What a Re-leaf

Exciting days at CSF.

CSF has, in efforts to get all the backyard beds prepped for the winter, reclaimed a bunch of 'waste' from around the neighbourhood. A sizable future-soil stockpile of sorts.

Bags of leaves, manure from the High Park zoo, worms, wooden palettes, stakes from the mayoral election signs, etc.

When you are a farmer, never-before-seen heaps and scraps start to register on your radar. Well-decayed compost, for instance, starts to look like gold.

Last week, CSF went to visit Mike, the full-time Compost Facilitator at FoodShare, at Brock and Bloor. He had his Tuesday volunteer transferring some finished compost from one bin to another. Every time the shovel sliced into the pile, it made the sound of paper ripping. Shhhhooooooooop. An amazing metal-cutting-through-good-soil sound that has taken on a strong connotation of cha-ching for one CSF member, originally as a treeplanter and now, again, as an urban farmer. As the teen volunteer shoveled this rich, dark, crumbly stuff around, we couldn't help but dream of the day when our food scraps and yard waste would look like that. Gold.
Vacant lots that are not paved - gold.
Discarded wooden palettes (potential material for compost bins) - gold.
Discarded windows (potential greenhouse siding) - gold.
Huge pile of poop at the High Park zoo - gold.

Good things are happening this week, and CSF can thank the generally glorious weather for that. We have been enriching (yak and buffalo manure), seeding (winter rye - Secale cereale) and mulching (autumn leaves) the beds in backyards all over the High Park/Junction area.

At CSF, we leaf no man behind.

The Vision

One CSF member is also an executive member of the Young Urban Farmers. Yesterday, she went to a 2011 planning retreat for the group. The energy was striking around in hot bolts, like a veritable brain storm. This fervor comes from the many successes YUF had this growing season. With good reason, the plume feathers are out and a'ruffled. Tiny successes (from every sprout of Italian broccoli to every leaf of Bambino lettuce in every backyard), to media attention (from The CBC to The Globe and Mail and... back to The CBC again), to unexpected collaborations all over the map. The network is strengthening and deepening like moist dirt.

During our storm, some major lightning (ideas) flashed, and, seconds later, thunder (goals) struck. Words like 'inter-cropping,' 'nutrient-cycling,' and 'well-rotted manure' got tossed around as if by Jupiter himself. Yeehaw!

CSF draws much inspiration and skills and ideas from YUF, and hopes to bring it with just as much hot-wire energy to the High Park/Junction neighbourhood.

This is the flava of our project:

City Seed Farms - Bringing It to the Table

The Vision
To provide a food source to our community by our community, here in the High Park/Junction neighbourhood
To expand the urban food shed in Toronto
To bring unconventional farming to the convention, one backyard at a time

The Mission

To employ organic (non-certified) farming methods

To use carbon-neutral transportation – we will be delivering all food by bicycle

To plant heritage seed varieties adapted to Toronto’s unique climate

Garlic

Today two City Seed farmgirls planted a bed of garlic!

Having never planted garlic before today, we pooled tips from many different sources - Ed from the High Park allotment gardens (we came across him mulching his garden yesterday).
"Make sure you keep the soil loose around the clove. Also, try to keep a mix of five parts soil to one part s**t , or else you'll burn your plants."
"Burn them?"
"Yes. because poo is salty." Even more confused, I consulted The Google later. It turns out, the osmosis effect of water from clove -> to manure (low salt to high salt) dehydrates and eventually 'scorches' the plant. Sh**ty.

We also called in mom-help. "Do we remove the roots? Do squirrels like garlic?"
I was pretty sure the answer was no and no. I was wrong on both counts.

Apparently squirrels like to dig up garlic bulbs just to check them out. They're just curious. They'll sniff out the scene, play around with them a bit, just for a second, just to see how it feels. "Oooo, is this a tulip bulb? Nibble nibble. Nope. I'll just leave it here, beside the hole."

(I wonder... if I left out some turkey for the squirrels... would the tryptophan effect overpower this detrimental curiosity?)

IN EITHER CASE, we successfully planted 3 beautiful varieties of Ontario garlic!
Triple Cord Mennonite garlic from a cute little heritage seed shop on Sorauren Avenue, some massive bulbs that we picked up at the Dig In! UofT Local Lunch last week (in celebration of World Food Week), and some garlic from Ed at the High Park allotment garden - straight from his garden to ours.

Can you chive with that?

Hello and thanks for following the progress of CSF!

City Seed Farms is a SPIN farm initiative.
The seed, with all the genetic information coiled up tight in a tiny, shiny casing, is the SPIN FARM MODEL, started by Wally Satzewich in Saskatoon.
The soil, a microscopic metropolis of metabolism, is the group of committed/excited individuals that make up City Seed Farms.
The sun and water and wind and nutrients are those the unique terroir of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Toronto, hark! Oh this place, tilled and carved into formation from the receding glaciers. This place, originally named after the Huron word toronton, or 'place of meetings.' This oh so fertile place, where people came pouring in on the great junction of waterways, and stayed for the great abundance that burst forth from its soil.

CSF loves Toronto. We see potential underneath every lawn for productive, delicious vegetable gardens.

Follow along on this blog for the adventures of the first growing season of CSF, or drop by! We're setting up now to sprout to life in spring 2011.
This week, for instance, you'll probably find us assembling a bike trailer and compost bins for as cheap as possible... so this should get interesting.

Hail dirt,
CSF