On the front of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, via John Robb – a sign of things to come, perhaps:
BOULDER, Colo. — When suburbanites look out their front doors, a lot of them want to see a lush green lawn. Kipp Nash wants to see vegetables, and not all of his neighbors are thrilled. “I’d rather see green grass” than brown dirt patches, says 82-year-old Florence Tatum, who lives in Mr. Nash’s Boulder neighborhood, across the street from a house with a freshly dug manure patch out front. “But those days are slipping away.”
Since 2006, Mr. Nash, 31, has uprooted his backyard and the front or back yards of eight of his Boulder neighbors, turning them into minifarms growing tomatoes, bok choy, garlic and beets. Between May and September, he gives weekly bagfuls of fresh-picked vegetables and herbs to people here who have bought “shares” of his farming operation. Neighbors who lend their yards to the effort are paid in free produce and yard work. A school-bus driver, Mr. Nash rises at 5 a.m. and, after returning from his morning route, spends his days planting, watering and tending his yard farms and the seedlings he stores in a greenhouse behind his house.
Farmers don’t necessarily live in the country anymore. They might just be your next-door neighbor, hoping to turn a dollar satisfying the blooming demand for organic, locally grown foods … “Agriculture is becoming more and more suburban,” says Roxanne Christensen, publisher of Spin-Farming LLC, a Philadelphia company started in 2005 that sells guides and holds seminars teaching a small-scale farming technique that involves selecting high-profit vegetables like kale, carrots and tomatoes to grow, and then quickly replacing crops to reap the most from plots smaller than an acre. “Land is very expensive in the country, so people are saying, ‘why not just start growing in the backyard?’ ”
But for the neighbors, the new face of farming can have a decidedly ugly side. The sight of vegetable gardens — and the occasional whiffs of manure from front-yard minifarms — is not their idea of proper suburban living.
You can see their point. Heavens, they’ll be giving up the SUV next. It’ll be anarchy. Still, it’s a nice counterpoint to last time we heard from John on the subject of the future of the ‘burbs: back then, you’ll recall, he was wondering about armoured suburbs. That said, mind you:
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8ssSZK74fw]
