Adventures in Urban Bike Farming

Table of Contents

Publication Information

Dedication

Introduction

05.27.2004: A porch garden in Portland produces delicious bounty

The Call of Katrina

2007 Season: Forced Landing

06.19.2007: First Broken Bike Cart

08.20.2007: Where are the tomatoes already?!

In-Depth — The Firepit Garden

08.31.2007: The gophers got the taters

10.04.2007: A Word on 'Organic'

2008 Season: Backyard Booty

In-Depth — Urban Farming as Meme: The Media Blitz

04.08.2008: Cultivating a moonscape (The Staple Crops Project begins)

05.17.2008: Orgiastic growth-spurting bliss (and Quinoa)

05.23.2008: Speech Delivered to the Village Building Convergence

06.15.2008: Big Push Time

In-Depth — Havens from The Grid: All About the Gardens

06.24.2008: The Ultra-Magnetic Stoplight Crop Circle

07.18.2008: Nutria Emergency!

09.21.2008 + 09.26.2008: Report from a DIY local wheat harvest

Sunroot Gardens FAQ

2009 Season: A Call to Pitchforks! / 50 Gardens (and counting)

02.08.2009: Hairy Little Heart

03.03.2009: Still Paying Taxes?

04.26.2009: Farmers without phones / What's going on

05.25.2009: Labors and love happening in multiple locations every day

07.10.2009: The Hobbit Meal Plan

In-Depth — The Versailles Syndrome: All About Landowners

09.02.2009: Invitation (to Terra Incognita)

09.17.2009: The Farmer Life

09.19.2009: 'Farmer K' of Sunroot Gardens pranks local men's wellness group

09.27.2009: Back from the Forest (but not Out-of-the-Woods)

10.09.2009: Quinoa Consciousness

10.15.2009: Set Your Own Prices / The Dollar-a-Year Farmer

In-Depth — Beyond Salads: All about the Staple Crops Project

2010 Season: Love and Loathing

04.05.2010: Don't You Ever Take Time Off?

06.11.2010: How To Eat Local and Enjoy It

06.14.2010: Download re. Community

In-Depth — Skip work and come play: All About Volunteers

07.30.2010: Sunroot Gardens up for grabs

08.27.2010: Sabotage

Wasted Seed and Murdered Bees

09.18.2010: 2010 Farm Year Notes

10.10.2010: Staple Crops Report 2010

RIP Sunroot Gardens

2013 Season: Slight Return

Afterword: Where did I go wrong?

About the Author

Publication info

Copyright 2015 by Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

All rights reserved.

Front cover photo copyright 2009 by Calliope Star; cover design by the author.

Published in 2015 by Macska Moksha Press

9035 SE Washington Street

Portland, Oregon 97216

macskamoksha.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sonnenblume, Kollibri terre, 1969-

Adventures in Urban Bike Farming / Kollibri terre Sonnenblume

ISBN: 978-0-9861881-5-2 (EPUB version)

1. Agriculture 2. Bicycling 3. Culture and cultural processes I. Sonnenblume, Kollibri terre, 1969-. II. Title

Dedication

For Elaine Close

Introduction

When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic. (Dresden James)

This book is about my experiences as bicycle-based urban farmer in Portland, Oregon, USA, from 2004 through 2010 (with a brief reprise in 2013). The arc of the narrative begins with wide-eyed idealism and ends with disillusioned acceptance. If you're looking for a message of rah rah, look how sustainable we are! you won't find it here. If, on the other hand, you are genuinely concerned about our collective future and are interested in how urban farming could play a part, there are lessons here to glean.

Mainly, this book tells the story of Sunroot Gardens, an agricultural experiment that I created and directed from 2007-2010. Sunroot, as it was called for short, took the form of a CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture. CSA is a business model in which customers pay a lump sum of money to a farmer at the beginning of the agricultural season in exchange for a share of fresh produce distributed regularly throughout the season. The idea of CSA was invented in Japan and started gaining popularity in the USA in the early 2000's. For the farmer, it advantageous because that a certain amount of monetary income is guaranteed. For the customer, a close and even personal relationship with a farmer can be enjoyed, as well as fresh, local food—very local in the case of urban farming.

How is urban farming different from gardening?

The majority of people who garden enjoy the activity as a hobby but are in no way dependent on it for their diet. The most ambitious ones might cut their summer produce bill significantly and put by an impressive amount of preserves for winter, but they are exceptional, and what they are doing is still not farming. Farmers are trying to provide for themselves by providing for other people, and to succeed, what they provide must be substantial. It is a matter of both scale and seriousness. With Sunroot Gardens, we were earnestly trying to provide for ourselves by providing for other people and at the peak of the operation we had over three acres in cultivation and were providing for over two dozen households. That's why we felt justified in calling ourselves urban farmers and in describing our activity as urban farming.

There were (and are) home gardeners who like to call themselves urban farmers or refer to their yards as mini-farms. While that might be cute, it is trivializes real farmers. Re-localizing our agricultural production system is a real need that will require real effort and real urban farming was what we were seeking to accomplish through Sunroot. For a handful of years we managed to do it, but in the end we found that our efforts could not be maintained, not for logistical or financial reasons, but for social ones.

A particular place in a particular time

Portland, Oregon, between 2004 and 2010 was in transition. Of course, no city is static, and each one is always between phases that are often accurately seen only in retrospect, but the City of Roses in that period was a particular place in a particular time that made it especially fertile ground (no pun intended) for the urban farming experiment known as Sunroot Gardens.

Passing away was Little Beirut, a city given that nickname by George H. W. Bush's advisors in the early 1990's because of the energetic protests the President faced there. This Portland was a center of unabashedly leftist politics but was also a homely, low-rent backwater that was perennially overshadowed by its more urbane and glamorous siblings, Seattle to the north, and San Francisco to the south. Little Beirut was the city I hoped to find when I moved to Portland in early 2001, hot on the heels of the explosive anti-WTO protests in Seattle in late 1999. I immersed myself in political activism, primarily Indymedia and forest defense. Indymedia was a global network of autonomous alternative media centers based in different cities, including Portland, where the atmosphere led to a special dynamism. During these years, I met and collaborated with hundreds of people, many of whom became supporters of my urban farming in part due to the reputation I had earned as dedicated and hard working.

As is told in the chapter, The Call of Katrina, I ended up switching my focus from Indymedia to agriculture in 2005. In 2007, the U.S. economy began imploding, though the Great Recession wasn't declared until 2008. Over the next couple years, financial institutions failed, gas prices hit an all-time high, and Climate Change crept into the news. Against this backdrop of the system's suddenly apparent fragility—and perhaps even imminent collapse—people in Portland were open to new ideas and big concepts. It was within this milieu, and in directly-stated response to it, that I founded Sunroot Gardens.

As is told in the chapter, The Media Blitz, local publications from newsprint entertainment weeklies to glossy lifestyle magazines took an interest in Sunroot and other, similar projects, and made a meme of urban farming. People in Portland who were hungry for creative solutions—especially ones with the stamp of cool—proved enthusiastic to lend their help. Resources flowed in, in the form of money, land, labor and more. Thanks to corporate media, I was given what I needed to put my ideas into action. Ironic, to be sure, given that Indymedia existed in opposition to the corporate media, but I accepted it nonetheless.

But by 2010, urban farming as a meme had lost its luster and the practice itself had been relegated to the role of one more quirky thing that existed to keep Portland weird. It was assumed, incorrectly, that urban farming had become an established, successful endeavor and that no more attention needed to be paid to it. This was the final year of Sunroot's operations.

The Portland that emerged next was Portlandia, a caricature of itself, a destination no longer for scrappy activists—or starving artist, their sometimes partners-in-crime—but for the app-driven digerati, with their oh-so-refined tastes and non-confrontational blue-state politics. Rents skyrocketed, hipsters pushed out hippies, and by 2015, Portland was the most quickly gentrifying city in the USA In short, no longer a hospitable place for unconventional experiments.

In retrospect, it is clear that Sunroot Gardens took full advantage of this particular time and place for as long it lasted, neither arriving too early nor leaving too late (like an engaging work of fiction).

About this book

Stylistically, this book is equal parts historical document, confessional memoir and social critique. Most of the text is quoted directly from the voluminous amount of material I composed at the time, most of it posted to the Sunroot Gardens email list, whose subscribers were CSA shareholders, volunteers, landlenders, and other friends of the farm. I was a very active writer during those years. How active? From the first message, transmitted on April 24, 2007, to the last, on December 10, 2010, the total number of words I sent out totaled just over 100,000. Much of it was routine, relating to CSA pick-up times, work-party announcements, and other logistics, but a significant chunk focused on big picture issues and personal reflections.

I used a very light touch in editing this primary source material. Other than changing names (for reasons noted below), I did nothing except correct spelling and standardize punctuation, and only so the reader wont be distracted by mistakes. Otherwise, every excerpt is intact, as originally composed and sent out into the world, warts and all. By preserving the text as-is, my intention was to lend a legitimate vérité to the story of the evolution of my farming efforts, political awareness and personal growth.

The chapters in the book follow chronological order with the exceptions of the In Depth sections, which dig deeper into particular topics—the gardens, the landlenders, and the volunteer scene, for example—and span the entire time-line in their scope.

Apology

Sunroot Gardens was often accused of being a cat-worshipping cult. We never confirmed nor denied these charges, but it is true that cats played a very special role for us. While biking from one garden to another, if we spotted a cat sitting on a fence post, lying on a sidewalk, or hiding under a car, we would always stop to offer Catnip and see if we could pay tribute with an ear-scratching or a belly-rub. It didn't matter if we were late or in a hurry; in our opinion, spending time with a cat was the best possible way to spend time, and those moments existed independently of the clock.

Therefore, I issue an apology that this book does not speak more than it does about the many felines who graced our lives during these adventures. Giving them their proper due would necessitate doubling the number of pages in this volume. That this amount of attention, though rightfully deserved, might be tedious to the more boorish readers out there is not the reason for the omission; rather, simple economics at this time preclude me from producing a project of that length. I will take solace in the fact that the cats themselves don't care about whether they are in this book, but I must express my most sincere regret to the humans who are missing out. May Bastet forgive me!

Disclaimer

The events in this book are all true: that is, they are factual, about real people and real places. Nonetheless, I have changed the names of most people and some places. This is not to avoid being sued for slander; I'm not lying, so there's no libel. Rather, I want the reader to focus on the big picture of the social factors that I am illustrating, not on the particular personalities who happened to express them. Readers who were present for any or all of the events therein are invited to enjoy themselves trying to guess who is who. Maybe one of them is you!

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Deva for financial help with publication, to Nikki Hill for personal support while writing, and to Mrs. K for cooking such delicious and healthy meals for me throughout all of it (I couldn't ask for a better wife, dear!). Thanks also to the pre-publication readers who offered valuable feedback: Bryce, James Dunne and especially Laurie Troeger Milliard. Tom Knaust's eagle eye was invaluable in catching spelling and grammar mistakes. Last but not least, I thank the Special Financial Supporters of the First Print-Run: Susan and Ira of Dora's Garden; Tom, Formerly of Mall56; and, doubly, Justin and Jan Stolen.

Technical Details

This entire project was created with open-source software on a laptop running Linux Mint. I used LibreOffice for word processing and layout and GIMP to design the cover. Viva free software!

05.27.2004: A porch garden in Portland produces delicious bounty

My first agricultural efforts in the city of Portland, in 2004, were mostly limited to the front porch of the house I shared with Angel, my Indymedia partner and best friend. It was an impressive garden, for what it was. The porch itself was built over the roof of a single car garage so it was bigger than average. Always interested in spreading good ideas and inspiring others to action, I posted an article about the effort to Portland Indymedia website. As was usual for those days, I wrote under a pseudonym.

The joys of urban gardening:

A porch garden in Portland produces delicious bounty

author: Johnny Tomatoseed

27.May.2004 00:23

Raising your own food has many advantages. Rising gas prices are driving up the cost of food in the markets. The insidious spread of genetic engineering is reducing the safety of that food. The industrialization of agriculture funnels increasing amounts of money into corporate hands, rather than to farmers.

These are economic, health-conscious, and political reasons. Less quantifiable but no less real are the emotional and spiritual rewards attained from nurturing seeds or starts into full grown plants that end up on your plate.

Urban gardening presents its own challenges: space, light, uncooperative landlords, etc. I want to share with indymedia readers a few photos and thoughts from my own attempt to grow as much food as possible on a front porch in the middle of the city.

These photos are of my porch garden. My landlord allows me only one small raised plot (about 4x8) in the backyard because he wants the rest for his kids and dogs. This is a compromise that i'm willing to make because my landlord actually lives in the same building, so we're sharing this space together. I have no patience, on the other hand, for absentee landlords who won't allow their renters to garden. That's ridiculous. In many other times and societies, it would be criminal to forbid someone to raise their own food. But that's a subject for a different post (or for comments to this one).

So, since that small plot isn't much space, I started a container garden on the front porch to supplement it. Over the course of several months, I collected 5 gallon plastic buckets from a co-op. I drilled holes in the bottom, filled them with soil I bought from local organic farmers (which was much less expensive than buying soil by the bag), and mixed in casings from a worm composting bin we'd been maintaining in our kitchen for the 9 months previous. I tied strings from the bucket handles to the top of the porch roof, and planted starts in them: snap peas, collards, mizuna, spinach, and red dandelion greens. As the peas grew, they climbed the strings. The greens were happy growing lower down in each of the pots. Within 6 weeks I was harvesting greens, and within 8, peas.

The greens have all started to bolt now. (That's when they send up a long tall shoot from the middle and flower and go to seed. They also stop producing many edible leaves at that point, and the flavor of the remaining ones often changes for the worse.) But the peas are in full-on glory. I can go out there and pick a handful every day. I suppose you could make a great stir-fry with peas like these, but I always just eat them right there, sitting on the bench among all the greenery.

The space has become an almost magically pleasant one to hang out in. The dappled sunlight shimmering through the pea vines is quite beautiful, and it is cool on hot days. Bees and other insects buzz around, and there's even a few worms in some of the buckets. When I water the buckets, the rich smell of wet earth hangs in the air with a sultry presence. The space is both productive and alluring; it nurtures and satiates and enlivens. It has become a tiny oasis in a sea of concrete.

This kind of gardening is not difficult. It just requires dedication. And the tangible and unquantifiable rewards are obvious. My life is definitely better for having this garden in my life.

When the peas are done, cucumbers will take their place, for pickling. i've started those already, from seeds, in another set of buckets, and when they are ready to start climbing, the peas will be about done and the buckets can be swapped out. Here in Cascadia, our long growing season means that you can have two or even three generations of a crop. As food prices rise and global warming makes other parts of the world less habitable, our position here will be a good one. The time is now to start learning self-sufficiency skills like these.

- - - - -

Looking back at this article, I am struck by how well-informed I had already become about the state of agriculture in the world and by my awareness of the emotional and spiritual rewards associated with growing food. These dual focuses—the political and the personal (the spiritual)—would remain co-present and active during my entire urban farming stint, deepening with time.

The Call of Katrina

The future's here, we're it, we're on our own. (John Barlow and Robert Weir)

August 2005: In the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina's landfall, widely-publicized forecasts were predicting a direct hit on New Orleans. I assumed this disaster would be the excuse for much flag-waving as a heavy-duty rescue operation took place. After all, the USA's military was increasingly bogged-down overseas, the mainstream economy was performing poorly, and the resident of 1700 Pennsylvania Avenue was losing popularity. Televised heroics could provide a distraction from all of this and more.

A few days after Katrina carved her swath of destruction across the city and region, flags were certainly being waved as FEMA, the Red Cross, and the other big players arrived, but the response was woefully inadequate, even botched. I was puzzled. After all, this wealthy nation had the means for a massive humanitarian undertaking. Why was it not doing it? Then I realized, with shock, that the drama playing out was no accident: an entire city was simply being cut loose. The system was more brutal than I had believed. I had been naïve.

In the weeks that followed, I had friends who traveled to New Orleans to help out. They were people from Portland's radical cliques: tree-sitters, herbalists, Indymedia activists and anarchists, and they immersed themselves in community efforts at the neighborhood-level. Their stories started to filter to Portland back via email and word-of-mouth. The government agencies and non-profits, being authoritarian by nature, could only apply a top-down approach, which inevitably lacked nuance and true responsiveness. In contrast, the grassroots efforts of my friends—focused on clean-up, medical help, and housing—were making a real positive difference, bringing together the forgotten and abused and empowering them to help themselves. I was impressed.

More than just impressed, I was affected. For me, Hurricane Katrina illustrated that we cannot count on big bureaucracies during times of crisis. Furthermore, I believed that times of crisis would become the new normal during my lifetime and that the longer we delayed collective preparation, the more difficult it would be later, when the shit really hit the fan. Many areas needed to be covered—housing, medicine, water, food, etc.—so I decided I would volunteer for food immediately.

I made this decision public by passing out the major portion of my sweet corn harvest at a Portland Indymedia meeting where I announced that I was dropping out to focus on farming. I had been a serious Indymedia activist for five years, contributing the majority of my waking hours for much of that time, so this was a significant shift. On that day, farming officially moved into the center of my life as my activist path. Fortunately, I was not limited to a front porch anymore. That same Spring, a large plot of land had fallen into my lap.

At the time I was a junkie of the local co-op's farmers' market and I never missed a week. I would arrive early to see what was new (and would sell out quickly) and then return at the end to cut deals for unsold produce that the farmers would rather part with at a discount than drag back home. I eagerly explored every stall, asking not just what is this? and how do you cook it? but how is it grown? The co-op's market was then the only year-round farmers' market in Portland, so I also received an education on winter-harvested vegetables, which had previously been unknown to me, being from the Midwest.

Maks and Libby of Wild Things Farm were two farmers I befriended. Maks especially had taken an interest in my gardening when I was limited to the porch garden. One day in the Spring of 2005, he called me over to his booth excitedly, put a piece of paper with a name and phone number on it in my hand, and announced, Here's some land for you. Give this guy a call. He flashed me his wide smile and patted me on the back warmly.

Minutes later, I was on the phone with the man and got the details. That afternoon I biked up to have a look and was immediately entranced. The site was a big open lot, over a quarter acre in size, with full sun to the south and the west.

The man introduced me to the owner, Susan, who lived on the hill above the plot; her house overlooked it like a sentinel. (Indeed, when I described the plot to people in the years that