KEXP Presents Mind Over Matters; Sustainability Segment: Colin McCrate and Brad Halm

this is diane warren your host on the sustainability segment of mind over matters and k x p seattle money plenty of them an online k x p dido orgy i guess this morning the column a crate and brad ham co owners of the seattle urban farm company and co authors of the book food grown right in your backyard a beginner's guide to growing crops at home published in two thousand and twelve cullen and brad are here today to tell us about their efforts to promote urban farming in seattle and health seattle citizens produce their own food welcome to you both things you would like to europe are still interested in growing food greg how would you like to start it got started in college actually was that certain college we were the school of denison university gather and they had a pretty interesting student run farm there at the college and he was going to bring food there i was a really unusual place for a campus a really good chance for a stink to get out and actually do some hands on work as opposed to being a strictly academic thing so we never should've gotten more than a

large organic garden and we had a flock of chickens and goats and bees so i that's kind of were stored was originally and cullen the great how about you it didn't really anticipate getting interested in growing food so kind of caught me off guard but it was in college where i guess i was looking for something to be interested in and the most part a school didn't really appeal to me that much i guess i realize it experience a learning was really important for me to actually be doing something rather than just sitting around talking about it and what i found was that for some reason getting out and in growing food it made sense to me was i guess are doing and i think a lot of the things that cascade into what our belief system is now started there because i wasn't eating very healthy died at that point i'm announcing a lot sir that scene she knows who was a certain gardening i started wanting to eat that stuff and i realize it was good and i rise or fall better as are like trains for me it's not even intentionally surgeon did it on its own i guess go into that experience made me

start to think about why a sustainable our culture may be important for other people myself and culture in general what's the motivation for starting a company the seattle urban farm company i think that there were multiple motivations i can think about my a mindset when i was trying to think about the idea of bright eyed both independently working on small organic farms i've been in touch since khalid are both following the same for a career path of trying to figure out not how regina be farmers and what is that mean was that look like a hand and with a timeout that she kind of frustrated because i'm working nine different small organic farms for people that are really amazing to really amazing work and growing amazing food and part of it was that it was very difficult for that would make a living which i think remains true in part my thought was will maybe there's a way to bring our culture into the city where there's a lot more commerce going on and

find out if there's a way to build a model where you could have a career in jobs growing food in the city and maybe make us economically sustainable business model or was like i can support myself growing food but i can also live in seattle what do you mean they're in an urban farm work in an urban farm and tells a lot of different things you can get a lot of different directions you can go that term people use it pretty loosely these days a big urban farm can be defined as anybody growing food in the city for themselves or for other people and the way we use that term for our business is a lot of our work is building urban farms for homeowners so basically going to their yard even the front yard backyard and putting in a garden or a chicken coop or go somewhere in their yard or urban farms happen that schools a lot we go quite a few educational gardens for students to work in and get their hands dirty in order to put food back into their breed system at the school and then kerns and business grounds on rooftops gordon setter for

both production actually producing food to go into a restaurant or into a grocery store or just for rocky patch or present gardening is a lot of different ways you can go with it what is the mission of your company the admission of solar wind farm company is to promote community the gathering spaces healthy lifestyles and just sort of environmental awareness like through growing food was unlikely that started how did you go about getting their first customers it was pretty crazy when we first got started we don't really know were getting ourselves into we both had a lot of experience growing from it but very little business experience so we have a lot to learn in the first answer in a lot of obstacles to overcome or no other business is really to head a model that we could copy your work from so we are starting from scratch we didn't really know how to make a business plan so we just kind of intuit getting tools got a truck is illusory of selling plants at the ballard farmers market and i pass out our business cards there and that

was really how weak we started connecting with people in the city was so receptive to what we're doing right off the bat the press was great people or greater woody was so excited about the idea of edinburgh ago you forgot something interesting and it kind of all just went from there would be some examples of the different types of people who ask for their services and their motivations that's a good question there are it seems to me lots of different types of people are interested in a lot of our clients are what we would say are made first time homeowners are young families are young couples are young earth single people that have moved into a new space aliens i think they're coming at it was that sort of a mindset where they use wants to create a space around them that's productive and useful and instead of sustainable being ornamental garden they were set up something that you know maybe it's still beautiful hopefully but it's also it's doing something tangible for them in their same elinor spend time taking care there's a new

water too public role then i wanna be bringing something back from it all so innocent and i can eat something that is very useful to me and so that's one mindset there's also a lot of those same people how of young children and i think it's really important and that their kids see you know the process of food that's where food comes from is what people say la times' ao all my children understand where food comes from and it is not just out of a bag at the grocery store and i think that comes from the fact a lot of people have grown up sort of removed from that there's like a whole generation or two that never really had an experience growing food and so never really understood what of broccoli pine looks like horror how grows or what it might be like the harvest if there's anything like that i think do it was to reconnect to that because i feel like that something is missing in addition to that though there's lots of other people we help out people that have been guarding our allies are maybe or you know old and on fighting duo of physical things anymore so it is going to help them a little bit there's

a pre why writing it's been surprising how wide the range of people i couldn't touch with us is seems like people from all ages all economic layers of strategy we've connected with a lot of different people from a lot of realms and that's been really exciting to see i'm diane warren and my guests are colin the crate and brad ham co owners of the seattle urban farm company and co authors of the book food grown right in your backyard a beginner's guide to growing crops at home and you are attuned to the sustainability segment of mind over matters mg x p ninety point three fm and on the lab k x p nut allergy we've alluded to this but what are the key reasons people ask for help rather than just planning a garden of their own i think one of the big things that the people to give us a call initially is they need to help overcome an initial ownership of going from a big lawn into a garden or a manicured landscape into a guard and i think it has been so long people have been disconnected with actually going out and doing physical work in the dirt that it's hard for them to conceptualize all

the steps that need to happen to make the garden a pure in their yard sweep them and figure out those steps for them and we'll oftentimes help them are about the site and bring in new soil set up an irrigation system so we get all the steps in place for them and then we find that they often needed assistance once the garden's in the ground people often think oh it's it's easy from there is nothing to be other plans or there but bigger muscles it really takes a lot of regular care so us coming out for frequent visits after that their nose and really helps people get off to a good start and our goal is to the nation of ignoring their successful first year to people really they did engage in the garden and stay with that we find people get a garden and it doesn't do well the first year they become the surge pretty quickly and then it becomes a negative thing for them as opposed to a positive so we try to push it from that angle you most of your customers twenty is the produce they grow primarily for themselves i would say most people their

primary motivation is to supplement their diet from the garden but we do a lot of other people that you've heard just surprised at how much it produces an end you know we hear a lot of stories over like i had so much of this i was given at my friends are as given to my neighbors and i just let my neighbors because i had to do something on a scale sort of that over there and i found out they're really cool people it which is a really cool story here in other people i was actually built gardens or extra large is so they can donate not going to the food bank that something big a request on foot as for veterans are two beds in and then i'll just give all the produce away would you like to speak about the rooftop garden that you've built at the bastille restaurant in seattle's ballard neighborhood so a day bastille credit has been really good for us and i think for the best deal the restaurant opened in two thousand and nine and from the outset the new that they want to have a garden on site so they bought the building in its about a hundred years old so they do a bunch of

serious structural work on it to that that actually open a restaurant and are in the process of that they decided to build it so that the river strong enough to hold a garden the concern being that soils very heavy so that has yet to make a pretty strong so they did that in me and you know we help them design and set up the garden and gun was opened in producing food from day one and the idea is kind of just that i think the bastille can show their commitment to local and fresh foods a man or to take that step and it's cool because there are chefs who work in the kitchen i should do all the harvesting and they choose all the crops that are grown up there so it sort of a collaborative effort we go karen plant everything a measure that is healthy that indicate to them when it's ready i'll though sometimes a warriors up there often enough that they know when it's ready and inward is trying to get the space to grow as much food as possible and we grow a wide variety of things mostly that focus on salad greens and herbs and stuff that is highly productive in it in a small space how well has the rooftop garden work during the winter you know i

say pretty well this past winter the one he was a pretty mild winter so things are grown a bit more than it normally would but we transition in the fall too really cold tar crop so we do a lot of spinach up there we do miner's lettuce but this year we focused on spanish villages private the most productive wintergreen you can cut it and get four five or a salve of it even through the winter and so probably seventy five percent of gardeners planted and spinach the cooling was i think for over the last year there is not a single day where they could harvest something off the roof still has a great climate for growing a lot of greens year round through the winter so that something we really trying to capitalize on with our production gardens at that steel and other restaurants and were really encouraging people at home to go the same direction because it's something that's really satisfying appeal of animal winter when everything seems colin gray and pouring rain actually brings out in your garden and becoming ramadan even for dinner and sell a really unique to

our climate here so that's something we're trying to help people get into do you have a sense of how many rooftop gardens they're in seattle right now and there are very many it's something that i think there's growing interest in but up to this point we hope that projects like successful prize at the best deal will help incentivize or encourage people to do that i think up to this point it's a new enough idea that people are sort of tentative to get started on it into the one disadvantage are among climate is that we don't really have to be old building strong enough to haul away on the roof so we're like an east coast where they expect they could have ten feet of snow they can and a freak storm the building to just be a lot more solid in here and rooftops really are built for that so many many buildings in seattle are really fit to have a garden on the roof one of things that we talk about a lot is stiff development there's a pickup and in that that serve the easiest time to build new structures so that they can support that because it's easier to build something brand new and put in a few orchards beans and roof than it going mike

open up old building and try to fix it so they can hold something on the road so we're opening going forward it'll become something it's more like you have your building a new building and salaries at one of the options and so males that is build a seven iron on the roof and i've become the normal thing you plop fizz gown right in your own backyard has just come out but ever since we started the business we had been talking about writing a book mostly because we chew the same question the verse somewhere questions from all of the customers that we work with and we thought to ourselves well be great to have a single resource that would address these questions that people are asking it don't seem to be covered in a lot of other gardening books that are out there so we had in our head ever since we get started and actually did some of the groundwork and so putting together a layout for the book and reading some initial chapters and i were fortunate to connect with them on your publishing company and their their skip stone branch and they were really interested in the idea so we were actually able to make it happen here were excited about that the idea behind the book is that we were close if you're beginning gardeners of never done any gardening

before and so we tried to write the book from the perspective of not taking anything for granted like not assuming they know what any these terms mean are not assuming that they know of the general principles of garden at all but a star and say you're an assumed that this is a new ideas and then you never really pursued before and read the book around that idea actually the idea is somebody who's never garden before and get the book an old go through all the steps it would need to actually have a successful garden and they could they do that here in seattle or anywhere else and that the court the idea to use it you we have pretty limited range of service area the greater seattle area but we actually get emails and calls and you all over the country that or just on her website for one or another an inner interested in a similar idea or a service like that so there's obvious if you everywhere that one star gardening for the first time in so you're hoping that we've come some good ideas we figured a book would make it easier for somebody say minnesota to buy the book and say now i'm gonna start trading cards out of service of available at the lawyer you're

listening to the sustainability segment of mind over matter is uncanny x the seattle ninety point the fm and on the web add k x p dowd oh archie i'm diane warren and my guests are calling the crate and bred helen connors of the seattle urban farm company and co authors of the book food grown right in your backyard a beginner's guide to growing crops at home we do want to give a brief overview of the bat we set the book up actually based and the process that we go through with a new customer it would give us a call and we would schedule a consultation to come out and visit their yard so we start off with site selection in the book and we kind of walked the readers through a tour of their own yard and guide them to help them find the best sun exposure which is really the most important thing in setting up a vegetable garden and that finding the microclimates in their yard so spots where it's gonna be shady and cooler in the summer and spots words can be really hot and dry that might be good for growing tomatoes and they sold things like that and this will help them find the best site for growing vegetables in their yard and then we moved

to a garden away out in gardens structures and we talk about the different options for building raised beds are mounted raised beds in the ground and we talk a lot about dealing with slopes and making sure you have adequate pathways and the garden beds aren't to why that they're hard to reach into every note that says will gardner super important for vessels clear in this base regularly and if things are hard to reach or hard to get to if the diggers often come from a position to work in the garden and that is generally discourage you from engaging in and so you talk about those types of issues we really like to push that the garden news out front and center in the yard so were you walk by it every day and see if you can engage in at the tenancy if you put a garden the back forty and don't ever look at it is that it gets neglected so from there in the book we move on to the actual construction of a garden and the logistics of how you can bring and so old how you can build bed yourself we defer thing as simple as possible so it doesn't seem as daunting a task to somebody you've never done it before and then from there the book it's the more details about the actual quarter of gardening

so what tools to have some basic skills to know for promising crops and how to fertilize using organic fertilizers and your spouse organically then the book breaks out in the crock profiles where we discuss common garden crops individually and give a lot of culture information about each crops so if you're say have questions about writers she felt that her profile and you can read a flea all you wanna know about parents who tend to be the biggest challenges for beginning gardner as well as a good question people who not really he was a resource interview sort of winging it i'd saved the challenges that they face are an adequate so preparation probably would be the main thing people don't prepares soil that's actually for a low enough for corn crops to grow and they say the way i think about it is the crossing point and gardenias asking a lot from them you know you want him to do a lot in a very short period time and to produce as much food as possible sea of the given the resources that they need in order to do that

what that means is i need you no adequate water and adequate space inadequate nutrients and so it's really were that you just set up the garden so properly so that the players can draw everything they need out of it to grow successfully and i think would your first are now that's not really something that most people have thought about were really understand how much nutrition the place actually need to grow and so you got a light gardens and the waters have stunted are small crops are crosses are producing very much for them and so a big part of it as a beginner's really wrap your head around it this preparation of a sophomore guard as far away the most important thing i can do for short term and long term success and company similar tear is operating in other parts of the us the finale since we got inserted actually it's been pretty neat to see a lot of people call us from all over the country and say hey i'm starting my own gardening business can you answer some questions about what you went through getting your business started and so what we've heard from

people from texas from new york from south carolina they say all over the country and their businesses have gotten under way and seemed to be successful so i think it's a growing movement in the country and worldwide i think more more people are getting into it i think it's going continue what is not sever all about urban farming currently going on in seattle well i think seattle is actually been doing a lot for a long time we have compared to most cities i think a really robust urban food production system like the departed neighborhoods runs a syrup ipad program basically they set up a lot of parks faces essentially they're divided and garden plots of people can sign up for news which i think is really impressive and has been around for a long time so there is a chemist i was guarding coltrane so are ready and there's a lot of smaller projects like ours are sort of popping up all over town and people that are starting to do you like market gardening parole borrow like a couple of giant

backyards and tried a format and selig is at a farmer's market and i think is actually really exciting times because people are just trying to figure all the different models of urban farming it might work and i think that and you know a few years will be hashing out are like what's the most practical thing to do like which of these miles make the most sense in a city in me which ones don't and i think everybody's just improving their systems all the time and learning from each other and so i think it's really exciting you know the city is well i think is really supporting this they just open up a property down and sell seattle it's called the rain year beach urban farm and wetland and italy baby is a complicated story i guess that busily opened up a seven acre property to be turned into like a function well in an urban farm which i think is pretty unique from their perspective i think it's a pilot for him if it goes well then that means all the countless acres of city liane you know there might be other opportunities to figure out how to grow food on them so it's cooling or for the beginning of it becoming a normal part of city life and i think that's

pretty exciting here what we're really fortunate in seattle at the city government is so engaged in urban farming and is a supporter of that and i've been really progressive and changing codes and regulations to make urban farming easier for people easier for businesses to having that support from the city has banned due to not know a lot of other people in other cities were codes are much more restrictive it's a lot harder to get something sturdy their business wise or personally so i think that in itself is really unique to seattle is really getting puts el the forefront of urban farming and the country either current our upcoming projects that you're planning to do that you would like to tell us about one private we just start work on is a new rooftop restaurant garden over and he's like there's two restaurants its sushi cappo tomorrow and ravage restaurants which are right next to each other and it's really cool to a collaborative project because it's a mixed use building which means in a part of it is condos and then part of it is businesses so already in italy was it would agree that there is an area that was an established living roof

but they would convert it into actual like production darren for the restaurants on the ground floor and so we started working on that and it is it is really exciting because you know the people going are engaged in it and then there's two restaurants are right next to each other losers have this really great relationship with each other and it's basically sharing a garden space emerges can be growing food up there to serve in those restaurants just generally speaking i think there is a lot of new ways to get people engaged in gardening and sort of having an individual homeowner rely upon themselves to get a garden i think as we see developments or to pick back up again we hope that new construction will include a gardening spaces for residents and businesses and restaurants as they happen as they go in and that's something that we really want to engage in so gardening becomes more radical turn something that you expect if you go to buy an apartment they have a little spot about ingress and cellular if you buy a house and others already have the vegetable garden ready for me in the backyard so we'd just like to make that more infrastructure of our outdoor air or is that people expect to see a spot for growing food in addition to the ornamental so

would you like to tell us about the track it turned into a guardian for the northwest garden show yeah cher in two thousand and ten we did a little fruit or project to go to crops for clunkers and the idea was we took an old truck and sir just turn it into his comprehensive of the garden as we could so the whole but it was planted in me as she took out the engine plant in stuff under the hood put a living wall on one side of him and actually built a chicken coop out of the cab and attach to the side of it and we did it for the northwest aren't hard show to really display garden there and i guess the idea the concept behind it was you can use whatever space you haven't still make a pretty creative and productive garden and reuse things and whatever you have available and you can use any context to grow food the idea for now several songs we wanted build it and then find a home for it somewhere in seattle that would just keep it in upkeep and want to have it around and after the show we are contacted by a children's play garden which is a really cool nonprofit organization and they've set up a

playground and garden down south seattle and it is for kids of all abilities to sort of interact with so it's built for wheelchairs in little sort of programming so that serve any time again can go down there and use it so the garden now also as a truck as part of its the truck is parked down there permanently and they use it they plant into it and the cab is not turn into more a play area i think but they're really cool fall of the other day from member of kids inside the cab watering the plants outside lake from through the windshield which was removed and stuff so it's been pretty cool to see it like have a home and be serving a purpose what's been most satisfying about the work you do for seattle urban farm company i think one of the biggest things for me is the poverty and engage with people directly so so much i've been really fortunate to work on a great farms in the past and allied opportunities to learn how to grow food but this business of begin your unique experience to take that and meet with people every day and really pass on information to them and see

them get excited about growing food and that process of working with people in seeing their interest grow and seeing how it changes their lives and seeing their kids get involved in the garden it for example one of our customer's their daughter we just printed going for them this year and their daughter took a now head of lettuce for show and tell as opposed to the usual toy or something like that in that sort of the whole changing her mindset about her food she never apparently vegetables in the past so as ken of experiences like that where you feel like you're really making a difference in people's lives and eating habits and the activity that they enjoy has been really satisfying for me what's the message you'd like to leave our listeners were growing food is easy and you should just get to try its pre call you know we both service came into growing food on our own which i think a lot of people do you just get started doing it and you get addicted to it and i think it's a hard thing to argue i think once you start growing food in your personal you're eating it there's just this really intangible sort of joy that comes from it that i think is very unique and i

think it's hard to not appreciate when she tried out so i think it's easy to start doing in his ears are doing small so i think if people are looking for i don't know a new hobby or something to dry out are just a way to get outside more often but really easy avenue to disarm and cool unique new experience will thanks so much for being here this ravenous think you spend the time you had just been listening to come and the crate and bred helen connors of the seattle urban farm company and co authors of the book food grown right in your backyard a beginner's guide to growing crops at home published in two thousand and twelve by skip down an imprint of the mountaineers books for more information check on the web at daddy daddy daddy adult seattle urban farm ceo dot com again that seattle urban farm ceo dot com the sustainability segment of mind over matters program you have just heard we'll be on the streaming archives section of k x p is website at

atx feet out your g for the next fourteen days in addition sustainability segment interviews are available as podcasts along with the axes music podcasts go to k e x feat out orgy click on demand and then podcasting i'm diane warren thanks for listening and be sure to turn into the sustainability segment again next week on any point the fm andy xv died orgy