Portland Urban Farm Project

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2012 Update:

Here are a few organizations that are accomplishing some of the ideas that are listed below. I thank the community of Portland for teaching me so much during my time in the city:

Kitchen Commons matches kitchen resources with community need, making it affordable and practical to cook healthy food, putting the dream of a food business in reach of low-income entrepreneurs, and advocating for food justice.

Farm My Yard

Connecting Urban Farmers with Land to Farm
  1. Print out or Buy “Farm My Yard” Sign
  2. Place sign in a visible place
  3. Potential neighbor/farmer is attracted to farming your yard
  4. Use agreement which comes with sign, or use one provided below
  5. Your yard gets farmed, everyone wins!

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The Portland Urban Farm Project‘s mission is:

  1. To grow food locally within neighborhoods
  2. To share resources
  3. To build community

The following initiatives are goals of the Portland Urban Farm Project:

  • Growing food on unused neighborhood plots of land such as personal yards, churches, schools and tearing up pavement/parking lots
  • Developing neighborhood CSAs and/or farm stand produce markets within neighborhoods
  • Creating tool libraries – sharing resources and tools within neighborhoods. Help start a Tool Library in your neighborhood!  Learn about finances, fund-raising, outreach, publicity, technology, volunteer coordination and placemaking from other local tool libraries.
  • Setting up community dinners for sharing food among neighbors
  • Building commercial kitchen for use by moderate or low-income community members seeking to establish their own food busines
  • Transforming yards into gardens – Offering fee-for-service projects for local landscape architects
  • Saving seeds for use in the community for developing more urban farms
  • Delivering food by bicycle for environmental considerations and to cut down on costs

The Portland Urban Farm Project addresses the following to build community:

  • Food security
  • Resource sharing
  • Education
  • Job creation

Contact me if you have a yard to contribute to growing food, would like to be a CSA member and/or interested in helping as a volunteer of the CSA. I will also be starting an internship program as well as a 10 month Tool Librarian program.

Send me ideas, thoughts or connections to people, organizations or businesses that might be interested in getting involved.

Thank you!

In cooperation,
Bob New