Well…Saturday was an amazing day. Old friends and new friends came out to help build a better farm for 2013.

To start, we had Lake Street Supply deliver an entire truck of “composted cow manure” to the farm. After a few discussions with Mark, and a long email thread, we determined this was going to be the best stuff we could afford for the various growing methods on Urban Canopy’s rooftop farm.

Keep in mind that 18 cubic yards is no easy task to get from the ground level, to our third floor roof. That’s equivalent to about 3600 gallons of compost! Over 750 individual buckets we needed to lug up there! We filled every coffeebag that we had with this stuff, around the perimeter and in the middle, and still had plenty left over. We then filled every bucket we had, every container, every drum and at the very end…had just a little bit left that we couldn’t get up to the roof.

Audra & Tudor proceeded to plant into many of the bags that will become a living hedge to (hopefully) help block some of the wind coming off the side of the roof.

Not to mention much of the stuff needs pollination and creates food for our honeybees, beautifies our farm, and much of it is edible plants like sunflowers, corn, lettuce, okra, radish, peas, and much more!

What a wonderfully long day. Thank you to all that were able to make it out! Your help was much appreciated and come back in a couple weeks to see stuff growing out of your labor. If you missed this Saturday, we’ll have another volunteer day soo

With Gratitude,

–Urban Canopy Crew :)

Farming 2013 has begun in full force!

We’d like to start off the season right and invite you all to come see the farm. Better yet, help us build it! Saturday, April 20th, at 10am we will be getting a truckload of compost from our friends at Lake Street Landscape Supply.

Together, we’ll make the task of getting several TONS of soil to the third floor rooftop easier, quicker, and more enjoyable. Next, we’ll be putting the soil into our perimeter hedge and vertical growing systems, then plant/x-plant into the fresh soil. These will be the first outdoor seeds and plants of the 2013 season…exciting!

Our farm crew will be on hand to interact with volunteers, help with all tasks, and teach/learn where possible. Somewhere during the day we’ll all take a break to eat pizza, drink beer, and hang out. Sound good? Please let us know by responding below so we know how much food/beer to get!

Let’s Grow!
–Urban Canopy Crew

Water is one of three of human essentials: water, food, shelter. Do you know how much water goes is used by daily essentials like taking a shower or brushing our teeth? Take this quiz from the US Geological Survey for a fun way to find out….and this quiz is specifically about our food. Incredible that a single hamburger is over 600 gallons!

Well, when Urban Canopy talks about sustainability on our farm we set out to provide some specifics. One of the resources that we monitor our use of is not surprisingly water. The rooftop and indoor farms both use some water saving techniques: rain harvesting and recirculating irrigation. Many of the plants grow in hydroponic systems where water from a central reservoir waters plants while collecting the water that runs off. This not only saves the water that the plants and soil weren’t able to absorb fully, but also any nutrients that went with the water as well. Nonetheless, and especially during a year of drought, we have to add water from City of Chicago utilities when there has not been enough rainfall–We count these gallons!

*** In the spirit of full disclosure, we do our best to keep accurate records but there are certainly going to be errors, omissions, and gaps. We started keeping records on April 28th, 2012 and there is a gap from July 5 through September 10. The last entry as of the writing of this post is from today: 12/26/2012.

With that aside, here’s what we used from city lines:
Rooftop hydroponic plants: 385 gallons
Rooftop living hedge & container plants: 690 gallons
Indoor plants (wheatgrass, sprouts, starts, herbs): 645 gallons
That’s a total of 1,720 gallons. For May, June, September, October, November and December.

The other side of this equation is the amount of edible food we were able to achieve. Our records here, especially on the roof are less accurate and less delineated based on whether it was a potato(~25 pounds), a tomato(~300 pounds) or kale(~8 pounds).

The living hedge plants were mostly grown as food for the bees, wind-blocking, and beautification, but nonetheless produced some squash(~20 pounds), some beans(~2 pounds) and small onions(~1 pound).

So, the nearest calculation for the rooftop was approximately 400-500 pounds of food while using about 1200 gallons of water (tomatoes were sprouted indoors before heading to the rooftop). That’s about 3 gallons of water per 1 pound of food (1200 gallons divided by 400 pounds).

Now indoors we mostly grow wheatgrass and sprouts year-round. Continuing the math from above, we ended up using about 520 gallons over a 6-month period. This is about 85 gallons per month (520/6=86.7). Using a ballpark of 100 trays of wheatgrass per month, which yield about 10 ounces of wheatgrass juice at one of our juicebar customers, this yields about 7.8 gallons. (That’s 100*10 = 1000 ounces / 128 oz per gal = 7.815 gal) This translates to 85/7.8 = 10.9 gallons of water to get 1 gallon of wheatgrass juice. Now, keep in mind that we grew more than just wheatgrass, and once the wheatgrass has been juiced we take back the dry scraps to compost with our worms, which then becomes the nutrients/soil for the rooftop farm.

This certainly was the most math-heavy post so far! Apologies, and if you have any questions feel encouraged to ask in the comment section below.

Happy Holidays!
–The Urban Canopy Team

Happy [belated] Halloween! and Happy Holidays to come…

It’s been a looong season. First there was record-breaking warm weather in March, with almost half the month in the 80′s and 90′s. Then the driest spring in decades. Nonetheless, there were lots of successes to match these challenges and now that it’s almost 2013. Time to consolidate the records, better document what happened (or didn’t), and communicate that to you and the world.

Over the next couple weeks we’d like to let you know how much we were able to grow on the farm in our first full year, how much we consumed in terms of resources like electricity and water, how many pounds we diverted from landfills by composting, etc. These are some of the easier ways to quantify sustainability from the farming side of things, but we’ll continue to struggle to fully understand the impact of providing workshops, regular tours, and farmtop dinners. Stay tuned for the numbers…

In the meantime, we’re also beginning to plan for 2013. We’re looking to expand in several ways and improve from what we’ve learned in 2012. To be specific, the Urban Canopy’s CSA (community supported agriculture) this year had three members and received a weekly home delivery of fresh produce, delicious bread or granola, zesty kombucha, and free-range eggs. As part of this effort, we’re expanding the number of community and school gardens we collaborate with next year. We’re opening our CSA to all that grow organically in Chicago and calling it the Local Unified CSA, or “LUCk-SA.” We have four members already enrolled in the LUCSA for next year, and are looking for a total of 12. These bold twelve will receive TWENTY weekly home deliveries of even more diverse and delicious fresh produce and products. These twelve will also help Urban Canopy to provide a free 13th LUCSA to an individual or family in need (details to come). Contact us to get more details about becoming a LUCSA member in 2013.

In other good news:
A) We’ll be building a chicken coop to keep chickens on the rooftop farm in March with the goal of adding our own organic eggs to the LUCSA by June. Who wants to help?!
B) Introducing the Compost Club! We will pick up your home’s food scraps every week (or two) and compost it for you as a service. Your food scraps will be composted by our club of composters around the city and used as fertilizer for community gardens, home gardens, our rooftop farm, or your own garden. Email us for further details about either being a composter or “compostee” in the Compost Club.
C) We’re looking for a few solid interns and some regular volunteers. Last year, Quinn, Jacob and Nate (as well as many others) worked between 5-20 hours every week running the indoor and rooftop farms. This year, we’re looking to teach and learn from 3-4 farm manager interns. The positions are unpaid, unfortunately, but we are hoping to figure out ways to pay them financially as well as with produce. Duties will include many of the following: seed starting, composting, harvesting, weeding, chicken-keeping, beekeeping, community work, farmers markets, customer relations, deliveries, basic construction, etc.
D) Dinner Dates for 2013 are going to be to be announced in the spring, but you can expect to have delicious restaurants like Nana Organic and amazing caterers like B’Gab’s Goodies or Zullo’s prepare a rooftop dinner for you and your guests. Each dinner date is limited to 10 people.

Lastly, to our Kickstarter funders. About half of you received your rewards so far, but we weren’t able to get to many of you this year. Our sincere apologies for not getting this done sooner and you have our word to get you your rewards as soon as we can! Our logo is just about done, soon to be sent to the screenprinters, and so on. Thank you for your understanding and patience. Thoughts?

Design by our beekeeper, Bike-a-Bee‘s Jana Kinsman.

We always want to hear from you. Leave a comment below or connect with us on our Facebook page.

Kind Regards,
–The Urban Canopy

Hey All,

First off, our apologies for being very poor at keeping everyone up to date over the summer months. It’s been a busy season and we’re constantly working on the farm. That’s no excuse…

The CSA has been going well…we harvest about 5-7 pounds of tomatoes every week that goes into the crate, along with a few squash, some collard/kale/mustard greens, as well as peppers and a bunch more fresh produce that varies each week.

Since our farm is small and we pride ourselves on variety and community we’ve partnered with a few others to make our CSA even better. Every week we include some kombucha from Arise Kombucha (our neighbor at the Plant), bread or granola from Peerless Breads & Jams (soon-to-be neighbor), beets & eggplant from the Plant’s garden, fresh eggs from my sister’s free-range chickens, squash and carrots from a school garden some friends manage, and some other items from a community garden in Humboldt Park. The most up to date pictures have been on our Facebook page “Farmy 2012″ album. Check them out, and below are a few you might like in particular.

We’ve had a few rooftop dinners as part of the Kickstarter rewards and they have been amazing experiences for the guests to our farm, the caterers/chefs, and especially for us. Being able to connect people to their food and where it comes from is thrilling, not to mention a core part of our mission as an urban farm. There will be video footage of one of the dinners soon to give you a sense of what the experience is like. Thank you to Guy and Sandra of Nana Organics in Bridgeport, and Ron and Gabrielle of B’Gab’s Goodies in Hyde Park; amazing people and wonderful places to eat. Please check them out!

As for other Kickstarter rewards, you haven’t missed out, but we have been really bad at getting them out the door. We’ve had several setbacks with the logo, which has delayed everything else. Jana, the lovely beekeeper of Bike-a-bee, with two of her hives on our rooftop farm is also a graphic designer/artist by day and has put us back on track. We have draft logos in our inbox and hope to have a finished logo in a couple weeks. After that it’s off to the screen-printer for placing the logo on shirts and totes before they go out to our KS backers. If you’d like to receive one of those shirts or totes, and help us raise farmy-funds in the process. Leave a message below or contact us with details. These will ship end of September or early October.

If you have a food reward, we can now start to distribute the individual shares. With our limited supply from the rooftop and community gardens, we’ll need to split up the group into smaller groups each week. More details to come but if you have a specific week you’d like your share, leave a comment or contact us.

The bees are doing well. They’re buzzing around, collecting honey, and have grown vertically as the beekeepers add boxes for the bees to fill with their goodness. Here’s a video of Jana’s bees hanging out on the porch. Tera’s bees are doing great as well and hope to update you all with some more videos soon. Here is one of Tera’s third hive going in end of May.

With things approaching Fall, and us being more in the swing of things, we hope to get back to regularly updating everyone on our progress. Also, we’re looking ahead to next year and starting to plan out the rooftop with the lessons we learned this year as well as potentially expanding to a few more farms on the south side!

Lastly, we’re constantly looking for help and welcome visitors! Volunteers are welcome and being able to regularly help out (like once a week) is preferred. Financial contributions are of course welcome, but so are other things from our “wish list.” If you know someone that has a large rooftop they’d consider farming please let us know!

That’s all for now…keep you updated soon

Kind Regards,
–The Urban Canopy

Let’s catch up to what’s been happening on the farm in May.

System 1 is online growing pine berries (like a small strawberry), 4 kinds of chard, 2 kinds of kale, red giant mustard, and a few kinds of lettuce (speckled black, red romaine, etc.). There is still a lot of wind holding things back and we’re working on controlling that to make the plants happier. System 2 is about to be plumbed together.

The living hedge has a few purposes. 1. Help block wind with taller plants like corn, sunflowers, jerusalem artichoke and raspberries. 2. Provide bees with some good foraging food. 3. Look beautiful. 4. Food to eat! It’s a sort of flood and drain, bucketized hydroponic system (recycled from pickle buckets and tomato sauce!). Some pics might help understand what it looks like. You’ll have to come see it to understand how it works

Side view showing raspberries, broccoli, collards, onions, chives, etc.

In front of the hedge there is some space so we decided to try growing some potatoes in coffee sacks!

Speaking of honeybees. Five hives managed by Jana (of Bike a Bee) and Tera are here! The ladies are happy in their new homes…

Tera’s bees and son chillin’ in the sun

Jana installing her ladies

Over the past month Urban Canopy was able to take a trip up to visit Growing Power‘s Milwaukee urban farms. It was a great experience to see one of the best examples of an organisation focused on urban farming, community empowerment, and job training…while feeding THOUSANDS of people! Inspirational and educational. I’m jealous of their goats

Overall, things are progressing and we’d love to have you out to see what’s happening for yourselves. On June 9th, the Urban Canopy and the rest of the building (the Plant) are having an open house. Come from noon to 5pm to enjoy some grilling, touring, and conversation with all our friends.

You are always encouraged to leave comments, we love hearing from you!

Kind Regards,
–The Urban Canopy

It’s been what seems like ages since the last post in March. Almost needless to say, March and April so far have been busy. Let’s catch up:

Good Food Festival in March was great. Lots of networking, learning about new farmy things, and interesting conversations. A few that stand out:

Mark Shepard of New Forest Farm. Without seeing (at least in pictures) the farm it’s tough to describe but in short it is a perennial permaculture farm. Meaning, most of the plants are ones you only plant once and then every year they come back or keep growing. For instance apple trees, hazelnut shrubs, mulberries, and about a hundred others. They all work together by giving each other what they need in terms of nutrients out of the air and soil, while simultaneously rebuilding the soil and cleaning the air (take in CO2, release O2). Mark told me about his farming approach, one he calls the “STUN” method. Shear, Total, and Utter Neglect. He doesn’t spray anything and doesn’t need to fertilize. The animals he keeps, chickens, ducks, and hogs graze different parts of the 100+ acre farm collecting nuts, berries, etc after he’s gone through and harvested the same, thereby fertilizing the soil. Anyways, look it up if you’d like to know more or leave a comment with questions at the bottom.

The other is a person I already knew, Irv of Irv & Shelly’s Fresh Picks. Their food service business is somewhat like a cross of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), where you get a box of fresh fruits & veggies, and a home-delivery grocery store. As soon as we figure out some packaging and logistical concerns we hope to supply them with sprouts and produce from the roof in the next month or two. Keep an eye out, or look at their website now to see how you can get local stuff delivered to your doorstep.

Alright, on to the farming itself, or pictures thereof. Indoors first. Preparing soil and starting plants ahead of the season are two vital parts of farming, maybe especially so in an urban setting, and on a roof. Photo of the general space and some of the clutter that’s been added:

Right around the beginning of 2012 I started collecting food scraps from one the juicebars I supply with wheatgrass. This was previously going into the dumpster and headed for the landfill. Instead, I pick it up and feed it to my worms. They in turn poop out what is essentially fertilizer/soil. Here are some numbers, in three months (as of today) of collections, I’ve picked up 3000+ pounds of food scraps from this one juicebar! Here is a few hundred pounds worth:

Another interesting thing about compost is that the process generates heat as the worms, bacteria, fungi and other microbes (most are perfectly beneficial) move around and dine. Well, the space was unheated through the winter, on the north side of the building (no sun), above a drafty back dock, and without any windows. In short it was a very cold room until we got busy with it. In that composting thing is a little thermometer, similar to a meat one with a 6 inch needle. Take a look for yourself; nope, that’s not a joke.

Apparently, a pile that hits 125 degrees Fahrenheit tends to heat up the room a bit…

Moving along. To get more out of a shorter growing season in Chicago many plants can be started indoors and then transplanted outdoors once the weather is warm enough (but who knows this year >:| ) and the plants are a bit bigger. In that indoor space shown above we put in some grow lights and racks for the various plant starts.

Those raspberries are technically transplants from my sister’s and mother’s gardens but they still need to grow a bit before going on the roof, where it is windy and cold.

Speaking of the roof. The first system was finally completed today after some last adjustments. If you came to volunteer a couple weeks ago, you may recognize some of your work.

It was quite windy today, which reminded me of how important it is for the living hedge to be functional ASAP. Another set of volunteers worked on this as well, and if it wasn’t for an incorrect measurement on my part it would already be operational. Not to fear, should have this fixed by week’s end.

…and here we are. This has been a long email, but with lots of pictures! Ok, much more work to do and we hope to be better at documenting everything for your viewing pleasure. Many more pics than the ones here should be on the flickr page soon.

As always, feel encouraged to post comments, questions, concerns, whatever in the comment section below.

Kindly,
–Alex

For those that are interested in volunteering with the Urban Canopy I say, “Let’s build!”

Enough of the parts have arrived that we can build some of the rooftop farm. The weather is also amazing and almost time (normally) to start planting outdoors. Here what we’re thinking.

When: THIS Sunday 3/18, Noon to 4pm

What: We’ll gather, talk, build, plant…More specifically: Some beers and pizza on the rooftop, converse with each other about why we’re on the rooftop on a Sunday afternoon. We’ll describe the systems we’re building together, and a quick lesson on how to. Lastly, Kitt will lead a group that will start doing plantings of some greens, herbs, and flowers, and possibly more for the hedge.

Where: The Urban Canopy rooftop farm (on top of The Plant), 1400 W 46th Street

Please rsvp so we have a sense of how many to expect. Email us through the contact page or leave an RSVP in the comment section below.

Exciting!

–Alex

Alright folks, the time is now!

My apologies for the delay in updating everyone on progress but there are tons of exciting things going on; this post will be a quick stream of consciousness type post. Here goes…

Rooftop farm: Ordered the reservoirs, pumps, media, etc. etc….this is about $2500 worth of the stuff. Finalizing the order for all the plumbing and parts necessary for the towers. Much of the stuff is coming this TUE/WED! As soon as it arrives we start building. If you’re looking to be part of the first round of building, leave a comment or email directly.

Living hedge: this is essential to the rooftop farm succeeding. This hedge will disperse the wind away from the more sensitive plants like cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, and many more. The plants that will be growing here are the hardier variety that like full sun and can withstand the wind. Including, but not limited to, amaranth, beans, peas, corn, sunflowers, and vining or bushy flowers (moon vine! bachelor button, marigolds). We have about 75 buckets already (collecting weekly) but could use about another 200. The plumbing of making this a self-watering system is coming with the rest of the rooftop parts. Building this portion begins Wednesday or Thursday!

Other news: We’ve been collecting waste stream materials that were destined for the landfill and using them for various things all over the farm. Buckets from restaurants, coffee bags and chaff from coffee roasters, juice pulp, and a few other things. The buckets become the growing containers, coffee bags will also grow things (potatoes?!). The chaff goes to my worms to make an even healthier compost that’s nice and airy, which helps with plant nutrition and root growth, likewise with the awesome juice pulp.

Trying to get my hands on some racks and lights to get all the indoor plants started ahead of the season. If you have plants you’d like included on the rooftop farm, bring us the seeds or started plants. Next week (march 17ish) we’ll be starting a third of the tomatoes, peppers and a few other big plants that are destined for the roof. IF you have those wire/metro racks that you don’t need anymore, give ‘em to us.

Bike-a-bee will be keeping 2 or 3 hives on the roof this year. They have a great update here. Also, my friend Tera will be keeping another 2 or 3 hives and these lovely ladies together will be keeping their “lovely ladies” happy. The plants and flowers will keep everyone healthy and fruitful. haha, punny.

Oh, and we were just on the radio. I had a great, though brief, conversation with Bill Moller of WGN Radio. The podcast should be available to listen soon: http://www.wgnradio.com/shows/billmoller/wgnam-bill-moller-alex,0,5951630.mp3file

Please comment and ask questions, I realize this is a bit of a scattered post.

–Alex

Hello Folks,

The good news is that the Kickstarter project was successful, thanks to you! The better news is that things are moving along!! The bad news is that we’ve meant to post this update over a week ago when the campaign ended. Sorry!!!

Here’s what’s going on this week:
1. Talks with local screen printer, local logo artist and local clothes maker about creating a logo, ordering tshirts, sewing canvas totes, and printing the logo.
1b. Get your addresses and in about a month sending those rewards to you.

2. Finalizing quotes for all the rooftop growing stuff. We have excel spreadsheets we’re sure you wouldn’t want to see that detail every irrigation tube, water pump, etc. Orders will be placed this week and stuff will start arriving the following week!
2b. BUILDING THE FARM!

3. Rooftop diners: think about a date (and backup date in case of rain) when you’d like to have your dinner. Will contact you once we have a chance to talk to Zullo’s again about various logistics.

4. Fresh Produce (incl CSA’s) pledgers: The first plants to get going will be mustard greens, lettuces, chards, kales, and a few other interesting ones. Fresh free-range eggs, kombucha tea, and baked items from other Plant tenants might also be included in your tote as a surprise or with specific request. Details to come…Also, to ensure you get the mix of stuff you’d like, we hope to be able to have you on the rooftop and pick it yourself! If that doesn’t appeal to you, we’ll deliver to your doorstep if you’re in/near Chicago.

5. More details on other rewards and progress to come. Stay in touch, right here.

Seed Swaps are awesome!

Went to a seed swap today at the ECO rooftop farm in Pilsen. We have, no joke, 40 new varieties of plants in hand. Neatly arranged, individually labeled, little pouches of awesomeness. Genetic diversity baby! If you’re curious, or obsessed like me, this included 15ish types of heirloom tomatoes, 6ish peppers, 5 or so squash/cucumbers/zucchinis, marigolds, morning glories, 3 amaranth, blue corn, yata yata yata. A few more seed swaps upcoming and hope to pick up even more cool plants to grow.