'Agrihoods' Offer Suburban Living Built Around Community Farms, Not Golf Courses

[ashling]

http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/agrihoods-offer-suburban-living-built-around-community-farms-not-golf-courses/



I love the idea of transforming the ubiquitous cul de sac (which apparently ia French for "parked cars in the middle of the street&quot

[MrScorpio]

1. Depending on how much fertilizer that gets used there...

I'm sure that flies will find it a great place to vacation.

[clamshells]

2. not a gardener, I see

I have never seen compost attract flies.

[MrScorpio]

3. No, but I have been around my fair share of German farmland…

Let's say that the fertilizer spraying was legendary.

[NickB79]

12. Farmland fertilization isn't really comparable to urban agriculture

A manure spreader throwing tons of shit across a field isn't really the same as dumping your old coffee grounds and banana peels in a compost pile and covering it with grass clippings.

Hell, I have a flock of 6 chickens, and even adding their soiled bedding to the compost pile doesn't attract flies (or at least not for long, as the resident toad population would decimate them).

[Liberal_in_LA]

9. It can be smelly. But I wouldn't mind it for a few weeks a year

[NaturalHigh]

4. Cool.

[PufPuf23]

5. There is a sort of similar entrepreurial venture planned near me.

There is a RV/trailer park that once was active with clients either recreational fisherman or seasonal loggers and associated support but the customer base no longer exists so the business is no longer viable.

This is in the most rural part of Humboldt county.

There is a local long term pot grower "BP" that has turned quasi-legal because of medical pot.

"BP" has purchased the RV park that is located on great soil.

"BP"s plan is develop small garden spots at each RV hookup and lease the spots to do-it-yourself medical pot patients.

His business will provide clones, garden spots, growing supplies, water, security, and farming tips.

It will be interesting to see if his plan works. The RV park is within a National Forest and less than a 5 minute walk from a Federal Wild and Scenic River.

[lunatica]

6. Do any of the wildlife eat pot?

I lie smack up against a State Park boundary and we get lots of wildlife. The deer graze on our plants every night.

[PufPuf23]

7. I think that wildlife will eat pot but like other plants better.

I am not a pot growing expert (at all).

The first time I grew (or tried) pot was on the top west flat of 2214 Durant in Spring 1974: three plants, my babies.

Cal was on quarters then and a friend and my girl friend and I made plans to make a quick drive to Chicago and back during Winter-Spring quarter break. I convinced the profs to let me take 5 finals on Monday and Tuesday of finals week. My babies were about 18 inches or so. A friend who was going to apartment sit came over and knocked on the door saying "Police" and my gf ate the plants, my babies. I walked in from my finals marathon about 5 minutes after the munching. It was hilarious.

In the past 10 years, folks have given me 8 clones. One year I was med legal even. People ripped off three. I let this years plant dry up and die from neglect.

The deer that come in my yard are tame and never bothered the clones.

The deer really like okra (or at least okra I try to grow).

Folks I know that live the pot lifestyle have more problems with predation by other humans, authorities, or bears.

[lunatica]

11. Thanks for the response.

I actually learned something.

[hunter]

8. I'm wondering why there needs to be any new developments on undeveloped land...

... especially in drought stricken areas like California.

My great grandfather built and owned a big house in San Francisco. It survived the Great Earthquake. But it's long passed out of our family, sold in the Great Depression, and now subdivided into many small apartments.

I don't like the gentrification of neighborhoods at all, nor the crass destruction by poverty of formerly viable communities, but beyond those horrors, the U.S.A has huge amounts of existing infrastructure that could be reformed into pleasant, energy efficient, solar powered "walkable" garden communities with local shops, and local work.

It's the great disparities of income in the U.S.A. that create our current hells of homelessness and vacuous opulence. If local communities had a mix of people, everyone from elderly retired working people to very affluent professionals at the top of their game, all of them secure in their own housing and sending their children and grandchildren to the same public schools, then this nation would be a better place.

The separation of "classes" made possible by the automobile and great disparities of income have been a very damaging thing.

I think income and wealth taxes should be such that the billionaires of today should have no greater income and wealth than twenty times that of a minimum wage worker. Corporations would thus have greater incentive to put money back into innovation and research, and share profits with employees. Guys like Bill Gates would live in the same neighborhoods as the people keeping the corporate headquarter bathrooms clean, and would probably be much happier for it too, not having to put up with bodyguards and other onerous security.

I'm using Bill Gates as an example because he once stopped on the spur of the moment to eat at a restaurant I've eaten at. As I've heard, his security entourage entered first, scoped everyone out, inspected the kitchen, and then while Gates was eating allowed no one further to enter the restaurant.

I've walked into the same restaurant without any fuss, and I was thinking it must suck to have to live like Bill Gates, or much worse, to worry about the security of one's family too.

[clamshells]

10. I think it probably sucks to be anywhere around Bill Gates or other "celebrities."

I read in the nytimes awhile back that when Beyonce was in the hospital after having her baby, her security entourage prevented other new parents from visiting their own babies in the hospital nursery, and the hospital did nothing about it. Beyonce and her husband had forked out major bucks to the hospital to basically take over a section of it.

[LWolf]

13. Do residents

actually do any farming/gardening?

I think this is a fabulous idea. I notice, though, that for this one, the growing is managed by a non-profit group. The last paragraph quotes a resident of a different "agrihood" talking about getting his hands dirty. I'm wondering if residents of this pricey development will be touching any dirt.

I'd love to see something like this offer affordable housing, accessible by all.