The urban farm as a system

Urban farm goals: surplus of healthy food, enjoyable levels of labor, rich soil to maintain high yields, a neighbor-pleasing space that is supported by the community.

Permaculture: an agricultural system or method that seeks to integrate human activity with natural surroundings so as to create highly efficient self-sustaining ecosystems (Merriam-Webster).

Over the winter I took a short intro course at my local community college on permaculture and came away with many ideas and goals on making the urban farm into a system that could support itself, both in terms of lower levels of physical labor and fewer outside inputs. Someday I'd love to take a full length permaculture course, but for now we're starting small with a few ideas and projects that will hopefully lead to setting up a whole system.

Chickens

This chick doesn't know it, but she's very important to the health of the urban farm.

This spring we spent too much money buying compost. This was mostly due to the big farm expansion and not having enough of my own compost to fill the new raised beds. In the future I'm hoping to be able to use urban farm-made compost, thus saving money and the hassle of having it delivered and dumped in a big pile on the driveway.

Our chickens are going to be a big part of this system. Not only will the hens provide a delicious protein source for us with their eggs, their waste is probably even more valuable. Chicken manure, when composted, is nitrogen rich "black gold" that will feed all of our vegetables. Also, we can take our bags of grass clippings, weeds, and even dinner scraps and give them to our hens, keeping these "waste" products within our system and turning them into something useful. This will not only make the chickens healthier, happier animals, it will reduce the amount of feed we need to purchase.

I have two bins: this one and something similar given to me second hand.

Rain garden

A nice example of a rain garden.

Bees are all over the news this spring, and for good reason-- most of the fruits and vegetables we eat need insect pollination to produce fruits or seeds. One way to attract pollinators is to plant native species close to the vegetables or fruits that need pollination. This summer we are installing a rain garden in a drainage area that remains wet much of the year. The rain garden will be close to the raised beds, so the bees will have plenty to pollinate, which will increase our food surplus.

This natural area in our urban farm will be dual purpose, since it also will hold water on our land instead of allowing it to flow down the hill and into the street (and then directly into our local lake, Lake Mendota). Also, it will be beautiful and will attract butterflies, birds, and humans.

The more we can re-purpose materials, items, and areas on our urban farm, the more resources we can save, making the farm that much more valuable!