Wednesday, April 28, 2010

City Farm (Chicago, IL)

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Check out this totally amazing urban farm in the heart of Chicago. City Farm is actually part of a recycling resource center (offsite). They run at least two farms in the city, selling produce locally and collecting compost materials (plant scraps) from all over the city.

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Here are two of the staffers putting up the last letter of their very cool street sign. This site in Cabrini-Green sits on the edge of a historically poverty-stricken part of the city undergoing gentrification. The farm runs a youth training program and serves as a demonstration site.

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One of the unbelievable things about City Farm is that they have actually moved this farm –soil and all—at least twice. They just scoop up the soil in dump trucks and haul it to their new site.

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Soil is a major issue in Chicago, since most of the land in the city has been contaminated by one thing or another. Rather than building grow boxes to combat the problem, City Farm lays down a layer of clay soil (to adsorb contaminants and keep them from moving upward) then layers their good garden soil on top of that.

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I love City Farm, but not in a weird way.

City Farm

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