Chicago's City Farm: Farming in the City
(Page 2 of 4)
November/December 2008
Letitia L. Star
Blackstone Bicycle Works teaches neighborhood youth how to repair and customize bikes from donated recycled bicycles and parts. The Resource Center also operates a composting site and provides composting education and bins as well as community garden assistance.
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Dunn started using the name City Farm in the early 1990s, and the farm has been operating at the present site since 2004, providing green space and organic farming education.
“We provide jobs and community service to low-income and minority communities,” he says. “Mayor Daley has endorsed this as a proper treatment for vacant space.”
City Farm’s green oasis
It’s about 4 o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, and a colorful cornucopia of kale, okra, beets, tomatoes, hot peppers and flowers is for sale on the bustling Clybourn Avenue.
Welcome to the City Farm on-site farm stand, where lucky urban customers buy the finest seasonal organic produce three days a week. The market stand is at the entrance of the City Farm lot, which grows an amazing 80 varieties of produce, including 25 types of tomatoes, on just one acre.
“Our primary customers are restaurants, but our market stand is another big part of our sales,” says Tim Wilson, manager of Urban Agriculture for the Resource Center. “We annually sell $45,000 worth of produce and another $20,000 worth of recycled firewood.
“With urban agriculture, we can show what can be done with an average vegetable garden lot,” he says.
If you visit City Farm on Wednesday mornings, you may meet Caroline Gottschalk-Druschke, one of the 15 or so dedicated volunteers who happily get their hands dirty for a good cause. She appreciates all she’s learning about gardening and sustainable agriculture.
“I have a little gardening experience at home with tomatoes and herbs,” she says. “The farmers here are tremendously patient and are wonderful teachers.” They are also very knowledgeable and spend a lot of time training volunteers.
“I’m interested in sustainable agriculture and local food systems. Rather than using an academic approach, I want to connect with people actually doing sustainable agriculture,” says Gottschalk-Druschke, who teaches rhetoric and composition at the University of Illinois and is also a third-year Ph.D. student.