Urbanites & Food: Revisiting 50 years ago.

A backyard garden: Growing up in the 50’s/60’s, every family in my neighborhood had a vegetable garden and one or more fruit trees. Some were into composting back then, no one had chickens or rotated beds as far as I can remember. But, still it was normal to have fresh produce for the late Summer and Fall. In the last ten years or so there has been a revisiting of the garden coupled with the obligatory ‘organic’, chickens perhaps, definitely rotating beds, cover crops, composting and bees.

This week, after I investigated the little gem of a cottage and took photos, I received an invite to return. I did indeed return. Walking right out the back door I walked into bee hives and bees seemingly everywhere. Roosters, hens, rabbits. Crops bursting forth. This was not my dad’s tomatoes, cuc’s, corn and string beans. Coops and pens are built to shed poop…then the coop and pens are moved over and a new vegetable bed is constructed atop the past cast off’s area. This is not the feel good urban farming with hens as pets. Food is the purpose. Last weeks rooster is this weeks dinner.

The visit was completed with a nice jar of comb honey and an appreciation of how gardening use to be in the urban setting…and still is for some.