When I first moved to Portland I lived in a studio apartment in the Kerns neighborhood. I didn’t have a car and walked everywhere. I remember how fragrant Portland seemed – clouds of smell would assault me as I passed through neighborhoods that first winter. I had moved here from Chicago where the city smells had nothing to do with vegetation. It took me months to figure out that the nasty cat pee smell that seemed to be everywhere came from all the boxwood hedges and NOT from a battalion of felines bent on spraying the entire city!
That first spring I was seriously blown away by the number of flowering plants in Portland. Nothing from my experience growing up in Michigan and Illinois prepared me for the lushness that is Portland. In Chicago, where spring is 2 weeks wedged between frigid winters and sauna-like summers, the entire blossom season lasts a few days as buds literally explode in the sudden heat. Portland’s blossoming on the other hand takes months in a seemingly never-ending parade of shapes, smells and colors.
Until I got to know some people here I spent a lot of time walking around checking out my new home. Kerns, Buckman and Laurelhurst were all on my regular route, and as an apartment dweller I lusted after the huge yards that some of these homes had. I craved some land of my own, and I’ll admit I harbored a few uncharitable thoughts for these people who let their land go to “waste”. I would fantasize about walking up to one of these homes, and asking the owners if they would please let me use just a corner – just a piece - of their empty yard to plant some tomatoes and a little lettuce.
That was a long time ago, and obviously I was not the only person to have these thoughts. Portland is on the leading edge of sustainable living in part because there is a critical mass of people living here who take action and create the lives they want to be living. It takes visionaries and activators both, coming together to make exciting things happen.
Here are three ideas/initiatives that all address different aspects of our local foodshed and food security in particularly inspired ways:
Portland Yard Sharing is a website and a Facebook page that helps link up people who want to garden with people who have unused yard space.
The Portland Fruit Tree Project: has a mission “to increase equal access to fresh, healthy food and foster stronger communities”. They link owners of fruit and nut trees with volunteers who help harvest the trees. Fruit and nuts that would otherwise have gone to waste gets divided up between the volunteers and local food pantries.
Your Backyard Farmer takes a slightly different approach to accessing locally grown produce. Donna and Robin have created a business farming other people’s yards. Hire them and they will come to your home and build you an organic garden and follow it up with weekly visits to water and weed it for you. You keep all the produce they grow for you.
They’ll even teach you how to do it so that eventually you can be planting it for yourself.
For more info:
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If you are not in Portland but interested in getting a yard share arrangement going with your friends, family or neighbors come by hyperlocavore.com - It's a free social network for yard share gardeners!
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