Help with Your Food Garden
“… James Lucal in Seattle … not only brings home the local produce, he got a local to grow it for him directly outside his home. And yet he spent almost nothing for this luxury, and lifted not so much as a trowel to make it happen.
Welcome to ‘urban sharecropping,’ the hippest, most hardcore new way to eat local. In the latest twist in the farm-to-table movement, homeowners who lack free time or gardening skills are teaming up with would-be farmers who lack backyards. Around the country, a new crop of match-makers are helping the two groups find each other and make arrangements that enable both sides to share resources and grow their own food.
Mr. Lucal’s tenant farmer Michaelynn Ryan is a mother of two and homeowner … . Though Ms. Ryan is a certified master gardener, the yard of her Craftsman house isn’t up to farming—it’s too small and shaded … . So, the summer before last, she posted a want ad for a garden plot on Urban Garden Share, a website started by a professional gardener as a good-karma producing hobby.
That’s how Ms. Ryan found Mr. Lucal, … who had terraced a steep slope next to his house, but discovered through frustrating failure he lacked the patience and expertise to make it bloom. Finding they lived within five minutes of each other, they agreed Ms. Ryan would farm the lot and Mr. Lucal would harvest his family’s supply.”
See article at: WSJ 13-14Nov10: “The Rise of the Lazy Locavore”
