Ableman - Street farm: growing food, jobs, and hope on the urban frontier

Praise for Street Farm

Street Farm is a story of how to bring cities back to life, literally and emotionally. The cold, forbidding landscapes of urban life bring our hearts to a standstill. When streets, medians, abandoned land, parks, and byways are transformed by soil, bugs, microbes, pollinators, and seeds, lives bloom. Connectedness flourishes, and people become denizens once again.

Local food is not a mere talisman or gesture. Local food not only addresses quality of life, economy, and food security, it changes our hearts. Michael Ableman has a finely honed sensibility. Read how he gardens society, grows well-being, weeds out despair, and sows hope in this wonderfully written testament to life.

Paul Hawken , author of Blessed Unrest

Whenever Michael Ableman sees a barrier, he runs over and kicks it in. Lucky for us, this strikingly focused anarchist writes about it too, sharing the deeply moving story of reclaiming land and building real community in the most unlikely places, from the ground up. Read this book and be amazed.

Dan Barber , chef/co-owner, Blue Hill; author of The Third Plate

Michael Ableman is one of the pioneers of small-scale urban farming, growing quality food for urban communities. He has worked through the challenges inherent to urban farming. Michael has been and is an inspiration to myself and many urban agriculture leaders around the country and the world.

Will Allen , founder and CEO, Growing Power

This is the most inspiring book I have read in years. I found myself trembling at the monumental challenges that Michael Ableman and his colleagues faced and overcame in creating a set of urban farms in some of the most downtrodden neighborhoods on the continent. This is a story of hope, disappointment, and hope returning, detailing the mistakes and setbacks as well as the victories and benefits of creating a large-scale food-growing program in a big city. Told in moving vignettes and full of useful tips for those who want to try to heal the urban food grid, this is an important book. Its essential reading for everyone in the urban food movement.

Toby Hemenway , author of The Permaculture City and Gaias Garden

In Street Farm , long-time farmer Michael Ableman reports on the triumphs and failures of Vancouvers Sole Food Street Farms. The goal of this five-acre network of four farmsbegun in the poorest postal code in Canadais to produce, from thousands of boxes of planted dirt, not just delicious food but salvaged lives. Candid about the difficulties of creating flourishing farms on hot pavements and of making reliable farm workers of dispirited locals who struggle not only with poverty but with assorted personal demons, Ableman has written an important, inspiring, and bravely honest book.

Joan Gussow , author of Growing, Older and This Organic Life

Michael Ableman is an innovator extraordinaire whose projects have a track record of benchmarking new models of best practice. He is one of the handful of inspiring visionaries on the planet who are redefining our future food systems.

Patrick Holden , founding director, Sustainable Food Trust

In this inspiring book, Michael Ableman documents that generating paradise by growing vegetables amidst the urban jungle also rehabilitates lost souls, builds community, and creates genuine economic value. Street Farm is a great antidote to pessimism, illustrating how even seemingly broken people can contribute to themselves, to society, and to our shared ecology.

Gabor Mat , MD, author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts

Michael Ableman examines the heart and soul of urban agriculture through the eyes, hands, and hearts of people in need of a place of civility and serenity. The passion and humility of the farmers who work at Sole Food Street Farms shines through. They are neighborhood folks, many with transgressions of addictions, who find solace in farming.From Street Farm , we learn that urban agriculture indeed takes a village of planners, politicians, investors, and believers to envision such an economy, with urban agriculture as the new economic engine.

Karen Washington , urban farm activist; cofounder of Black Urban Growers

Sole Food Street Farms is living proof that creative social enterprises, thoughtful land use, and green jobs can combine to make cities more inclusive and resilient. Michael Ablemans work and passion helped make Vancouver a global leader in urban food systems, with happier and healthier people.

Gregor Robertson , mayor, Vancouver, British Columbia

Michael Ableman recognises that urban growing is not just about producing lovely, healthy, local food. Its about creating meaningful work that pays a decent living and showing that cities can play a vital role in building a better, more resilient food system. In Street Farm , Ableman writes about many of the issues that we also grapple with as we strive to build a better food system in London. Sole Food Street Farms is an uplifting demonstration of how communities really can change the world.

Julie Brown , director, Growing Communities

Michael Ablemans interwoven growing skills and people empowerment are beautifully illustrated by ground zero spaces transformed to market gardens. Sole Food Street Farms produces twenty-five tons of food every year, grown in unlikely places by drug-addicted farmers, softened in the process like the soil they tend.

Charles Dowding , author of How to Create a New Vegetable Garden

Street Farm tells it like it is on a gritty urban farm, introducing us to rough but real people who learn to live again through growing food and nurturing the soil. Michael Ableman shows us that we can amend distressed soils and distressed communities alike. Novella Carpenter , author of Farm City

Copyright 2016 by Michael Ableman.

All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs by Michael Ableman.

The photographs on page are by David Fearn.

The photograph on page is by Alana Patterson.

No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Project Manager: Patricia Stone

Acquisitions Editor: Ben Watson

Developmental Editor: Fern Marshall Bradley

Copy Editor: Laura Jorstad

Proofreader: Eileen M. Clawson

Designer: Melissa Jacobson

Printed in the United States of America.

First printing July, 2016.

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Our Commitment to Green Publishing

Chelsea Green sees publishing as a tool for cultural change and ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book manufacturing practices with our editorial mission and to reduce the impact of our business enterprise in the environment. We print our books and catalogs on chlorine-free recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks whenever possible. This book may cost slightly more because it was printed on paper that contains recycled fiber, and we hope youll agree that its worth it. Chelsea Green is a member of the Green Press Initiative ( www.greenpressinitiative.org ), a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the worlds endangered forests and conserve natural resources. Street Farm was printed on paper supplied by RR Donnelley that contains at least 10 percent postconsumer recycled fiber.