KEXP Presents Mind Over Matters; Sustainability Segment: Noelani Alexander and Becky Warner

this is diane warren your host on the sustainability segment of mind over matter is on k e x the seattle ninety point three of them and on the web add k e x feat out orgy my guests this morning or no money alexander founder and wallingford farms and marketeer and vicki warren are farm manager for sitting around seattle distributed urban vegetable farm that intends to feed seattle from seattle and turns underutilized land and productive food growing space no money and a key are here today to tell us about the work of sitting around seattle to help refine local sustainably grown produce and bring people closer to the source of their food welcome to both thank you so much thank you what is sitting around seattle well you actually set a very well in your intro city ground is a multiplier urban farm growing vegetables on mostly privately owned land within the city of seattle we have a few backyards and a community center space and a city owned space we sell to the community be our farm stands and a small csa why were sitting around seattle started and what is your history

i started sitting in seattle a scot beymer we came from another organization i was trying to do a very similar project and as we for forming that project we realized exactly what we wanted to do which was city ground the reasons we were passionate about it was that we found that it really builds community it started as a business so not necessarily a can you project soli but that the community piece of really comes and it's just really exciting to us i think we could feed our neighbors as elsa singing he said for the transparency of growing food in the city in our neighborhoods where our neighbors can see the food and understand how it's grown and be closer to a system that's gotten pretty far away from our tables and then there's a sustainability segment which is really important is this idea that we could preserve food in a way that's not detrimental to the environment that we can grow intensively a little low in points and low miles to get our food to the table and to our neighbors that all really appealing and why we're

passionate about it what led to your personal interest in urban farming normally do you want to start sure it started really simple i live in the city and i wanted to farm i had a landscaping business and that keeps me urban for the forseeable future they're farming life cells really fulfilling and i really wanna that the struggle is always how to afford a farming lifestyle and how to deal with their current cost of living anywhere really so i'm sticking with their landscaping business this is a great way to be able to do both and how about for you that he yelled for me i got interested in agriculture and several years ago i actually have a software development background hands got a little tired of office lifestyle i did a couple of farming apprenticeships and rural farms in the area and fell in love with the sense of community and the work of growing food i was ready to start and experimenting with my own thing about four years ago and

found no les and scott and what they were doing in the city it seemed like a really exciting sort of model and a way to try my hand at agriculture without the risks of buying land and buying a tractor and being able to do those activities here in the city for a while and tiny island lands and then eventually would you say more about how to be grown seattle is set up an organized sure we're i have sort of evolved and changed each year as the business has grown where set up as an llc so were a for profit business we have had different numbers of co owners of the business over time at this point we also have a few folks that work as independent contractors but all the farming is done by ourselves even though it's done in multiple people's yards around the city we trade vegetables for the use of the space for homeowner space la city grown seattle different from other urban agriculture affects

our model mimics the small girl vegetable farms that you might find in carnation are around what is different about our farmers more just how we use the land how we have a relationship other landowners otherwise it's a lot more like that than a lot of the other urban farms around here with nonprofits and media groups which are generally awesome products as well we have an emphasis on growing food and selling our fear rather than education are feeding the hungry or we don't run on cheney participation as much or at least that's the idea so we run on farm or participation our primary focus is on making the ground with us