Saul Brown does. He also knew that some of the footage we recorded made it on to YouTube. I hope someday more of the footage makes it online in some form. Strathcona BIA is working on their next conference which they’ve dubbed Sustainability 2.010! I’m less involved this time personally, but with Will Allen coming to Vancouver and Majora Carter having already been here twice. Resilient Cities: Vancouver, greening the inner-city, Green Capital, GCAT, Vancouver is definitely one of the North American leaders in sustainability, social purchasing, urban agriculture, urban architecture. You know good stuff.
Although we’ve written a number of posts on the SOLEfood urban farm that the authors of this blog helped start and run, it wasn’t the first vacant lot in the inner-city to be planted, nor is it the only one. Before we were ready to announce our full plans we consulted a number of people and photographed existing gardens and green spaces in the Downtown Eastside. The Hastings Street Community Garden is probably the most well known, though there are a number of others which I photographed, including one beside the DTES Neighbourhood House.
Today an article about the history and purpose behind another garden appeared on the internet. David Aupperlee describes himself as a full time urban farmer and works with the organization Jacob’s Well which is right down on Main Street not far from Hastings heading North. Those of us behind the blog are delighted to read of their successful harvesting or organic vegetables and look forward to discussing techniques and future opportunities to increase the green economy, green jobs, and urban agriculture in the DTES.
Rebecca Bollwitt AKA Miss604 has just written a piece on all the community gardens that have sprouted up in Vancouver. She of course mentions SOLEfood which differentiates itself as being an actual neighbourhood farm, with the intention of selling the produce and paying inner-city residents to work on it.
The farm wouldn’t have been possible without a lot of people donating: time, labour, and in some cases money. SOLEfood has it’s own blog now, where you can hopefully learn more about our future plans.
That is the title of a short documentary film made by students at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. It features interviews and footage of local gardeners, politicians, authors, and farmers talking about food security, urban agriculture and the use of public space.
They obviously stopped by SOLEfood on our first major build day. They interviewed Seann Dory and other members of the team as well as some of our volunteers. It is about 14 minutes long so take the time to watch it and send it to a friend or re-post it like we’re doing after it appeared on City Farmer News.
Work has been ongoing behind the scene. We have worked hard to expand our brain-trust through an advisory board. We’ve added more urban farming expertise in the form of Ward Teulon of City Farm Boy and Michael Ableman of Foxglove Farm.
We have been developing our training program for inner-city residents. We will have a public info session soon for folks interested in that. We will also be having a third build day. We’ve taken the advise from others and refined the layout of the farm. We are currently deliberating on what to grow. We have conflicting demands, we want to break even and provide income for inner-city residents, but we also want to provide some locally grown healthy food that is affordable for folks living in the inner-city.
We’ve even looked at adding another site, we are actively exploring two plots, but we may not have the resources to start a second or third farm with our first not even having produced a crop.
We plan on adding more growing space to SOLEfood and building some low tunnels to increase the growing season. We also will be transplanting seedlings rather than going from seed, we have a lot of logistical issues to work out in time for Spring.
At least Saul Brown seems to think so. Saul and his company are members of our Green Inner-city Cluster and have helped us on SOLEfood and the Sustainability 2.0 Expo among many projects. His company provides sustainable and socially responsible corporate gifts and operates out of a green building in Strathcona.
Building Opportunities with Business maintains an online directory of inner-city businesses with particular emphasis on those that are sustainable and socially responsible. Many large organizations such as Business Objects and SFU use it to buy their catering, recycling, or cleaning services. Next time your business or organization needs to hire someone for a job, if you’d like to hire someone who is progressive and working towards improving Vancouver’s historic inner-city, check our online business directory first.
If you operate a business in Vancouver’s historic inner-city and wish to be included in the directory, you can register online. We’re making a few changes and additions to our website which will be finished soon according to our web developers.
