Saturday, December 20, 2008

outsourcing vegetable gardening and CSAs

Here's a wild new idea.

Excerpts:
... MyFarm is an enterprise that puts vegetable gardens into people's backyards, then sends a gardener once a week to do upkeep and harvest, leaving fresh produce behind ... Trevor Paque calls his enterprise a "decentralized urban farm." ... aims to turn under-used, overgrown backyards into plots of green that will provide organically grown food .... what makes Paque's venture different is that he sees all the gardens as merely components of one large farm .... His plan is to take that land and use it to create a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). ... The more extra produce a yard grows, over and above the owners' needs, the less they will pay for weekly upkeep.

Here's the link for MyFarm's website. They have great photos of their gardens.

What a concept! Can you imagine a vegetable garden in EVERY backyard ... or front yard. Not only the White House, but every house.

Why do this? I think I have a list somewhere back in my blog of a few reasons to grow vegetable gardens. Here it is. I think most of these apply. Of course Pollan has written well detailed reasons: NY Times article and Moyer interview.

CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)
White House veggie garden proposal

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

What an awesome idea!! I think gardens are the kind of things that seem daunting to start, but get addictive *very* fast :-) This might help people take the plunge.
Oh, is it ok if I link to your post on reasons to garden on my blog? You say it so much better than I could!

kathy said...

Thanks for linking. I really liked the comments on this post.

Dan said...

That is an interesting idea especially when most city yards are just weedy waste lands.

kathy said...

As my hubby says: Its amazing people will pay for it.

kathy said...

I'm thinking more of the rolling lawns of suburbs - like Belmont.

Kateri said...

I want to quit my job and start doing that! Actually, I already plant and take care of a vegetable garden besides my own--I trade gardening work for fitness training.

Anonymous said...

A great idea taken to "fruition"! Even if the cost of having this done puts it out of the reach of most people, it is still a valuable service for those busy people who can afford it.