especially for long-term and migrant Black and Brown growers.

A key measure of this strategic plan is transparency and accountability to the community of growers who have been fighting for years to have better support and access to land. The goals of racial and economic equity are entrenched in the plan’s process and therefore will translate in the final outcome to some benefit for those communities most affected by food insecurity.

The people are ready to accept these community-informed solutions in order to create systems of support that will enrich food and land work, according to Ashley Gripper, Soil Generation data expert and native Philly grower.

“Gardeners are looking to receive more support from the city and are hopeful that it will come through the efforts of the Urban Agriculture Plan,” she says.

However, despite the plan, gardens are still being pulled out from under people’s feet and sent to sheriff’s sale, and practiced Black and Brown gardeners and organizations still face incredible blockades to purchasing their own gardens or new land.

The economic and political landscape of land ownership in Philadelphia works against many of its residents, but still, we grow, and we expect to see change and hope for a better, more equitable food system.

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the blacker the berry is a column done in collaboration with Soil Generation, a Black- and Brown-led coalition, to bring you stories about food and racial and economic justice in the Philadelphia area.

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urban naturalist

The American kestrel is the smallest falcon found in North America.

It eats insects as well as small rodents and birds.

New Kids on the Block

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heard my new neighbors screaming before I saw them.

A high-pitched “kee, kee, kee, kee” at the end of my block stopped me in my tracks. It reminded me of the calls peregrine falcons make, but was a little higher in pitch and certainly out of place.

Peregrines like tall structures with good views of the surrounding landscape, and our block is all two- and three-story buildings. There was another falcon candidate, though: the American kestrel, a much smaller and more colorful bird best known for sitting on telephone lines in the country, watching the fields for mice and grasshoppers. I caught a glimpse of the bird, backlit so that I could only see its silhouette—blue jay-sized, pointy wings and a blunt head.

Like any obsessive naturalist, I began stalking the bird. I’d sprint out the front 16 GR ID P H IL LY.CO M M A RC H 20 20

door with my binoculars whenever I heard it calling, often dragging my 7-year-old daughter Magnolia along with me. (She quickly got in the habit of authoritatively demanding the binoculars so she could confirm that I had, in fact, seen the kestrel.)

Each observational victory only generated another question to obsess over. We finally got a clean look at it: a male kestrel, with blue-gray wings, an orange back and bold black-and-white cheek bars. Then, I needed a picture, proof that would let me log the observation on iNaturalist. (We eventually got the shot on my phone, taken through my binoculars.)

But the question remained: What was it doing on our block?

Finally, I saw it slipping into and then out of a hole in the brick wall under the eaves of a small apartment block on the corner.

by

bernard brown Kestrels nest in holes in trees or buildings (they’re cavity nesters). Males will feed their female partners while the females sit on eggs, so it seemed our kestrel was supporting a family.

The other birds on the block offered some hints as to whether it was hunting.

The mourning doves, the same size as the male kestrel, chased him away whenever he landed near them. The starlings watched him warily and cleared out whenever he got close, even from their favorite oak tree across the street from our house.

Then one day in April I saw the robins mobbing the kestrel in a tree of heaven down the block. He flew away carrying a lumpy item dangling two skinny legs.

“Birds eat birds?!” Magnolia exclaimed, the world a suddenly crueler place than it had been a few seconds earlier.

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American kestrels have the grit to live and thrive in Philly

Over the weeks, as I scampered around our block and the neighboring one on the other side of the kestrel’s corner, I handed off the binoculars to neighbors, at least a few of whom were excited to learn that a falcon (albeit a very cute and small one) was trying to raise a family right alongside us.

As May heated up, the female, notably larger and less colorful, came out of the hole to meet her mate more and more often. She would call, take the latest slain sparrow, and duck back in. Soon, she was hunting, too— an indication that the eggs had hatched and the chicks needed the labor of two parents to feed the family. The female was able to take down bigger prey, adding starlings and robins to the menu.

While I didn’t ever see them make a kill, I saw enough attempts to get a feel for their strategy: surprise unwary songbirds by launching into a sprint down our street or the parallel alleyways. Sometimes the kestrels would burst into a cross street, leaving their prey a split second to scatter and seek cover.

The little raptor family had plenty to eat.

Our resident urban songbirds start nesting in late winter and pump out multiple broods through the spring and summer, yielding plenty of clumsy fledglings.

In June, the kestrel babies finally emerged from the nest. I counted at least two as they huddled adorably just outside the nest hole.

I then ran inside the house to celebrate with my less-excited—but kindly patient—family (and then with my neighbors, who obligingly accepted my binoculars to take a look).

Soon, I was spotting them in the trees, begging for food from their parents, who would fly off and return with a dead songbird to shut them up. As children do, as they grew more independent, they began to spend less time near the old nest hole. By September I saw them infrequently, and by October they’d moved away—I wondered, “Where to?”

Pick up a pair of binoculars and see what you can find in your own neighborhood.

Our brush with the beautiful and savage lives of these little falcons was special for sure, but there is nothing special about our block. Our city is full of similar houses and apartment buildings with holes perfect for nesting. It is also full of songbirds just the right size to feed a growing kestrel family.

It could be just a rare coincidence that interesting birds nested 60 yards from a nature writer’s house, but I doubt it.

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HOLD THE SALT Citizen scientists collect data throughout the winter on the levels of road salt in our streams story by

t all started with a conservation group’s angry intern.

In the winter of 2018, employees of the Izaak Walton League of America, headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland, were greeted by an unsightly pile of salt. It obstructed part of the driveway and sat on top of a storm drain. It wasn’t just huge, it was a hazard—for drivers and the environment.

As Scott Maxham, the League’s Clean Water Fellow, prepared to head outside to clear the pile, his colleagues stopped him. It would be too risky, they said; the driveway was adjacent to a four-lane road.

“We were like, ‘You can’t do that, it’s a very busy road. You will get killed,’ ” says Emily Bialowas, the League’s Chesapeake monitoring outreach coordinator. “So, he got really riled up.”

Maxham tried to track down city and county agencies for salt cleanup, and came up short. The pile of salt was leaking chloride and other harmful chemicals into a creek on the property.

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The League knew this wasn’t the only instance of over-salting and began connecting citizens at regional watersheds and organizations to look at the impact of this practice on water quality.

Thus, the Winter Salt Watch was created.

It was a natural fit for the League, which dedicates itself to the conservation, restoration and promotion of sustainable practices in natural resources. Founded in 1922, it prides itself on being a defender of soil, air, trees, wildlife and water—the last of which can be easily polluted by road salt.

Road salt, which is sodium chloride, was first used in 1938 to de-ice roads in New Hampshire, according to the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Four years later, in

1942, 5,000 tons of salt blanketed highways across the United States. That number has since skyrocketed to 10 to 20 million tons of salt annually.

On average, about 844,000 tons of road salt were used on Pennsylvania roads in the last five years, PennDOT reported.

High quantities of road salt can build up in streams, lakes, reservoirs and watersheds, and harm aquatic plants and animals. It can also contaminate drinking water and damage infrastructure.

A body of freshwater should never exceed 1,000 parts per million, according to parameters set by the U.S. Geological Survey. Levels of 230 ppm or more can be toxic for aquatic life.

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francesca furey

Citizen Scientist Kevin Roth tests the chloride levels of Pennypack Creek.

“The fish that live there and the aquatic macroinvertebrates ... can’t handle salt. And any mammals that drink out of the stream, they can’t really handle salt,” Bialowas says.

If the saline level is higher than normal, it’ll eventually impact humans because it goes into our drinking water, but not as “immediately and dramatically” as it does for aquatic wildlife, Bialowas adds.

Using the help of citizen scientists, the Winter Salt Watch monitors these fresh waters. The program provides organizations along the East Coast, plus Minnesota and Michigan, with test kits to check chloride levels. Then, citizen scientists upload their findings on the Water Reporter app, allowing the League to identify patterns and locations of abnormal levels.

Tookany/Tacony-Frankford watershed partnership conservation leader Ryan Neuman says this data collection is important work.

“With the citizen science effect, we can get a lot more data points,” Neuman says.

“There wasn’t a lot of this representative data of the whole watershed.”

Other active organizations that test waters monthly in the region include the Lower Merion Conservancy and the Coalition for the Delaware River Watershed.

Some have even detected extreme levels, like the Darby Creek Valley Association, which reported results of 482 ppm, 583 ppm

The fish that live there and the aquatic macroinvertebrates ... can’t handle salt.

And any mammals that drink out of the stream, they can’t really handle salt.”

— emily bial owas

and 800 ppm throughout its watershed tributaries on March 4, 2019.

Kevin Roth, the education and outreach coordinator at the Pennypack Ecological Restoration Trust, says the Pennypack Streamkeepers began to participate in the Winter Salt Watch after chloride sensors at Pennypack Creek “went crazy,” in November 2018.

These levels followed a random snowstorm that hit the Philadelphia region that came too quickly for trucks to salt the roads.

Homeowners, however, were prepared.

Most residents over-salted their driveways, walkways and sidewalks. Once the storm cleared, the remaining salt leaked into the creek and tripled its chloride levels.

Soon after, a group of 20 to 30 streamkeepers conducted 60 reports.

“We found exactly what we expected,” Roth says. “Salt content in Philadelphia-area creeks were way higher than sustainable because freshwater shouldn’t have any salt at all. We had reports starting at 230 ppm of chloride in the water.”

The dangerous results inspired the Pennypack Trust to hit the ground running and try to tackle salting methods in their community by educating the public about chloride contamination and recruiting more citizen scientists along the way.

A small amount of salt isn’t too dangerous, Roth says, but constant oversalting by homeowners is—and this is something residents need to learn. Roth and his partners at Pennypack Trust decided to implement a three-year plan to promote awareness about proper salting techniques. Bialowas says the folks at Pennypack propelled the mission of the Winter Salt Watch and went above and beyond.

Through current community programs and social media campaigns, Philadelphiaarea organizations are teaching homeowners how to properly prepare for snow storms.

“A lot of them salt the wrong way. They kind of just throw it out before the snow, and then they throw it on top of the snow.

They think it’s a be-all, end-all,” Roth adds.

Homeowners can follow four different steps in decreasing their salt pollution, according to the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed: • Shovel before you salt to decrease the amount used.

• Use just enough salt to melt ice, and sweep up any leftover salt for reuse.

• Avoid products with urea, such as kitty litter or ashes.

• Educate neighbors and alert the township of any salt pile-ups.

“We’ve been focusing on telling the public to use less salt and clean up after themselves after a storm,” Roth says. “Unfortunately, salting is a part of what we do now because of insurance, legality and safety. Obviously, we’re not against safety, but we definitely can be doing better.”

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Chris Bolden-Newsome (left), of Sankofa Community Farm, with his husband Owen Taylor, of Truelove Seeds.

Finding Your

ROOTS story by claire marie porter — photography by linette kielinski

Farmers are growing the same crops that fed their ancestors with help from this seed company

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ehind the curtains in a small room at Bartram’s Garden’s conservatory are jars and jars of seeds. Owen Taylor of Truelove Seeds, is storing them for winter. They just happen to be on the grounds of the oldest surviving botanical garden in the country, where, several hundred years ago, botanist John Bartram once manifested his own devotion to the biodiversity and cultural preservation of plants.

Taylor continues this tradition today.

“Every seed has a story,” he explains. “The history of the seed ties in with your own personal history. You’re able to talk about the movement of people and to hold on to this sense of home in a new land.”

Taylor grew up in northeastern Connecticut, originally territory of the Mohegan Tribe. When a friend of his from the Mohegan reservation shared her great uncle’s succotash recipe with him, Taylor learned that the magenta-splashed borlotto bean was not only culturally significant to his Italian family, but to the Mohegan tribe as well. He devised that the Mohegans eat the borlotto bean because they intermingled with the Italian farmers who settled around them.

These are the types of seed stories that define the operation at Truelove, a profit-sharing company that grows, preserves and sells rare and culturally significant seeds. The seeds are grown and sown by about 25 different small-scale farms around the country that are committed to sustainable growing practices.

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who grew them, which, according to Talyor, is what makes the venture unique.

“People are growing their ancestral and regional crops and sharing those stories in their own words,” he says, “while also getting financial support through the seed company.”

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hile taylor began growing food with his family as a child, his first official farm experience was at Bull Run Mountain Farm in The Plains, Virginia, in his

early 20s.

This interest in farming eventually evolved into passion for food justice. He met his future husband, Chris Bolden-Newsome of the Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden, at a Growing Food and Justice Initiative gathering in 2008 in Milwaukee. They dated long-distance while Taylor worked in the food justice movement in New York City for seven years, first as a training and livestock coordinator, and then as a program manager.

After Bolden-Newsome proposed in 2012, Taylor moved to Philly. Within a few months, he began working as the community organizer for the Public Interest Law Center’s Garden Justice Legal Initiative.

“I left that position after one year because I fell in love with the work of seed keeping,” says Taylor, who had begun working for notable seed collector William Woys Weaver and his Roughwood Seed Collection of more than 4,000 heirloom food varieties.

Weaver’s grandfather, H.R. Weaver, informally started seed saving in the 1930s.

After finding his grandfather’s collection in a freezer years after his death, Weaver continues to preserve and add to it, also selling seeds from the collection.

“Saving seeds is preserving the biodiversity of our food supply,” says Weaver.

“It puts us in control of our food supply. If we grow our own food, we’re not dependent on someone else.”

It allows us to control the quality of the food we’re eating, he says, but it’s a commitment, and a lot of seed savers aren’t making a lot of money. The cost of producing food like this just isn’t profitable in the globalized food market, with “the junk that’s in the supermarket,” he says.

“The seed saving movement isn’t nostalgia,” Weaver says. “It’s about nutrition and healthy eating and living.”

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“I try not to exoticize our seeds, but honor their important place in our past, present and future.”

—owen tayl or works, Weaver explains. But eventually the cost of oil will prevent globally sourced foods from being transported long distances. In this next phase “we’re going to have to deal with what we have,” he says, indicating that keeping seeds for healthy food able to grow in the soil around us will become vitally important.

Still, that’s not the only reason for Weaver’s interest in heirloom seeds. They also define who we are, he says.

“These seeds’ stories are about our cultural identity,” Weaver explains.

Taylor learned all this and more when he studied the art of seed saving under Weaver’s tutelage in Devon, Pennsylvania. After working with the Roughwood Seed Collection for four years, he conceived of Truelove Seeds as a way to integrate saving seeds and food justice.

Heirloom seeds with cultural importance are the focus of the business, and a lot of the seeds are deeply ancestral for the growers. While for Taylor, ancestral seeds are

southern Italian and Irish varieties, depending on the grower, the seeds can range from African diaspora varieties to those from the British Isles and Ecuador.

Truelove growers also work with rare seeds, some from the Roughwood Collection, and culturally significant vegetable, herb and flower seeds, with a focus on food and medicine crops.

When Taylor asks all the growers he works with, “What seed tells your story?” what he means is, “What kind of seeds remind you of home, and how can we preserve and honor that history?”

“Most seed companies are growing crops from all over the world, but not recognizing their origins,” he says, adding that things we often think of as staples, such as apples, or eggplants, are not native to the U.S., and have far-reaching histories and ancestral ties.

“It’s been 400 years of cultural mixing,” he says.

Left: Taylor poses with seeds from Truelove’s collection. Right: A close-up of borlotto bean seeds, which hold special significance to Taylor.

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ruelove seeds’ purpose and process for seed saving is threefold: Having seed repositories of high-performing, regionally adapted plants is one. According to Taylor, the importance of developing crop biodiversity in combating climate change cannot be overstated.

“Climate change is happening rapidly,” he says. “For me, developing a relationship with our soil and climate through seed saving is a long-term, ongoing process.”

And he does so by having large populations of plants, so there’s a large gene pool, and no inbreeding and “genetic bottlenecking” of plant species. When growers buy

seeds from across the globe, they buy seeds that are acclimated to a different climate, and thus, less resistant to climate change.

Conversely, “the more that we’re adapting seeds to our specific climate, the more climate change-ready they are,” Taylor says.

Regional adaptation for seeds is crucial, and happens when people save or grow their own local seeds.

“Not every plant makes it to the future,” he says. “So we’re saving seeds from the plants that are the healthiest in our field.”

The second part of Truelove’s mission involves buttressing the most vulnerable people in the path of climate change.

It does this by supporting community-led

solutions to the inadequacies of a globalized food system. The company partners with urban farms that promote food and social justice, like Soulfire Farm in Upstate New York, Sankofa Community Farm and Soilful City in Washington, D.C..

The third piece to the model is promoting the art of seed saving—a practice that has been lost as people have stopped farming and moved to cities and suburbs, says Taylor, but that can signify a deeper connection for many communities to the food they grow and eat.

Truelove also encourages their customers to save their own seeds, supplying them with information on how to do so.

“We’re working with immigrant and refugee communities, to save their seeds” he says. “Holding onto those varieties that taste like home is super important.”

“I’m interested in supporting seed keeping as a practice of preserving living culture,” he continues. “I try not to exoticize our seeds, but honor their important place in our past, present and future.”

They do so without introducing plants that would tip the scales of the ecosystem, says Taylor. He also notes that at Truelove, the growers are required to practice natural, organic farming methods. They see the soil as its own unique ecosystem and practice no- or low-till farming methods, never tilling in the same area twice.

“When you till, you’re killing macro- and micro-organisms,” says Taylor, “things that create a healthy soil food web.”

“We believe in the life of the soil, and want to invest in that,” he adds, explaining that every time that the soil ecosystem is disturbed, it loses nutrients.

Truelove Seeds also practices open pollination, allowing the plants to self-pollinate naturally, leading to a more true-bred M ARCH 20 20

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variety of seed.

“We make our farms into a sanctuary for pollinators,” Taylor says, by investing in the airborne ecosystem and growing plants like milkweed, Mexican sunflowers, zinnias and dahlias.

“Our main focus is the human ecosystem,” he says. “As Philly’s population grows and changes, we want to make sure everyone has a chance to eat the food that reminds them of home.”

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olden-newsome emphasizes African and African diasporic teaching methods at Sankofa Community Farm, which participates in growing and saving seeds with Truelove.

“We are, first and foremost, a spiritually rooted farm,” says Bolden-Newsome of the farm, which operates on the grounds of Bartram’s Garden in Southwest Philadelphia.

The mission of Sankofa, he says, fits in tandem with Taylor’s work.

Sankofa is a Twi word (of Ghana) that translates literally to “It is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.”

“At the farm, we are committed to living the praxis of Sankofa,” he says, “ … moving forward with our lives as individuals nourished by active engagement of our people’s shared narratives in America.”

“We are doing the work of healing the land and people on the land,” he says.

Which in Southwest Philly is 90 percent people of African and African diasporic descent. Sankofa grows foods that are culturally significant to those groups, namely foods from the Deep South, like field peas, mustard greens, turnips, sweet potatoes and African greens.

“I work with Truelove because they have reverence of soil and reverence of ancestry,” he says.

They are doing all this work in the context of a larger agricultural project, Bolden-Newsome says. One that, as the farm’s namesake implies, returns people to their roots, so that they can move forward.

Sankofa began as a different entity, he says, with ties to food security, not food justice— the difference between the two being that food security involves communities’ access to food, whereas food justice involves communities exercising their right to grow, sell and eat healthy food. Sankofa takes the mantle even further into food sovereignty, communities’ control over healthy and culturally important food that’s produced sustainably.

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“Since the time of slavery, Black people in the diaspora have struggled with history in a unique way. We have had to dig out our story, taste its sweets and bitters.”

—chris b olden-newsome Bolden-Newsome came to Philadelpia from the Mississippi Delta, where he used to grow his own food. He lost touch with that history after moving to Philly, and it made him wonder how his people were separated.

The South, he says, is the land that “Black people can put their finger on. Because if you’re Black in this country, you’re from the South,” he says.

“Since the time of slavery, Black people in the diaspora have struggled with history in a unique way,” he says. “We have had to dig out our story, taste its sweets and bitters.”

“This is why we take the South so seriously,” he says, in terms of both a spiritual ancestral connection and cultural seed choice.

Bolden-Newsome believes that he and Taylor were divinely called to this work.

“We believe it connects us in a conscious way to God,” he says. “We began this work really nourishing the life of the soil.”

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he burmese community at the Novick Family Urban Farm in South Philadelphia has been trying to find the right-tasting hibiscus flower for years. They grow the plant for its leaves, and have been working hard to cultivate the one that tastes like home, says Taylor, using this as an example of the effort it can take to get seed preservation right.

“As you adapt things to our climate, sometimes you lose something, too,” he says.

Still, people like Taylor and Weaver are doing what they can to provide seeds and foods that are important, especially to diasporic populations.

“Seed saving is an act of resistance to assimilation, but also a radical act of self-determination,” says Taylor. “This is my food and I’m in control of it.”

And the heart and soul, the centerpiece, of food sovereignty, he says, really is seeds.

“A seed is literally planning for the future,” says Taylor. “A seed is hope.”

GROWING

UP Vertical gardens are a novel way to bring the outdoors inside. story by

claire marie porter for decades, urban dwellers have been finding creative ways to bring the outside indoors. In terms of both food production through urban farming, an implosion of indoor forest “jungalows” and rooftop gardens, the “GIY” movement has plant sales in Pennsylvania soaring, especially among millennials. In Philadelphia, it’s what Urban Jungle’s founder Curtis Alexander terms a “biophilic revolution.”

As with any large, rapidly growing city, optimization of space is essential. It was only a matter of time before another trend began taking hold, one that requires a bit more engineering—vertical gardening.

Whether walls of lush ferns and air-purifying spider plants or tiered hydroponic microgreens, things are growing up.

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Curt Alexander and Jane Winkel of Urban Jungle stand in front of a green wall installed at the office of biotechnology company Imvax.

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he first vertical gardens were invented by Stanley Hart White in 1938, though Patrick Blanc’s name is more closely associated with the trend due to his popular “vegetal wall” at the Musée du quai Branly, Paris, a wonderwall of greenery that resembles a mountainside. The wall uses a closed loop of water conservation and a felted, nutrient-rich material for planting.

Today, vertical gardening functions as an umbrella term for both food-production innovations and the artistic green wall.

If you haven’t seen a green wall in-person, it’s best described as an upright jungle floor. Verdant beds of emerald and kelly greens, luxuriant clusters of the tropical rabbit’s foot fern with its furry-looking rhizomes, and purple-striped tradescantias, pileas, spider plants or peperomias. Some green walls are random, others have vegetation clustered by color and texture, some are planted in specific patterns.

These viridescent wonders are individually planted, often in soil-less materials that conserve water.

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We’re inspired by the principles of biophilia, humans’ innate desire to have a relationship with nature.”

— jane winkel , landscape architect at Urban Jungle green walls in which he installs one irrigation line that feeds from the top of the wall and an emitter that drips about one gallon of water per 1,200 plants, or a tenth of an ounce per plant per day.

“I use gravity to my advantage,” he says.

He doesn’t use any soil for the walls, instead opting for an organic human-made hygroscopic material that absorbs moisture from the air.

The green walls require a specific plant palette, with particularly medium light plants that don’t grow out more than 6 inches. The walls use an LED glow light strip in lieu of natural light, as Alexander doesn’t build green walls outside due to the climatic conditions of the Northeast.

Jane Winkel, who works as Urban

Jungle’s landscape architect, says generally for green walls, they like to use a more random design, “like a pattern you might find in nature, or in a meadow,” she says.

She’s concerned with the construction of the project, creating descriptive drawings for clients. Sometimes they work with existing patterns, like in the Commerce Square building, which renowned architect I.M. Pei designed.

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hough urban jungle does have plans to create and install vertical herb walls for restaurants, the majority of their vertical installations are for aesthetic purposes.

“We’re inspired by the principles of biophilia,” says Winkel, referring to a word

P HOTO G RAP HY COURTESY JAN E W IN KE L

Alexander, of Urban Jungle, a full-service garden-design center on Passyunk Avenue, has been working on green wall innovations for the past decade.

When the tropical plant frenzy started about four years ago, which is now on a “fever pitch,” he says, hobbyists became fanatical about their houseplants, searching out rare cultivars, the best and coolest.

People were looking for this “natural state” in their home.

So Alexander began experimenting with green walls, as a way to pack as many plants into an environment without compromising precious square footage.

“Vertical gardening could be interpreted as many different things,” he says. “Vertical green walls are a specific thing. My green walls are what I’m most proud of.”

What he’s designed is unique. With a background in engineering, he’s been able to create ingenious solutions for his urban clientele—whether through manufacturing customized plant boxes for awkward spaces or self-sustaining drip irrigation systems.

His concept for the green walls, he says, is “truly vertical.” These are 90-degree-angle

that comes from Greek, meaning love of life and the living world. “Humans’ innate desire to have a relationship with nature.”

“In the city, where green spaces are so valuable, especially personal green spaces, it’s really rewarding to develop these spaces with clients,” she says. “The idea of bringing nature, and natural elements, to the residential environment is really important to us. It fulfills a need.”

Alexander adds that city-dwellers have felt changes in mood and overall health after bringing nature into their living environments. People have been gravitating toward the understanding that more green in your office space, means more concentration and focus, he says.

Which is essential, considering Americans spend an average of 87 percent of their time indoors.

C

an growing upwards go beyond aesthetics? Philly’s vertical farming movement has had many setbacks, and many critics view it as an “over-engineered solution” to the problems plaguing the food system, according to Greater Philadelphia’s Economy League.

“In terms of growing food in vertical gardens or living walls, this tends to be far more expensive and difficult to manage than growing the same crops in a greenhouse in the peri-urban zone surrounding cities like Philly,” says Dr. Robert Berghage, associate professor of horticulture at Penn State’s Department of Plant Science.

His research focuses on crop production in

modified environments.

He says that if there exists a high-end market that is willing to pay big premiums for “super local,” it might be worth it. But otherwise, growing food in this way has relatively high up-front costs that make it not economically competitive with conventional farm or greenhouse production in Philly or areas just outside the city.

He points to the prohibitively high artificial light and electric costs in vertical systems that are necessary to achieve high productivity.

“There are lots of other reasons to support ‘local’ or ‘sustainable’ food production, but in many cases, the economics for these urban systems are troubling,” he says.

From the much-hyped aquaponics farming of Phoenix Foods, which imploded in 2004, to the recent vertical farming scam of Metropolis Farms, Philadelphia has had a tough time with urban indoor farming.

But it’s not the only city in this boat.

According to the Economy League study, most vertical farms are struggling financially. Only 27 percent of indoor vertical farms are profitable, as compared to 67 percent of greenhouse farms and 50 percent of container farms, an Agrilyst (now Artemis) survey reports. Even with the benefit of a year-round growing cycle, vertical farms are only able to profitably grow a small number of crops, primarily micro and leafy greens, herbs and strawberries.

“In my opinion, they are primarily for aesthetic purposes and should be considered as art or an amenity within the built environment,” says Berghage. “They can serve other functional purposes like food production, but most of those functional purposes can be more economically and practically achieved growing in a more conventional system.”

The report further suggests that “improving

Green wall installations done by Urban Jungle in the lobby of Imvax.

crop diversity, reducing food waste and maintaining soil integrity in traditional agriculture will address the long-term nutritional needs of the planet,” much better than costly and risky indoor farming endeavors.

“I also don’t want to support people getting overly excited about how you are going to feed the world or a city growing plants in abandoned warehouses or in the walls of skyscrapers,” says Berghage.

D

e spite doubts concerning vertical farming’s viability, Philly nonprofits are forging ahead with the idea.

First Light Project announced a new pilot vertical farm project that will grow leafy greens in a five-tier vertical racking system below LED lights. The hydroponic farm will be hosted by hunger relief organization Philabundance in a warehouse on West Berks Street, and a portion of the food grown there will be available to the Philabundance community and its network of member organizations.

The project is a direct response to needs and concerns raised by neighborhood community groups, urgent needs for food, jobs, shelter, safety and healthcare, and education, says Frank Sherman, co-director and green architect behind the program.

Its projected yield is 65,000 pounds per 7,600 square feet per year—primarily in lettuces and leafy greens. The main goal is to have a positive impact on Philadelphia neighborhoods that lack adequate access to jobs and food, says Sherman.

“Profit is not our only indicator of success,” he says, adding that agricultural and food-related businesses tend to generate a miniscule 2 to 6 percent in profits.

E

ven if you aren’t trying to grow food commercially, bringing plants closer can improve your mental health. NASA recommends having at least one plant per 100 square feet.

“I’ve never heard anybody say, ‘I don’t like this plant,’ or ‘this plant makes me feel bad,’” says Liz Jacoby, Urban Jungle’s operations manager.

“Even if you have no room … you can pop a shelf up. There’s something you can grow.

A snake or ZZ plant; a succulent. It doesn’t have to be this crazy ornate, extravagant thing,” adds Jacoby. “Everybody should grow something.”

M ARCH 20 20 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 27

EV EN TS

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The environmental impact of fracking and plastic bags

Sourdough Making Workshop

Philly Wine Week

Learn how to develop sourdough recipes with La Colombe Fishtown Cafe head baker John McGrath. All participants will get the chance to mix and portion the dough, as well as leave with a piece of it to shape and bake at home. lacolombe.com

Gear up for this annual weeklong festival, organized by Philly’s leading wine experts.

Activities include dinners, tastings and specials at more than 50 venues across the city, which have included hot spots like Amada, Tria, Bud & Marilyn’s and Vedge in the past.

Recently retired environmental engineer Kelly O’Day will discuss how the Marcellus shale gas industry has altered the economics of plastic production and increased plastic pollution. This event is part of the Chestnut Hill Library speaker series. chlibraryfriends.org WHEN: 1:30 to 3 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 8711 Germantown Avenue

WHEN: 3 to 5 p.m. COST: $50 WHERE: 1335 Frankford Avenue

to

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phillywinecru.org WHEN: 6 to 10 p.m. COST: Varies WHERE: Various locations

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Repair Fair

Greenhouse Yoga

The Black Journey: A Walking Tour

Hosted by the Philly Fixers Guild, this event is the place to bring a broken appliance, electronic device, jewelry piece or other fixture you’ve been meaning to repair. Attendees will be paired up with a volunteer fixer who will walk them through the relevant fix-ityourself process. phillyfixersguild.org

This all-levels vinyasa yoga class is located inside a greenhouse full of tropical plants at Fairmount Park. Bring your own mat and water and enjoy the class, knowing your entrance fee helps to support the Philly park system. myphillypark.org

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 2901 Cedar Street

WHEN: 9:30 to 11 a.m. COST: $15 WHERE: Fairmont Horticultural Center

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M arch 14 Birdwalk at the Discovery Center

Healthy Soil = Healthy Plants

Enjoy this walk through the East Park Reservoir, led by a member of Delaware Valley Ornithological Club. Attendees will learn about a variety of bird species that call the reservoir home. Newbies and seasoned birders alike are welcome. birdphilly.org

All backyard gardens depend on healthy soil to grow and thrive. Learn about how to improve and maintain your soil’s health at this wine and cheese class, led by Penn State Extension Master Gardener Thom Mrazik.

Attendees will also learn how to use soil tests. floralandhardyofskippack.com

WHEN: 8 to 10:30 a.m. COST: Free WHERE: 3401 Reservoir Dr.

WHEN: 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. COST: Free WHERE: 4007 Skippack Pike, Skippack, Pennsylvania

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GRIDPH I L LY.CO M

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This 90-minute walking adventure offers participants a history of Black Philadelphia. With a focus on Black Americans in the city’s early days, the walk traces the footsteps of enslaved people, abolitionists, slaveholders and the nation’s founding fathers. blackjourneyphiladelphia.com WHEN: 2 to 3:30 p.m. COST: $20 to $35 WHERE: Independence Visitor’s Center

A pril 4 & 5 Cherry Blossom Festival Celebrate the blooming of cherry blossom trees around the city with Japanese dance and martial arts performances. This familyfriendly event features dozens of activities, from origami to tea demonstrations to a “Prettiest Pet in Pink” contest. subarucherryblossom.org WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. COST: $12 to $25 WHERE: Fairmont Horticultural Center

G E T A FR E E

TREE

FO R YO U R PH I LLY YAR D!

YOU CAN GET A FREE YARD TREE EVERY SPRING AND FALL Philadelphia is transforming into the City of Arborly Love, one tree at a time! Find a giveaway near you and come pick up a free tree for your yard - we offer a wide range of options, including large shade trees, For more information, give us a call or visit us online: TreePhilly.org 215.683.0217

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FOLLOW US @TREEPHILLY

small flowering trees, and fruit trees. Free mulch and planting & care demonstrations are available at each event. You don’t need to have a green thumb to have a great tree!

Growing season An agricultural scholar finds her niche in an exploratory, supportive setting Hannah Kass (MES ‘20–expected) is an academic researcher who advocates for food justice and farmers’ rights. When Hannah applied to Penn’s Master of Environmental Studies program, she had already completed years of ethnographic fieldwork with organic farmers—in college, on her own, and in a master’s program in anthropology that she ultimately concluded was not the right fit. “I realized that a purely anthropological approach was probably not going to create systemic change and that I wanted a more interdisciplinary master’s program,” Hannah says.

Hannah Kass, MES ‘20–expected

VIRTUAL CAFÉ Join the MES program director on the first

Hannah found the flexibility she was looking for at Penn. Students in the MES program select their foundational courses and area of concentration from a broad catalog representing a dozen environmental disciplines. For even greater flexibility, students can design an individualized concentration and take courses from across the University landscape. Hannah did exactly that, and she says it is how she found her niche as a researcher. She is now studying how corporate power in agriculture is institutionalized throughout the legal system and how power can be shifted back to farmers.

Tuesday of every month from 12-1 p.m. for an online chat about your interests and goals.

Log in with us.

www.facebook.com/UPennEES @Penn_MES_MSAG

Hannah says her experience in the MES program boils down to one word: support. That includes funding support to present her capstone research at the University of Cambridge and attend other academic conferences. She reflects, “Whether you want to enter academia or a professional field, or are still deciding, they support you in every sense of the word.”

To learn more about Hannah’s growth as a scholar and her current research, visit:

WWW.UPENN.EDU/GRID