Want local foods? Hire your own backyard farmer

Donna Smith and Robyn Streeter of Your Backyard
Farmer create mini-farms for homeowners.

It's politically correct, even fashionable, to tout the pleasures and virtues of eating foods grown closer to home. But why stop with the 100-mile diet? Why not a 10-yard diet? I'm talking about growing food in your own back yard.

Of course, not everyone is a gardener, either because of lack of inclination, lack of time or a self-professed lack of gardening talent. So a whole new micro-industry seems to be brewing--backyard farmers for hire.

Rebecca Gerendasy at Cooking Up a Story, an innovative website with professional video stories about the people who embody good food and sustainable living, recently profiled two women in Portland who create small backyard mini-farms for homeowners who want the really local produce but can't or won't create their own gardens. In plots as small as 10 x 10 feet, Donna Smith and Robyn Streeter of Your Backyard Farmer plant and tend gardens while the homeowners harvest the rewards.

While avid vegetable gardeners and near-the-earth rural residents may scoff at the idea of hiring someone to grow tomatoes for your capreses salad, if it means those tomatoes weren't trucked from Mexico, why not?

"This isn’t for everyone, obviously, but there are many households that do fit the parameters of an urban agriculture makeover," said Gerendasy. "I think it is another great example of getting away from a global economy and building toward a local economy, a local food economy. There is great richness all around us, no matter where we live, and sometimes it is right there in our backyard."

You can learn more about backyard farming and other topics about sustainable living at Cooking Up a Story.

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