Milkwood – it’s always a pleasure working with these committed legends. This week we took the students on a tour of some projects and homes we think are downright awesome – like Pocket City Farms. Once a bowling green, it’s now a flourishing restaurant, playground, yoga space, food forest and market garden that’s transformed 1200m2 of grass into food.
Image from Pocket City Farms
Pocket City Farms consists of a team of five and is a “new” project. New in the sense that their first crops are only 7 weeks old, but not so new in the sense that they’ve been working on bringing this dream to life for around six years – good things take time and *really* good people to see it all through.
Zag, answering our million questions
As someone who grew up on a city farm in Brisbane and helped get the Hobart City Farm up and running, seeing other similar projects kicking arse is more than heart warming, I’m a firm believer that this is world saving stuff. Seriously, in the face of climate change, peak oil, peak soil (yes, that’s right soil), food sovereignty and crazy politics – addressing unsustainable food production by countering it with regenerative food and community cultivation practices is where it’s at.
Thanks Zag, Emma, Luke, Karen, Adrian and Pepe (the charming farm dog) for being dreamers and doers, for seeing the problems and being part of the solution. Meeting folks like you make me feel like everything’s going to be ok. You can stay in touch with the Pocket City Farms by joining their newsletter here. ]]>
Hi guys, really cool to see a reclaimed bowling green. one question though, did you do any soil tests for toxic sh*t? or any remediation type stuff beforehand? I have drooled over a couple of former bowling greens and dreamed of getting them converted in a along the lines of what these folk have done, but I have also known people who have managed functioning bowling greens who have said that they thought that there was probably more chemical sprays per square meter on a bowling green than practically any other land use… kind of put a downer on my buzz. Interested to know what the situation was/is in this example.
The Pocket City Farm team did extensive soil testing and they all came up clean. Zag did say that it had been fallow for 2 years before they took it on. IT’s true that generally chemicals are used, but how much and of what will probably vary a lot. Do the soil tests and go from there :-)
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Hi guys, really cool to see a reclaimed bowling green. one question though, did you do any soil tests for toxic sh*t? or any remediation type stuff beforehand? I have drooled over a couple of former bowling greens and dreamed of getting them converted in a along the lines of what these folk have done, but I have also known people who have managed functioning bowling greens who have said that they thought that there was probably more chemical sprays per square meter on a bowling green than practically any other land use… kind of put a downer on my buzz. Interested to know what the situation was/is in this example.
Cheers
The Pocket City Farm team did extensive soil testing and they all came up clean. Zag did say that it had been fallow for 2 years before they took it on. IT’s true that generally chemicals are used, but how much and of what will probably vary a lot. Do the soil tests and go from there :-)
This is awesome thank you Hannah for sharing.