What we want to do:

Food Cycle, a project of Troy Bike Rescue and Collard City Growers, is a bicycle compost delivery project employing neighborhood youth, while diverting household and restaurant food and yard waste back into the ground on our urban farm all by way of the transportation of the future: The bicycle!

Food Cycle will create a hyper-local compost network that lays the groundwork for a self-sustaining, scalable enterprise. We need the help of financial backers (you!) for initial investment.

(We use wood chips from local arborists for mulch and composting.)

 How we'll do it: 

- build cargo bikes and trailers from recycled bikes and parts

- grow food in the garden

- collect food scraps and other organic material from neighborhood households and businesses by bicycle

- pedal the loads to the large compost bins at our garden site

- use the finished compost to build more soil in our garden

- bikes and trailers will also be used to deliver fresh produce to people in the neighborhood and beyond

Who we are:

Collard City Growers is a grassroots demonstration garden and composting project located in North Central Troy. We turned a vacant lot located in a brownfields-designated area into an urban garden, drawing upon resources from the community and the Upstate New York region to grow produce and the next generation of growers.

Troy Bike Rescue is a collective of bicycle enthusiasts committed to removing bikes from the waste stream and putting them back into use.  TBR operates a volunteer-run community bike space where we organize:

• DiY bike repair nights: Open Shop 
• hands-on bicycle education: Learn & Earn
• sliding scale bicycle adoption by Suggested Donation
• ... and mobile workshops

We help to build bicycle community in the capital region through hands-on education.

(Photo of Matthew Boston, one of our Youth Shop Peer Educators)

Where is your donation going?

We garden in the middle of three adjacent lots.  Your donation enables us to purchase the south lot from a longtime neighbor. Help expand the garden's footprint and programming!  TBR and CCG collaborate in a day camp-like program called Uptown Summer- kids on the block rotate through programming offered free by volunteer organizations and collectives.  We build and fix bikes, grow produce, make healthy snacks, shoot and edit documentary video. Owning the lot secures our future in the neighborhood.

Young people will help build cargo bicycles and trailers at Troy Bike Rescue to cart compost and deliver to the garden's collection bins.  We'll offer Food Cycle as a service to neighbors.  Collecting materials for composting will enable us to build nutrient-rich soil while keeping organic matter out of the waste stream.  Funding will also go towards buckets, compostable liner bags, materials for large bins, educational materials, and staffing for the youth program. 

Here's an early model of our custom cargo-haulers: