Urban agriculture

Front yard ordinance allows DIY food

2009-07-17T21:17:38Z

This is the second growing season that Sacramento residents have been able to grow vegetables, fruit trees and other food plants in their front yard thanks to a revised city ordinance. After a three-year effort by food activists, the city's Front Yard Ordinance was reworded in 2007 to specifically allow veggie gardens in that soil near the sidewalk. That change has enabled more and more Sacramento homeowners to grow their own food in an edible landscape, mingling [with] or replacing decorative foliage. Blueberries with your zinnias, perhaps, or tomatoes with your chrysanthemums, or lettuce where that brown scrubgrass used to be.

The original FYO was written into zoning code in 1941 and actually banned the growing of edible plants. Vegetables were confined to the backyard and growing any food plant on the front lawn was an offense punishable by a fine. This may seem like an unusual law, considering that homeowners own their lawns. The main concern of the old FYO was preventing overgrowth of plants, whether food or otherwise. It didn't explicitly forbid food plants, but didn't list them as legal either, whereas perennial grasses and decorative plants were listed as legal groundcover.

Sacramento resident Karen Baumann brushed up against that little-known ordinance when she planted tomatoes and a fruit tree on her front lawn in 2004, according to a city official. A neighbor reported her garden to city authorities, who then notified Baumann that she would have to pull up the plants or face a $750 fine. This was a surprise to Baumann, who asked folks at local gardening groups what she could do to save her leafy comestibles. Before she could act, an unknown party sprayed Baumann's lawn pretty heavily with RoundUp, a Monsanto-brand herbicide, and killed off most of Baumann's plants, as well as some nearby lawns.

Food activists citywide responded to Baumann's plight and petitioned the city council to revise the outdated law. "There was a tremendous amount of community pressure," Paul Towers, a Sacramento resident and state director of Pesticide Watch said. "There were articles in the News & Review, The Bee. Organic Sacramento got involved. It was everywhere."

This grassroots effort to make Sacramento lawns more than just pretty finally achieved their goal in April 2007. Baumann's war-torn lawn was later restored. Capitol Nursery donated a bundle of plants to replace her sprayed veggies.

The new FYO changed key wording to more explicitly allow food crops on front yards. There are still requirements for maintenance, but no limitations on what can be grown. There are limits on what you don't grow; the law requires that landscapes must be "landscaped, irrigated and maintained," and there can be no dead plant matter taller than 4 inches. "Basically, you can grow all you want," said Community Garden Coordinator Bill Maynard. "But make it look good."

A tricky segment of the FYO still causes some concern amongst front-yard growers. It reads: "All landscaping materials shall be mowed, trimmed, and/or maintained as often as necessary to prevent overgrowth and blight."

But Towers said "blight" is a vague term that city authorities would be hard-pressed to enforce. The FYO lists no definition of "blight," only the word. Fortunately, the city is presently uninterested in enforcement.

"The city sent around a code enforcement memo that said not to bust food landscapes," said Towers, and Maynard corroborated that the city isn't cracking down. Unless a withering garden is a clear fire hazard, then dried-out or overgrown lawns aren't a problem. In a dry season, water conservation is at a premium, and accordingly the city has revised its enforcement plan.

Growing a plot of vegetables can actually reduce a front yard's water consumption and benefit the community in drier times. "A lot of edibles are drought-tolerant plants, so people can tear up thirsty grass and replace it with food." Maynard said. "[The FYO] provides a whole 'nother way to think about your yard."

The FYO places no restriction on fertilizer or pesticide use but Maynard hopes that Sacramento residents will pursue 'river-friendly' practices to reduce chemical runoff.

A front yard garden offers advantages that a backyard garden might not have. More sun usually hits a front lawn, and backyards might be covered with a patio or a pool. The FYO benefits homeowners almost exclusively, though, as landlords would may be unreceptive to suggestions of tearing up grass for greens.

Still, the FYO allows Sacramento city-slickers double the opportunity to turn their lawn into a bountiful foodscape.

"Our mission is to make all landscapes more healthy and sustainable, and we always put food first," Towers said.

City plants seeds for new gardening opportunities

2009-07-10T08:07:20Z

The Sacramento Parks and Recreation department has responded to local calls for more community gardens by slating two new sites to be publicly cultivated , bringing the total number of city community gardens to seven. One of the fresh gardening plots is on the downtown grid - E and 8th in Zapata Park - and is planned to be opened to the public by the end of the year. The other is in North Oak Park and will be sprouting next spring.

Locally grown produce is a burgeoning attraction for Sacramentans and Community Garden Coordinator Bill Maynard has taken note. "We've seen a dramatic increase in interest recently," he said. "In a 2008 Master Plan Development survey, more than 10 percent of suggestions were for new community gardens." The Sacramento Parks and Recreation department responded to these suggestions by evaluating potential plots and eventually settling on the two most viable. There still remains a waiting list of roughly 40 other potential gardens.

The Zapata Park garden was originally a planned expansion of the J.Neely Johnson garden on 11th Street, but has now developed into a project of its own. It measures about 40 feet by 60 feet. The actual development of the park will be going out to bid and will be adopted soon.

The site in North Oak Park lies between Martin Luther King Boulevard and 12th Street and is significantly larger than the Zapata garden. It's about 150 ft by 250 ft, so there's space for a good number of garden plots. The Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency donated the land and funds for cultivation.

Once they're opened, the two new community gardens will offer chunks of land for low annual prices. Available plots range from 10 feet by 10 feet to 20 feet by 20 feet and prices run from $25 to $50 per year. Aspiring gardeners are limited to one plot per family, but even then the space is expected to sell out quickly. "There's only one or two plots left in all other community gardens," Maynard said, "so we don't really have to worry about unused garden space."

As reported earlier this week, Parks and Recreation has experienced an $8.3 million budget cut, but this doesn't hinder community gardens. "We don't have much budget to cut," Maynard said, "our budget is very low, and after the gardens are built, they're basically done." Aside from tools and small repairs, community gardens have an extremely low maintenance cost.

Funding for gardens comes from various sources, one of which is the Community Development Block Grant. More resources come from the little-known California Quimby Act. The 1975 act requires developers to set aside land or money equivalents for every project they undertake, and the donations scale up with the size of the project. This is intended to counterbalance buildings with attractive public spaces to be enjoyed by the community.

Community gardens are maintained entirely by volunteers. Plot-holders come by the gardens regularly, so gardens are usually watered twice a day. Second Saturday Art Walk volunteers also take part in garden upkeep during their bimonthly activities.

Garden operations place an emphasis on organics and conservation. "Gardeners don't take any more water than they need," Maynard said, "so very little is wasted." Small-scale fruit and veggie plots will of course not be treated with synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, meaning growers will end up with much healthier produce.

The recent upswing in community garden interest comes at a ripe time - Saturday is Sacramento's first 'Urban Agriculture Day,' as recently introduced by City Council. Festivities will be held tomorrow at several existing community gardens during Slow Food Sacramento's AgFest.

Also, the present economic slump has strained everyone's food budget, so a low-cost garden plot could well be an answer to some grocery worries.

Gardens can provide innumerable benefits to the community at large. "They can get neighbors to know each other, so it builds a stronger community," Maynard said, "and parents and kids will be working side by side, so it's an educational venue as well."

The problem with community gardens? "Some people still don't know about them," Maynard said.
For more information, check out the community gardens website or contact Bill Maynard at wmaynard@cityofsacramento.org

Saturday festival on Sacramento's first 'Urban Ag Day'

2009-07-09T18:55:41Z

Whether you've got drip-irrigated corn in the front yard or just some potted mint on top of the fridge, the Common Table agriculture festival has something for you. Slow Food Sacramento, the local chapter of the worldwide food community Slow Food, is offering city residents the chance to spend this Saturday getting green at their first AgFest workshop series, called the Common Table.

Saturday's AgFest is taking place on the Sacramento's first Urban Ag Day. The Sacramento City Council recently adopted a resolution to make July 11 an annual citywide celebration of local gardening.

Starting at 8:30 AM, AgFest activities include lectures on how to grow and manage food crops at home, tours of local farms and Sacramento community gardens, screenings of documentaries and opportunities to get your hands dirty at Soil Born Farms. The workshops are spread all over the Sacramento area and attendees are encouraged to check out as many as they like.

For those hungrier for ag knowledge, a separate set of evening activities will be held at the Fremont Community Garden, including a charity auction, a lecture from local food activist Brahm Ahmadi and a three-course dinner of seasonal foods from local business Magpie Caterers.

Admission to the daytime workshops is $25, and the evening entertainment runs at $75. Half of ticket revenues will go toward the Sacramento Community Garden and Sacramento Hunger coalitions, who are working with Slow Food to put on the event.

As the charitable fundraising would suggest, the workshops have a focus on community outreach and will address the question of how to keep all members of our city healthy and well-nourished.

"Slow Food has always had the mission of increasing the availability of good, clean and fair food," said event coordinator Charity Kenyon. "In this economy, we're emphasizing the 'fair' part of that mission. That's food justice." 'Food justice' refers to the equitable distribution of food in a society, or in simpler terms: feeding the poor and homeless.

One of the more experimental workshops, Hunger 101, places participants in the role of hungry Sacramentans who have to learn to cope with limited food availability. This hour-long simulation at the Sacramento Food Bank seeks to raise awareness and understanding of the difficulties of stable food sources for low-income families.

Other workshops offer lessons on composting, organic soil management and a variety of other green subjects. You can also get tips on how to give back to the community through gardening, crop-swapping with your neighbors and "gleaning" excess fruit from unpicked trees to donate to local food banks.

If you're up for a bike ride, you can visit Sacramento gardens on a guided cycle tour to check out "what's 'growing' on" in your neighborhood (pun courtesy Slow Food).

Two films will be screened in the afternoon: the critically acclaimed documentaries The Garden and Fresh. The Garden documents a neighborhood's challenge of maintaining an urban garden in East L.A., while Fresh critiques mainstream fast-food and educates about healthy alternative diets. They will be followed by question-and-answer sessions.

Those attending the evening festivities will be able to place bids in a charitable auction for a variety of green goodies. Auction items range from professional cooking lessons, countryside getaways and gardening consultations to "the best damned pie you've ever tasted" prepared by pastry chef Kira O'Donnell.

A full listing of the times and locations of each of these workshops is available at Slow Food Sacramento's website.

Slow Food Sacramento and its allies are seeking to educate Sacramentans on the viability of being more self-sufficient when it comes to food.

"In Moscow, 56 percent of food comes from urban agriculture," Kenyon said. "Here in Sacramento, we're in one of the richest ag regions in the world, yet not very much of our food is locally grown. We want to show that this is more possible for more people."

CLUCK presses for changes

2009-08-07T05:36:59Z

Sacramento gardening activists want to take urban agriculture to the next level and legalize raising chickens in your back yard.

"It's really been a hot topic lately," said Jaclyn Hopkins, volunteer coordinator for Environmental and Agricultural Taskforce Sacramento. "A lot of cities are changing their regulations to allow chicken-keeping, and Sacramento's on it's way."

EAT Sacramento and its partner group Campaign to Legalize Urban Chicken Keeping (CLUCK) were founded this year to advocate for more sustainable and organic gardening in the city. To promote the cause of backyard chicken coops, CLUCK will be hosting screenings of the indie documentary Mad City Chickens at the Guild Theatre Friday at 7:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., and again at 7:00 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $5 and available at the door.

Mad City Chickens is equal parts entertainment and educational outreach. The film is an intelligent, sometimes-comic look at the relationships between city-dwelling humans and the chickens they raise, following the intersecting stories of various families, professionals and birds. The plot centers around the grassroots movement to legalize chicken-keeping in Madison City, Wisconsin, which successfully changed its city code in 2004. The film's two directors, Tashai Lovington and Robert Lughai, are on tour with the film and will host discussions after both screenings on Friday. They will have moved on to San Francisco by Sunday.

This screening is part of a concerted effort to change Sacramento law on behalf of the birds.

Under current city law, clucking, flightless egg-layers cannot be kept as pets due to an ordinance that bans the non-agricultural raising of any livestock. City laws for the city were changed to prohibit chickens in 1989. The same language that bans chickens also bans most other barnyard animals: horses, mules, sheep, goats, etc.

"It was part of a sweeping ban to make Sac look like a modern city," CLUCK coordinator Abbie Crouch said. "But nowadays, people want to get back in touch with their roots."

After researching the ban for months, EAT Sacramento is still unsure why city government chose to outlaw chickens specifically. Perhaps it was, as Crouch said, to solidify Sacramento's development from a 'cow town' to a metropolitan urban center. Alternatively, it could also have been intended to deal with occasional complaints about noise, odor or chicken mistreatment.

Whatever the case, the ban hasn't stuck. Rogue Sacramento chicken-keepers still hatch, feed, house and learn to love their feathered friends in spite of the law.

"There's a surprisingly large chicken underground, "Crouch said. "A lot of people don't mind breaking the law." CLUCK estimates there are hundreds of backyard chickens in the city.

It's legal to raise chickens most anywhere else in California. San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Jose have all okayed backyard cooping, as have our neighbors in Roseville, Oakland and (of course) Davis.

Sacramento County code allows anyone to raise chickens as long as they have a yard larger than 10,000 square feet, which closes off most city residents but allows folks in Fair Oaks to raise chickens with much gusto.

Regulations usually place a cap on maximum number of chickens (about four to six per family) and add that chickens must be kept at least 20, 25, or 40 feet from neighboring structures. Los Angeles has no limits on how many hens one family can raise. Hens are tranquil, quiet and well-mannered, but their boyfriends can present a problem. Roosters are almost never legal, as they tend to pick fights and crow at godawful times of the day, and even after all that they don't contribute anything toward egg-laying. Slaughtering chickens is also illegal almost everywhere, as some serious health concerns start to enter the picture.

If chickens could talk, they'd be vocal supporters of backyard raising. Animal rights activists brought new attention to the relative brutality of factory farm conditions with the passage of Proposition 2 in the 2008 general election. Prop. 2 will require significant improvements in animal treatment for California meat and poultry industries in 2015. Those improvements reveal how constrictive factory cages are; Prop 2's requirements were simply for animals to have enough space to stand up and turn around.

Comparatively, backyard chickens have massive coops and a great deal more TLC. "Backyard chickens tend to live pretty sweet lives," Hopkins said.

It doesn't take much to really spoil a chicken. A little space to scratch around, a comfy enclosure for laying, feed to peck at, and as a treat, some grass to gobble from time to time. These are simple pleasures that anyone with a backyard can provide.

"Everybody could raise a chicken or two," Crouch said "They're easier to take care of than more conventional pets like dogs."

Raising chickens can enhance life for you and your chicken, according to new scientific studies. Chickens get an easy, comfortable living and you get fresh eggs that knock out the supermarket in terms of quality. Two recent Penn State studies have shown that free-range hens produce healthier eggs, richer in nutrients and Omega-3 fats, and studies of a less-academic nature have confirmed that free-range eggs taste terrific.

Crouch said that chickens can make great pets, too. "Not only do you get delicious food, you get some evening entertainment."

Even though they may have brains more like dinosaurs than like cats or dogs or hamsters, chickens can be a kind of companion animal. Chickens can hop on your lap and get friendly, and they generally like being petted. "And it sounds silly, but you can have a beer on the porch and watch your chickens be cute and do stupid stuff in your back yard," Crouch said.

Legalizing and regulating chicken culture in Sacramento would have benefits across the board, CLUCK members surmise. Documenting the number of chickens in the city is one perk, and increased attention could also allow for better disease control or donation of deceased chickens to local colleges.

"When we talk to city council, we usually keep things loose to allow for the development of regulations," said Hopkins. At present, CLUCK is looking at a six chicken maximum and a mandatory distance between coop and home.

The eggs of reform are incubating, according to EAT and CLUCK representatives.

"It's now just a matter of when," Hopkins said.

For information on CLUCK and EAT Sacramento

•Campaign to Legalize Urban Chicken Keeping, a subsidiary campaign of EAT Sacramento
info@EATsacramento.org or 916-551-1883

•Mad City Chickens on Friday, 7:00 and 9:30 and Sunday at 7:00
Guild Theatre
Post screening discussion with independent filmmakers Tashai Lovington & Robert Lughai, of Tarazod Films