Urban Farming, Salt Lake Style
June 24, 2010 at 6:04 pm slcpl 3 comments
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Steven Swanson combines urban gardening with inner city basketball in Sugar House. Robert Eckman from the University District keeps chickens and bees and cultivates vegetables in a community garden. Lisa McClauahan of Highland Park would like to see people who don’t harvest their fruit offer it to the public through a website. And Kenvin Lyman has kept rabbits, chickens, goats and bees during the 43 years he has gardened in the Avenues.
How would you implement urban farming in Salt Lake City? If you are already an urban farmer, how do you do it?
These are the questions The Hive asked folks waiting in line to talk with bestselling author Novella Carpenter after she regaled an enthusiastic crowd in the City Library
Auditorium earlier this month with tales from her book Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer. Carpenter turned a weed-choked lot in Oakland’s Ghost Town neighborhood (named after its many abandoned buildings) into an abundant farm with chickens, ducks, turkey, bees, rabbits and a couple of 300-pound Red Duroc pigs named Big Guy and Little Girl. Her tales of turkeys in traffic and the fine art of butchering a chicken kept the crowd laughing and wanting more. It also inspired them to tell their own stories.
Tell us yours in the comment area below.
Read the Salt Lake City Zoning Ordinances on keeping animals, livestock, and poultry in the city.
Read the Salt Lake City Zoning Ordinances on keeping bees.
Check out the blog, Sugar House Chicken: Adventures in Urban Chicken Farming.
Listen to Novella Carpenter’s talk at the Salt Lake City Library, June 10, 2010. Hear her interviewed by Jeff Robinson on KCPW. Read her blog, Ghost Town Farm. Check out her book, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, from The City Library.
See pictures of Steven Swanson’s Sugar House garden .
See pictures of Kenvin Lyman and Sofia Angkasa’s Avenues garden.
What are your favorite local resources for urban farming? Share them in the comment area.
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Entry filed under: Food, Gardening, Highland Park, Individuals, Literature, Neighborhoods, Sugar House, The Avenues, The City Library, University District. Tags: .
1.
Hal | June 24, 2010 at 6:30 pm
This is inspiring. Thanks hives
2.
Jared | June 25, 2010 at 5:33 am
The Tour de Coop that’s going on this Saturday is also a good resource.
3. Rethinking Nostalgia | The Year of Living Virtuously (Weekends Off) | October 12, 2010 at 5:07 am
[...] I read the article online and it’s easy to have doubts about a new frugality when almost every page features an ad for a kitchen appliance that costs as much as the down payment on a modest home. But I see lots of encouraging signs on the grassroots level right here where I live, Salt Lake City. When Novella Carpenter came to the Salt Lake City Public Library a couple of months ago to talk about Farm City—her very funny memoir of turning an abandoned lot in Oakland, California, into a farm—the auditorium was packed and folks stayed afterward to share their own urban farming stories. [...]