Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Farming in community

[Rich Wilber (richwilber]

Sheila,

Urban rooftop farming! I love it, and I love how you are including the greater 
community with the rooftop farm. We are also hoping to inspire others to follow 
our example, and plan to have some educational aspect to the farm. So most of 
your farm is managed by an outside hired farmer, and you also are managing a 
portion yourself? This is similar to what we would be doing if we decide on 
setting up a farm entity, probably an LLC, to run the farm. Besides the farm, 
we also plan on having community garden space for the residents. People who 
aren't interested in working on the farm would still be able to grow their own 
food, or perhaps they might want to grow a specialty crop. We also plan on 
establishing an edible landscape, nut trees, berry patches, plants for 
pollinators, etc. The community gardens and edible landscape would be managed 
by the community, but we haven't decided yet how the farm would be managed.

Rich Wilber
Rocky Corner Cohousing

P.S. Yes, I know about the Cohousing Conference, but we will most likely be in 
the midst of moving into our community at that time. I would still like to 
attend, but I'm not sure I will have the time this year.

> Date: Mon, 11 Feb 2019 10:19:21 -0800
> From: "Sheila Hoffman" <sheila [at] hoffmangraphics.com>
> 
> Rich,
> I wanted to be sure you know that the upcoming Cohousing Conference has a
> session on this subject called Growing Food: Does your community grow food
> or want to grow food? This panel will be led by well-known leader Mark
> Musick who co-founded the regional Tilth Association in 1974 and for ten
> years he was a member of a pioneer Community Land Trust farm, bring your
> questions and participate in a discussion.
> 
> This is a direct link to the session: https://sched.co/Jemt 
> For the full conference schedule please visit the website at:
> https://2019.cohousing.org
> 
> We at Capitol Hill Urban Cohousing have a rooftop farm that is used in
> several ways. We're very small (9 units) and very urban so I understand this
> is different than what you're looking at. We have a partnership with a
> nearby restaurant who pays Seattle Urban Farm Company to farm 2 of our beds
> and they have farm-to-table produce. We have one bed that is berries for the
> community and one that is divided by the number of households who want to
> manage a portion ala Pea Patch approach. This is a page on our website about
> the farm: https://capitolhillurbancohousing.org/rooftop-farm/ 
> 
> Sheila Hoffman
> Seattle
> 2019 Cohousing Conference co-chair