Urban Aviculture and Agriculture...

[NYC_SKP]

How do members of our DU E&E group feel about adopting a vacant lot to raise chickens and their eggs, tomatoes, and more?

Done responsibly, is this wrong? Is it better to just leave the lot barren or with native grasses, or are community gardens a better use?

I strongly support projects like the one developed my my friend in Chicago. It builds community and serves as a learning opportunity for school age kids.

To me, it's a move in the right direction-- away from hyper development and toward a sustainable SYMBIOTIC relationship among humans, animals and plants, and the earth.

What say you?

http://wgntv.com/2014/05/15/chickens-in-the-city-urban-coops-growing-in-popularity/

And it has useful links:

Producer Pam Grimes and Photojournalist Steve Scheuer contributed to this report.

http://urbanchickenconsultant.wordpress.com/

http://urbanchickenconsultant.wordpress.com/home-to-roost-services/

http://www.margotmcmahon.com/

https://www.facebook.com/MoahsArk

http://mypetchicken.com

http://1.usa.gov/O8ngKs

These links are for wild bird rescues in the Chicago area:

http://www.flintcreekwildlife.org/

http://www.birdmonitors.net/

[NYC_SKP]

1. Adding some info about my friends project in the Bronx:

City, State, and Federal "green" programs favor the conventional, the corporate, they don't encourage innovation from true citizens at the grass roots level.

Some, like my teacher friend Stephen Ritz, manage to "get there" but have to put out 10 times the effort.

http://greenbronxmachine.org/

Stephen Ritz is a South Bronx teacher and administrator who believes that students shouldn’t have to leave their community to live, learn, and earn in a better one. Moving generations of students into spheres of personal and academic successes they have never imagined, while reclaiming and rebuilding the Bronx, Stephen’s extended student and community family have grown more than 30,000 pounds of vegetables in the Bronx while generating extraordinary academic performance.

His Bronx classroom features the first indoor edible wall in NYC DOE, which routinely generates enough produce to feed healthy meals to 450 students and trains the youngest nationally certified workforce in America. His students, traveling from Boston to Rockefeller Center to the Hamptons, earn living wages en route to graduation. Stephen has consistently moved attendance from 40 percent to 93 percent daily, helped fund and create 2,200 youth jobs, captured the US EPA Award for transforming mindsets and landscapes in NYC, recently won the ABC Above and Beyond Award and the 2012 Chevrolet National Green Educator Award, and helped earn his school the first ever Citywide Award of Excellence from the NYC Strategic Alliance for Health­—and Stephen attributes these results directly to growing vegetables in school. The National Association of Secondary School Principals cited Stephen’s work and the Green Bronx Machine as one of five national exemplars of service learning.

His speech at Columbia University, entitled “From Crack to Cucumbers,” along with the release of a YouTube Video, “Urban Farming NYC,” resulted in a national following, including an invite to the White House Garden. Recently dubbed the Pied Piper of Peas by Lorna Sass, Stephen has launched the Green Bronx Machine to a national audience and has signed on more than 6,000 local followers in several months. Stephen was just announced as a national Green Apple Education Ambassador for the US Green Building Council. He is currently working on embedding the concepts of sustainability and environmental justice into K-12 programming and beyond.

Stephen has electrified and inspired audiences of all types with his “Si se puede” message of hope, urgency and Amer-I-Can innovation. In February 2013, he received the first standing ovation in the thirteen-year history of Green Biz and went on to standing ovations at the United Nations Social Innovation Summit and City Resilient. Stephen was just named a Poptech Fellow. His work has been featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and Fast Track, as well as on CNN, NBC, ABC, NPR and regionally across the country.

http://stephenritz.com/

[OnlinePoker]

2. Done right it can enhance the neighbourhood

However, if you don't own the lot, prepare to come down there someday and see all your hard work bulldozed. In Vancouver, there was a rail corridor owned by CP that hadn't been used for years. People had been creating gardens and erecting structures all along it. CP was trying to get the city to buy the land for the full real estate value but the city wouldn't come up with the price. This year, before the full growing season was up, CP came in and destroyed the gardens and structures.

[Rhiannon12866]

3. I think they're a terrific idea no matter where you are

We have community gardens in the nearest "city" to me, Glens Falls, NY, though it's close to rural areas, and my friend participates in a community garden in rural Vermont, though she's surrounded by gardens on her own property and raises chickens with her nearest neighbors.

[NYC_SKP]

4. This is the original "American Way", local food, sharing, real community.

TPTB oppose these things because they impact the "bottom line" of big businesses.

When we had surplus, we could take it with us into town and the local grocer would trade with us.

Black-eyed peas, as I recall, were among the thing we grew in an uncultivated strip of land next to our rural home.

My grandfather grew asparagus but died early, we lived on as other ranchers ran their businesses on the same acreage.

We got by with filtered river water running through the house and one tap in the kitchen for drinking water that was gravity fed from a 40 gallon former aircraft fuel tank in a tower.

Good times, really!

[Rhiannon12866]

5. It's certainly a much healthier way to live and really fosters a sense of community

Our grandparents/ancestors certainly had the right idea, wish it continued at the same rate as during WWII.