Restaurant. Yoga studio. Coffee Shop. Farm?

If you live in a big city, there are a handful of businesses you expect to have in your neighborhood: a comfortable coffee shop, a wine bar, an on-trend clothing store or two. A farm usually does not enter the picture.

But farms (yes, actual farms, with soil and compost piles and crops like tomatoes and squash) are popping up in urban neighborhoods, surrounded by all the usual comforts of city living.

In San Francisco's stylish Hayes Valley neighborhood, you'll find one of these farms, just a block from the chic Sebo Sushi and sleek boutiques like Azalea and Acrimony. Hayes Valley Farm, a formerly vacant lot that used to be the site of a freeway off-ramp, is now home to 250 varieties of edible plants. The farm, opened in January 2010, gives city people the opportunity to not only understand how food grows, but to get down and dirty and experience what it takes to nurture a cauliflower plant from tiny seedling to productive food crop. We love to see locally-grown vegetables on a restaurant menu or at a farmers market, but how many of us have crawled on our hands and knees and pulled those vegetables out of the ground ourselves?

Hayes Valley Farms makes it easy to get involved. Head to the farm on a Thursday or Sunday afternoon, and before you know it, you're crouching in the dirt, digging a small hole with your hands (you remembered to stop at the hardware store and pick up a pair of gardening gloves— dirt and manicures don't mix!). You grasp a broccoli seedling and gently fan out the roots to open them up. You place the tiny plant in the ground and cover it with nutrient-rich compost, packing it down lightly. You then move to dig the next hole, heeding the volunteer leader's advice to be creative in your placing of the plants, and to "think like the forest." Despite the cars zooming past and the big buildings in the distance, and zen-like calm overtakes you. Who knew farming could be so therapeutic?

If manual labor doesn't appeal to you, there are plenty of other ways to enjoy Hayes Valley Farm. The farm hosts outdoor movie nights, screening earth-friendly films like Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire, concerts, yoga classes and pot luck dinners. The goal of Hayes Valley Farm and others like it is to build community while raising awareness of the importance of sustainable agriculture.

Not all urban farms are as large and visible as Hayes Valley. Some, like Finny Farm in San Francisco's Panhandle neighborhood, are simply former neglected backyards that have been transformed into organic food sources for local residents. So the next time you're out running errands in your neighborhood, pay attention: you just might stumble upon an hidden farm, just waiting for you to pick up a shovel and start digging.

— Written by Melissa Baldauf

Photo credit: roundhere.net

< PREVIOUS ARTICLE NEXT ARTICLE >

Tags : Urban Farming, Hayes Valley, Melissa Baldauf

Login to comment