Kristin Ostberg and I took a bike ride down to Englewood to visit Larry O’Toole and see Growing Home’s .75 acre operation, www.growinghomeinc.org. Larry and I know eachother from way back in the early days of Critical Mass and our paths are again crossing on the subject of urban agriculture. Not being a farmer myself, I appreciate Larry’s words of wisdom. Growing Home focuses on transitional job training and does an amazing job of helping formerly homeless people build self confidence and marketable skills. The Wood St. Urban Farm recently received organic certification, which is a great feat considering its location on a fairly “dirty” site. They did this by building their growing beds and hoop houses on a deep layer of compost, which can be certified in only three months, as opposed to topsoil which takes years. SHED Studio designed the classroom building and other structures. Cool stuff. Watch this space for a potential partnership with Growing Home, providing training for folks to have permanent, year-round jobs at the Plant.
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Last night was the first session of Blake’s class focusing on our farm. Due to a mix-up, many of the students went to a different location thereby missing the whole vision spiel. The folks who made it seemed genuinely excited about the project. We have a mix of architecture, engineering, bio-medical, psych and micro-biology students. That should cover all of the basics, except for the financial end. We’ll probably have each of four teams handle the costs/roi/phasing for their piece of the puzzle.
Most of the class wants to work on the architectural component since most of the students are in the architecture department. So, this will be a great opportunity for many people to cross over into new challenges. Like me for instance, time to learn a whole bunch and fast.
