Cohousing-L Mailing List: Help fund our rooftop farm at Capitol Hill Urban Cohousing

[Grace Kim (grace]

Dear friend of cohousing  -
As you know, I have been working on a personal cohousing project for a long 
time - 5 years to be exact. And we are nearly finished - construction well 
underway...in fact they were framing our home this week. We should be able to 
move in by year end!!! And our office will also be on the ground floor.

But we have one final push to make. Due to escalation in construction prices, 
we were forced to value engineer out the cost of our rooftop farm..."kicking 
the can down the road" so to speak, for how to pay for it. And now it's time to 
fund it - so we are asking our friends to help.

What is the rooftop farm?
It is a working farm (in rooftop planters) that will occupy the lower rooftop. 
For the first year or so, it will be managed by Seattle Urban Farm Company and 
the produce will be sold to area restaurant - Lark. The owner, John Sundstrom, 
is very excited to be providing farm-to-table produce grown in his 
neighborhood. After the first year, we hope to have an institutional partner 
(currently it is the Sustainable Agriculture Education (SAgE) program at 
Seattle Central College) that will secure grant money to fund a year-round 
educational program. We anticipate food production and hope to work with 
students to develop replicable business models around urban agriculture. We 
also anticipate educational tours for school groups and the general public. In 
any event, we are not for lack of partners. We believe that we will be a 
catalyst for other rooftop urban farms in Seattle.

There are two other aspects to the farm.
The first is that we will have a small community garden where we want to have 
our children (there are 10 of them under age 14) to understand where their food 
comes from by planting their own produce.

The final and perhaps most important aspect to our farm is very practical - we 
are required to install a roof garden to meet our landscape requirements for 
our permit...without it we cannot receive our Certificate of Occupancy to allow 
us to move in when the structure is complete.

So we need your help! The Barnraiser campaign is set at $10K and we will have 
stretch goals of $5K to get to the total amount- closer to $30K. This is 
because of the crowdsource funding - if we don't reach our goal, we don't get 
any of the money pledged. So we set our goals low to ensure we get the funding 
that is secured.  See the link for more information. Please consider a generous 
donation to help us create this sustainable food source in the heart of a dense 
urban area.
http://bit.ly/1ejzWe9

What is Barnraiser? It is an on-line means of fundraising (aka crowd-sourcing). 
Kickstarter is the most well-known one, but Barnraiser is specifically for 
agricultural projects. Idea behind crowdsourcing is that if people think it's a 
good idea, they will support it.

If you can't help with a donation, you can help by forwarding this email to 
others in your community or those with a passion for gardening/farming.



grace h. kim | schemata workshop inc.
aia, principal architect

p 206.285.1589
schemataworkshop.com<http://www.schemataworkshop.com/>

new location
112 5th ave n, floor 2-south
seattle, wa 98109