Farm Girl in the City

Bye Bye Country Farmer

I'm a Vancouver girl who grew up living off the land in the forests of beautiful British Columbia, with my gardener parents and a bunch of siblings. We brought orchard bins of fruit from the Okanagan and canned hundreds of jars each autumn, stored our own root veg in our underground cellar, and bought beans and nuts in bulk to supplement what we didn’t grow ourselves in our abundant garden. As soon as I was able, I made my way to school in the "city", and never looked back.

My parents pretty much live that farming life still, with a wood stove, a hard-working, raised-bed garden, and bears, squirrels and fir trees for neighbors. They love it. Acres of curvy roads and sprawling forests between them and the nearest gas-station township.

I prefer humans to trees as neighbors, and some density, and a bit of city grit, although I'm the first to admit Vancouver is a pretty small city on a world scale, not even counting a million souls. The entire regional district is about 2.5 million people, and that's 28 towns. Mexico has hundreds of cities that are more than one million each, for example!

As the internet grew with information, and humans kept innovating as we like to do, and I left my farmer girl self in the past, I started to read blogs and listen to podcasts about sustainability and solar capture, and vertical farming.

Hello City Farmer

"Local" became trendy, and farm-to-table became a thing. I learned about the impact industrial farming, and industrial agriculture have on our ecosystems. I learned about all the awesome ways restaurants were learning to grow food on their roof-tops, or on their own farms, and I followed Tesla’s progress as they brought home batteries and solar capture to market, and I evolved into a new breed: “city farm girl”.

I’ve continued to learn and nerd out, and drag dinner conversations back around to my newest city farm discovery. I briefly had a blog called OGUD: Off Grid Urban Dwelling. I’ve learned to ferment veggies for pickles and krauts, and nuts butters for cheeses. I’ve invested in a porch garden start-up, tried to grow lemons in my Pacific Northwest kitchen, and volunteered for community garden programs.

It’s awe-inspiring how many local initiatives are getting produce saved for hungry bellies, and coordinating front yards to be turned into gardens, and the products shared with the community. Technology innovators continue to create new solutions like automated stack gardens and solar roads.

If time were free and hobbies became useful entities of enterprise with ease, my nerd girl hobby would become a place of inspiration and information for city dwellers seeking to lessen their carbon footprint and be better disaster-prepared.

Modern Problems, Modern Solutions

A modern Memberful solution would offer ideas and connections, and really useful information.

Stories of people who are implementing radically cool solutions, news about emerging technologies, maybe codes for discounts on great products and product reviews, perhaps job postings, fun challenges to do together over social media, occasional prizes to win, and most importantly lots of really useful information on how city dwellers can transform their little bit of home and patio, or yard into a lush, productive, and catastrophe-proof little farm.

A traditional farm has a well for water, wood for fire, gardens and orchards for food production, pantries and cellars for food storage, systems for reusing and recycling most things, and a thriving community to interact with.

The industrial revolution drastically changed life for most “farm-y” areas, and as cities have grown, farms have become giant and distant, heat comes from a power plant somewhere unseen, and grocers do most of the food storing, but people’s basic needs have remained.

Revolutions in information, tech, automation, and A.I. have led to innovations that make it possible for an urban farm to be incredibly productive, even if it be wee.

With all that we've invented and created and learned about each other and our needs, we truly can bring "local" to life, and change expectations about where and how we get our food and energy, and how we share and use it.

Before now I had not considered a membership concept for this trove of sustainable city-living info I’ve collected, but it’s actually a really good idea. Thanks for this challenge Vocal, and Memberful; you’ve sparked some new hopes and plans!