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Practical and at times comical (just like a goat!), connected both to nature and the city, and slightly rebellious — City Goats: The Goat Justice League’s Guide to Urban Goat Keeping is a book for gardeners, people committed to eating locally, and anyone who has ever pondered joining the backyard goat revolution. 
HISTORY SHOWS URBAN FARMS CAN FEED CITIES WHILE PROVIDING ECOLOGICAL SERVICES – Perhaps the revival of urban farming will lead not just to a diet for a small planet but a diet for smaller people? 
It’s the middle of March and time to get your seeds in – and for those of us lucky enough to live in milder climates, time to get those cool season plant starts! Buying starts and seeds from local growers and at local sales ensures that you get plants that are climate-appropriate. Get planting! 
Ever more Americans are becoming urban dwellers and access to good quality, reasonably priced food grown sustainably is more and more challenging. Food is grown using chemical-laden agricultural methods and travels longer distances to kitchen or table. We need to find ways to bring sustainable food production closer closer to home. 
Christina Hahs is a sprite with a direct stare. Even at the age of 27 she is not one of the youngest farmers in the City of Seattle. In the egalitarian context of urban agriculture it would be wrong to describe her with any other superlative or enumerator but she is, on her own, guiding a group known as the Harvest Collective. It has not been an easy year, however. 
Are we having a spate of “mid-life food crises” or are folks in their late 30s and early 40s simply realizing that the words “supermarket” and “good food” don’t seem to belong in the same sentence anymore? Annette Cottrell – self-avowed “extreme gardener” – and Joshua McNichols turned their love of whole, minimally processed, naturally grown food into both a passion and a book. 
People like Will Allen and Erika Allen, his daughter, have been able to convince Chicago’s politicians that for-profit businesses like urban farms can be an economic engine, not just for the farmers and their employees, but for the city in the form of tax revenues. A well-functioning urban land use policy will allow small farms and food related businesses to put people to work, to generate income, and to pay taxes. 
When you think of Bath, England, you mostly think of the ancient Roman Baths or stately Georgian architecture. That is, if you think of anything at all besides claw foot tubs and jokes about drinking the bathwater. You most certainly don’t think of a thriving food system and underground guerilla gardening. 
A little white sign tucked in between the plants offers passersby this invitation: “Need a snack? Come over and have a bite. We’re showing space-saving ideas for vegetable patches and showing that veggies can be pretty and yummy. Go ahead and munch on a tomato as you wait for the bus!” |
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