I’ve been interested in growing my own food for a while now, thinking it’d be neat to be self-sustainable and operate a small farm for a living. Unfortunately, the realities of a farmer are not the same as the utopian vision I had. Land is expensive, equipment and maintenance are expensive, and the economies of scale do not operate by the same rules for farmers as other manufacturers. And so it’s over before you even start. These are huge burdens to overcome for a new farmer, and are the reasons the average age of a U.S. farmer is now 58 years and continues to rise. There are many different approaches to farming, but nothing I’d come across fit my context of urban living in the most densely populated county in Florida. If you look hard enough though, you can find just about anything. Let’s eliminate the barriers to entry... I’m already paying for the land I’m living on and spending time to maintain it, and the front yard is brown, dusty and bare and sees no use other than a buffer between the house and the street. I cannot fit a tractor in this space, let alone any specialized planting or harvesting equipment, or processing facilities found on a typical farm; therefore, equipment and maintenance costs are reduced exponentially. Highly intensive and organic farming practices are used extensively in other parts of the world and have a long history of growing lots of food in small spaces. These techniques allow a greater diversity of crop and a higher rotation of production that cannot be matched by large scale farms. That’s how we got here; six, 25’ raised beds in the front yard giving us 375 square feet (almost a full 1/100th of an acre!) of bona fide farm land in the center of the most populous city in the most densely populated county in Florida, St. Petersburg. Sunshine City! This Spring at Greens ‘n’ Things Urban Farm, we’ll see what we can grow, trying different varieties of lettuces, salad and braising greens, spinach, chard and baby roots like radishes, beets, turnips and carrots, even some squash, zucchini and peppers. No lights, no pumps, no reservoirs, no tractors. Just sun, dirt and water.
