Subject: Demonstration 'City Farms' & Urban Farms

From: [email-masked]
Date: 16 Oct 1996 20:20:36 PDT

Hello International Permaculture People:

In a suburb of Vancouver, Canada there is a 250 Acre piece of land that
is already a park and zoned as farmland. Currently I am involved in a
Permaculture Design process for just 7 acres of this to become
Community, Demonstration and Alotment gardens.   If you want to see all
the organizing email it is on my local listserv:
[email-masked] (put subscribe in subject line)
The land is called Colony Farm. (it was for a hospital/prison/mental
health consumers)
This land was in production from c1910 and stopped even cattle grazing
in about 1990.

It currently has no usable farm buildings and embankments that need
fixing, and the fields tend to flood every winter.  The district
government is inheriting this federal land that was much fought for by
wildlife preservationalists and once 9 years ago I worked with an
organization to save it from: exibition grounds, race track, suburban
sprawl, selling it out to spray it, till it, compact it, fill it in,
rezone it,  commercial farmers.

I dream big along with a non profit called FarmFolk/CityFolk when we
think of making the entire 250 acres of farm and 100 acres of mixed use
a demonstration permaculture farm or institute.

Who has done that of thing?  What documents have they produced? What are the
stories?  I'm hoping some of the British permaculture people could tell
me some tips.  Austrailians, have you done anything like this?  What
back issues of which magazines or journals have articles?  If Bill M.
where to redo his Global Gardener
video of permaculture in cities what city farm would he walk and talk
in?

Wish me luck, I make my first public presentation on Permaculture Design
on Thursday eve.

Harold Waldock
[email-masked]     mail: 9641-139th Street, Surrey, BC Canada,
604 589 7275                        V3T 5H3
Vancouver Permaculture Network