Veggies on tour
By Dagmar Hoogland
If healthy food became as available as fast food and could literally rock up to your door, would you be a healthier Homo sapien omnivore? A man called Mark Lilly definitely thinks so. Having studied disaster science and emergency management, he became so passionate about the dire situation of global food and water security that he wanted to try and help change things.
The result? Farm To Family, a mobile farmers market using an 1987 diesel school bus to provide fresh local produce to neighborhoods in and around Virginia. You can follow him on twitter and facebook and get the online schedule of where and when you can find the bus. And the locals seems to love it; he’s already got 1,420 fans on Facebook who are following his whereabouts.
More than just providing fresh food to local communities, the bus is a vehicle for community support and fun enabling people to bond with their neighbors and their food.
Mark is happy to give out some cooking advice while you’re searching for the perfect taters and he even visits schools to give workshops on gardening and growing your own veggies.
Another great development is that from April 2010 you can order your fresh veggie list online and get them delivered to your home.
The VivaCity crew is very excited to see someone helping us urban citizens experience what life on the farm tastes like.
Got a car, bus or scooter and a couple of apple trees in your back garden, then why not get on the road and give people their apple a day? I hear the new SiSi driver is already looking for a rickshaw to start delivering his own brand of taste…..
Seeds of seed city
By Julian Broadhead
Having drinks with friends recently, conversation turned to childhood and the passions we’d developed at a young age (cooking, fishing, rhythm and blues), as well as those things that we wished we’d spent more time on (almost universally languages and learning musical instruments). For me however, whilst I could have spent more time learning Spanish and playing the guitar, I also regret not learning more about plants and growing things in general. Unfortunately, despite two green-fingered parents, I regarded any invitation to help in the garden as a thinly veiled attempt to extract some child labour.
Perhaps things would have been different if I’d been a member of the Secret Seed Society, a fantastic new social enterprise that aims to introduce 3-7 year olds (and perhaps also their parents) to food horticulture. Based around the adventures of the inhabitants of ‘Seed City’, such as Peter Parsnip and Chrissie Cress, they offer packs containing a storybook, seeds, growing instructions and a recipe for the resulting produce. Even better, you can then sign up on the website as a fully-fledged ‘Seed Agent’, to receive additional growing missions, tips and advice.
Although the first Secret Seed Society pack was only launched in July 2009, it has already proved popular with both parents and children, in addition to being awarded a prize by the SE100, a body that supports and promotes social enterprise. And it’s easy to see why. Not only is it great fun for parents and children, they also introduce the growing and cooking of food, as well as helping us all to appreciate where the things on our plate actually come from. So, if you have a child or even if you don’t, get yourself a pack, a place (a window box will do) and get planting! In the meantime, Julian Juniper Berry would love to know what you’re Seed City name would be.
A VivaCity new year
By Andy Marks
In the spirit of VivaCity, here are some tips on how to use your city in a new way in a new year.
Twinkle twinkle
Find the darkest part of your city and star gaze, parks are good. Turn your lights off and look at the Dark Sky Society and the International Dark Sky Association
Grow some food
Mint for a cuppa, tomatoes for your sarny, alfalfa in an old jar, or if you are feeling a tad more adventurous have fresh eggs from a clucking companion. Very satisfying indeed.
Pass on a beloved book
Leave a favorite novel of yours in a public place, but first sign it up to bookcrossing Set it free and see how many hands it passes through.
Free your food
Go dumpster diving and salvage perfectly good food thrown out by food retailers. If that is too much to stomach you can get fantastic tips on how to make the most of your edibles at Love Food Hate Waste
Turn your home in to a speakeasy
Have a dinner party and charge your guests for the privilege. Give your takings to charity, and have a friend host it the following month. In a year that’s lots of great soirees, and a load of cash raised for good causes.
Walk and talk in your city
Walk in an area you don’t know too well or at a time of day you are not usually out. Take friends with you; everyone has to find out one piece of local info about the area.
What do you see?
Give a young person a camera. Ask for a picture a week for 10 weeks, print the pictures out and give them back to the young snapper. See how the mwelu foundation do it.
Be a cloud inspector
Look up and contemplate those little fluffy clouds. Go one step further and join the Cloud Appreciation Society Before you know it, you, like us will find having your head in the clouds addictive. Protective clothing optional.
Honesty is the best policy
Sell something delicious using an honesty box and let us know how you get on. Can the collective masses of city dwellers be incorruptible? We think so.
Chickens in the hood
By Julian Broadhead
A few chickens scratching around out front is often viewed by us urbanites as a romantic symbol of the country. But city living shouldn’t stop us having our very own flock and getting closer to the food we eat.
A groundswell of enthusiasts are showing us exactly how we can enjoy a superior breakfast every day; a fresh egg laid by a beloved ground bird taking centre stage on the plate. Their activities have inspired numerous meet-up groups, blogs and websites, the launch of Backyard Poultry Magazine in 2006 and wider coverage in titles such as the New Yorker and New York Times.
So where should Vivacity start on an ornithological adventure? Well, it depends on what type of chicken owner we would want to be. For beginners, websites such as UrbanChickens (www.urbanchickens.org) and the City Chicken (www.thecitychicken.com) offer practical, down-to-earth advice on everything from coops and what to do if your chickens attack you (!), right through to petitioning local government to get the keeping of urban chickens made legal in your area. However, if you feel you could be a bit more ‘flock proud’, sites such as Backyard Chickens (www.backyardchickens.com) provide the basics, as well as a forum to brag about the size of your eggs and debate the relative merits of various breeds and varieties.
What underlies it all though is the fact that there is more to keeping chickens than just knowing where your food comes from and how it has been treated. People clearly bond with their fowl, it is surprisingly easy and it provides a fantastic source of fertiliser for other garden activities. But most of all it’s fun.
A word of warning. The benefits of raising your own food are addictive and chickens are known as the gateway animal. One owner went from a few chickens on her urban farm, to twenty chickens, fourteen rabbits, four turkeys, a duck, and two pigs! You have been warned.
