Kickstarter

Happy [belated] Christmas! and Happy Holidays to come…

It’s been a looong season. First there was record-breaking warm weather in March, with almost half the month in the 80′s and 90′s. Then the driest spring in decades. Nonetheless, there were lots of successes to match these challenges and now that it’s almost 2013. Time to consolidate the records, better document what happened (or didn’t), and communicate that to you and the world.

Over the next couple weeks we’d like to let you know how much we were able to grow on the farm in our first full year, how much we consumed in terms of resources like electricity and water, how many pounds we diverted from landfills by composting, etc. These are some of the easier ways to quantify sustainability from the farming side of things, but we’ll continue to struggle to fully understand the impact of providing workshops, regular tours, and farmtop dinners. Stay tuned for the numbers… The first of these posts, about water usage, is up on the website!

In the meantime, we’re also beginning to plan for 2013. We’re looking to expand in several ways and improve from what we’ve learned in 2012. To be specific, the Urban Canopy’s CSA (community supported agriculture) this year had three members and received a weekly home delivery of fresh produce, delicious bread or granola, zesty kombucha, and free-range eggs. As part of this effort, we’re expanding the number of community and school gardens we collaborate with next year. We’re opening our CSA to all that grow organically in Chicago and calling it the Local Unified CSA, or “LUCk-SA.” We have four members already enrolled in the LUCSA for next year, and are looking for a total of 12. These bold twelve will receive TWENTY weekly home deliveries of even more diverse and delicious fresh produce and products. These twelve will also help Urban Canopy to provide a free 13th LUCSA to an individual or family in need (details to come). Contact us to get more details about becoming a LUCSA member in 2013.

In other good news:
A) We’ll be building a chicken coop to keep chickens on the rooftop farm in March with the goal of adding our own organic eggs to the LUCSA by June. Who wants to help?!
B) Introducing the Compost Club! We will pick up your home’s food scraps every week (or two) and compost it for you as a service. Your food scraps will be composted by our club of composters around the city and used as fertilizer for community gardens, home gardens, our rooftop farm, or your own garden. Email us for further details about either being a composter or “compostee” in the Compost Club.
C) We’re looking for a few solid interns and some regular volunteers. Last year, Quinn, Jacob and Nate (as well as many others) worked between 5-20 hours every week running the indoor and rooftop farms. This year, we’re looking to teach and learn from 3-4 farm manager interns. The positions are unpaid, unfortunately, but we are hoping to figure out ways to pay them financially as well as with produce. Duties will include many of the following: seed starting, composting, harvesting, weeding, chicken-keeping, beekeeping, community work, farmers markets, customer relations, deliveries, basic construction, etc.
D) Dinner Dates for 2013 are going to be to be announced in the spring, but you can expect to have delicious restaurants like Nana Organic and amazing caterers like B’Gab’s Goodies or Zullo’s prepare a rooftop dinner for you and your guests. Each dinner date is limited to 10 people.

Lastly, to our Kickstarter funders. About half of you received your rewards so far, but we weren’t able to get to many of you this year. Our sincere apologies for not getting this done sooner and you have our word to get you your rewards as soon as we can! Our logo is just about done, soon to be sent to the screenprinters, and so on. Thank you for your understanding and patience. Thoughts?

Design by our beekeeper, Bike-a-Bee‘s Jana Kinsman. We always want to hear from you. Leave a comment below or connect with us on our Facebook page. 

 Kind Regards,
–The Urban Canopy Team

Hey All, 

First off, our apologies for being very poor at keeping everyone up to date over the summer months. It's been a busy season and we're constantly working on the farm. That's no excuse...

The CSA has been going well...we harvest about 5-7 pounds of tomatoes every week that goes into the crate, along with a few squash, some collard/kale/mustard greens, as well as peppers and a bunch more fresh produce that varies each week. 

Since our farm is small and we pride ourselves on variety and community we've partnered with a few others to make our CSA even better. Every week we include some kombucha from Arise Kombucha (our neighbor at the Plant), bread or granola from Peerless Breads & Jams (soon-to-be neighbor), beets & eggplant from the Plant's garden, fresh eggs from my sister's free-range chickens, squash and carrots from a school garden some friends manage, and some other items from a community garden in Humboldt Park. The most up to date pictures have been on our Facebook page "Farmy 2012" album. Check them out, and below are a few you might like in particular. :)

 

We've had a few rooftop dinners as part of the Kickstarter rewards and they have been amazing experiences for the guests to our farm, the caterers/chefs, and especially for us. Being able to connect people to their food and where it comes from is thrilling, not to mention a core part of our mission as an urban farm. There will be video footage of one of the dinners soon to give you a sense of what the experience is like. Thank you to Guy and Sandra of Nana Organics in Bridgeport, and Ron and Gabrielle of B'Gab's Goodies in Hyde Park; amazing people and wonderful places to eat. Please check them out!

As for other Kickstarter rewards, you haven't missed out, but we have been really bad at getting them out the door. We've had several setbacks with the logo, which has delayed everything else. Jana, the lovely beekeeper of Bike-a-bee, with two of her hives on our rooftop farm is also a graphic designer/artist by day and has put us back on track. We have draft logos in our inbox and hope to have a finished logo in a couple weeks. After that it's off to the screen-printer for placing the logo on shirts and totes before they go out to our KS backers. If you'd like to receive one of those shirts or totes, and help us raise farmy-funds in the process. Leave a message below or contact us with details. These will ship end of September or early October.

 

If you have a food reward, we can now start to distribute the individual shares. With our limited supply from the rooftop and community gardens, we'll need to split up the group into smaller groups each week. More details to come but if you have a specific week you'd like your share, leave a comment or contact us.

The bees are doing well. They're buzzing around, collecting honey, and have grown vertically as the beekeepers add boxes for the bees to fill with their goodness. Here's a video of Jana's bees hanging out on the porch. Tera's bees are doing great as well and hope to update you all with some more videos soon. Here is one of Tera's third hive going in end of May. 

With things approaching Fall, and us being more in the swing of things, we hope to get back to regularly updating everyone on our progress. Also, we're looking ahead to next year and starting to plan out the rooftop with the lessons we learned this year as well as potentially expanding to a few more farms on the south side!

It’s been what seems like ages since the last post in March. Almost needless to say, March and April so far have been busy. Let’s catch up:

Good Food Festival in March was great. Lots of networking, learning about new farmy things, and interesting conversations. A few that stand out:

Mark Shepard of New Forest Farm. Without seeing (at least in pictures) the farm it’s tough to describe but in short it is a perennial permaculture farm. Meaning, most of the plants are ones you only plant once and then every year they come back or keep growing. For instance apple trees, hazelnut shrubs, mulberries, and about a hundred others. They all work together by giving each other what they need in terms of nutrients out of the air and soil, while simultaneously rebuilding the soil and cleaning the air (take in CO2, release O2). Mark told me about his farming approach, one he calls the “STUN” method. Shear, Total, and Utter Neglect. He doesn’t spray anything and doesn’t need to fertilize. The animals he keeps, chickens, ducks, and hogs graze different parts of the 100+ acre farm collecting nuts, berries, etc after he’s gone through and harvested the same, thereby fertilizing the soil. Anyways, look it up if you’d like to know more or leave a comment with questions at the bottom.

The other is a person I already knew, Irv of Irv & Shelly’s Fresh Picks. Their food service business is somewhat like a cross of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), where you get a box of fresh fruits & veggies, and a home-delivery grocery store. As soon as we figure out some packaging and logistical concerns we hope to supply them with sprouts and produce from the roof in the next month or two. Keep an eye out, or look at their website now to see how you can get local stuff delivered to your doorstep.

Alright, on to the farming itself, or pictures thereof. Indoors first. Preparing soil and starting plants ahead of the season are two vital parts of farming, maybe especially so in an urban setting, and on a roof. Photo of the general space and some of the clutter that’s been added:

Alright folks, the time is now! Weather outside is scary nice and we'll be planting outdoors soon enough.

My apologies for the delay in updating everyone on progress but there are tons of exciting things going on; this post will be a quick stream of consciousness type post. Here goes…

Rooftop Stuff: Big order of rooftop farm stuff placed on Monday. Some smaller items have arrived and more arriving this week. Calling all volunteers, building day Sunday, March 18th, at noon! Details here. Meeting with logo person Monday as well. Once we're set on a design we'll go ahead and order all the shirts, veggie totes, and other stuff.

Living hedge: this is essential to the rooftop farm succeeding. This hedge will disperse the wind away from the more sensitive plants like cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, and many more. The plants that will be growing here are the hardier variety that like full sun and can withstand the wind. Including, but not limited to, amaranth, beans, peas, corn, sunflowers, and vining or bushy flowers (moon vine! bachelor button, marigolds). We have about 75 buckets already (collecting weekly) but could use about another 200. The plumbing of making this a self-watering system is coming with the rest of the rooftop parts. Building this portion begins Wednesday or Thursday!

Other news: We’ve been collecting waste stream materials that were destined for the landfill and using them for various things all over the farm. Buckets from restaurants, coffee bags and chaff from coffee roasters, juice pulp, and a few other things. The buckets become the growing containers, coffee bags will also grow things (potatoes?!). The chaff goes to the worms to make an even healthier compost that’s nice and airy, which helps with plant nutrition and root growth, likewise with the awesome juice pulp.

Trying to get my hands on some racks and lights to get all the indoor plants started ahead of the season. If you have plants you’d like included on the rooftop farm, bring us the seeds or started plants. Next week (march 17ish) we’ll be starting a third of the tomatoes, peppers and a few other big plants that are destined for the roof. IF you have those wire/metro racks that you don’t need anymore, give ‘em to us.

Bike-a-bee will be keeping 2 or 3 hives on the roof this year. They have a great update here. Also, my friend Tera will be keeping another 2 or 3 hives and these lovely ladies together will be keeping their “lovely ladies” happy. The plants and flowers will keep everyone healthy and fruitful.

Oh, and we were just on the radio. I had a great, though brief, conversation with Bill Moller of WGN Radio. The podcast should be available to listen soon: http://www.wgnradio.com/shows/billmoller/wgnam-bill-moller-alex,0,5951630.mp3file

Please comment and ask questions, I realize this is a bit of a scattered post.

–The Urban Canopy

Hello Folks,

The good news is that the Kickstarter project was successful, thanks to you! The better news is that things are moving along!! The bad news is that we've meant to send this update over a week ago when the campaign ended. Sorry!!! 

Here's what's going on this week:
1. Talks with local screen printer, local logo artist and local clothes maker about creating a logo, ordering tshirts, sewing canvas totes, and printing the logo.
1b. Get your addresses and in about a month sending those to you

2. Finalizing quotes for all the rooftop growing stuff. We have excel spreadsheets we're sure you wouldn't want to see that detail every irrigation tube, water pump, etc. Orders will be placed this week and stuff will start arriving the following week!
2b. BUILDING THE FARM!

3. Rooftop diners: think about a date (and backup date in case of rain) when you'd like to have your dinner. Will contact you once we have a chance to talk to Zullo's again about various logistics. 

4. Fresh Produce (incl CSA's) pledgers: The first plants to get going will be mustard greens, lettuces, chards, kales, and a few other interesting ones. Fresh free-range eggs, kombucha tea, and baked items from other Plant tenants might also be included in your tote as a surprise or with specific request. Details to come...Also, to ensure you get the mix of stuff you'd like, we hope to be able to have you on the rooftop and pick it yourself! If that doesn't appeal to you, we'll deliver to your doorstep if you're in/near Chicago.

5. More details on other rewards and progress to come!

Seed Swaps are awesome!

Went to a seed swap today at the ECO rooftop farm in Pilsen. We have, no joke, 40 new varieties of plants in hand. Neatly arranged, individually labeled, little pouches of awesomeness. Genetic diversity baby! If you're curious, or obsessed like me, this included 15ish types of heirloom tomatoes, 6ish peppers, 5 or so squash/cucumbers/zucchinis, marigolds, morning glories, 3 amaranth, blue corn, yata yata yata. A few more seed swaps upcoming and hope to pick up even more cool plants to grow. 

Continue to feel encouraged to contact us via Kickstarter, The Urban Canopy's website, facebook, or twitter.