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.

We’ve reached our $10K goal! We want to thank you again for your much appreciated pledges and stress one more time that your pledges directly enabled this project to exist!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1009326486/the-urban-canopy-rooftop-farm/posts

Let’s make one final push to get some more pledges…We hope this rooftop farm will be a model that others can come learn at, volunteer on, and produce TONS of fresh fruits and veggies. The more we raise the better and more comprehensive of an example this will become, also enabling the living hedge and composting sub-projects described in update #4.

The next few weeks will be a flurry of activity, so here’s a timeline of what’s ahead:
NOW –  Finalizing all the plans for the rooftop farm and getting ready to place all the orders.
Feb 18th - Your credit cards or method of payment won’t be charged until Saturday, Feb 18th at noon.
March 1st - This is when Kickstarter funds actually become available in The Urban Canopy’s account. We’re not awaiting until March to order stuff though, the credit card won’t be happy for a while.
March 8th-ish - Parts start coming in and we start building!
April - Pieces of the farm are up and running; the first chards, mustard greens, lettuces, etc are growing.
May-June - Full steam ahead. Once the frost date passes many of the tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash, etc. will go outdoors as well.

That’s as far ahead as we can faithfully project at this point. Connect with us via The Urban Canopy’s website, facebook page, twitter, and flickr to keep track of what we’re working on. We’ll keep everyone updated of stats like water usage, plant varieties grown, electricity consumed, pounds of produce, etc.

Cheers!

Oh, and I just pledged to every one of these 9 other cool Kickstarter projects from Chicago to Turkey! Take a look at whichever ones interest you
I met this guy, and the video is hilarious/artsy (he jumps and dances in stilettos!): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doubledj/doubledj-and-dan-paz
Walking tour of honey producers in Turkey! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260601899/walk-the-honey-road-with-balyolu
Heritage (heirloom?) chicken (look at those eggs!): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/yellowtreefarm/heritage-breed-poultry-in-the-heartland
Craft Beer in St. Louis: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ovalbrewing/the-oval-brewing-company-the-best-damn-beer-in-the
Craft Beer in Jackson, Mississippi (interesting prohibition history, MS didn’t repeal until 1966!): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/luckytownbrew/lucky-town-brewing-company-be-bold-rediscover-beer
Skill share, seed bank and Time Bank (we’re doing this in Chicago too with the Young Aggies: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/reskilling/reskilling-expo-seed-library-timebank
Craft Beer (seeing a trend?) in Savoy, IL: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/345918702/triptych-brewing-savoy-illinois
Challah in South Carolina, yes please: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hootandchallah/hoot-and-challah-baking-co
Double Decker Bustaurant! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/595969380/albuquerques-first-bustaurant

Check ‘em out and help enable even more innovative projects to exist.

Thanks to you all, we’re at 85% funded. We have two weeks to go and we can’t let up now! We’d like to show you who’s helped get the project this far along and tell you what happens if we go above $10K.

In The News
All the individual, couple, and group pledgers all got to TUC’s kickstarter project in one way or another. Thanks first off to Kickstarter for creating such a cool platform for innovative and interesting projects to find funding. My personal friends have been unbelievably helpful with pledging themselves and spreading the word. Keeping you anonymous, but you know who you are and I am so grateful! …and these great organizations helped a ton:
New Chicago Beer Co (fellow tenants of The Plant):
Bike-A-Bee …last chance to fund their kickstarter! http://kck.st/wxP6XJ
CityFarmer
Beyond Green Partners
Organic School Project
Advocates for Urban Agriculture
Rooftop Garden
Will update as I’m hoping the following will post something next week as well:
Huffington Post, The Greenhorns, The Plant, and a bunch of others. I’m not good at marketing at all so these organizations are helping a lot!

What happens above the $10K goal?
Everything will go towards creating an even better example of what a rooftop farm can be and how it works for our communities! Specifically, here’s a sub-project example. Last year, we had an issue with wind hurting some of our bigger plants like tomatoes and cucumbers. This year, we plan to create a living hedge along the perimeter of the roof! This living hedge will be composed of a combination of corn, sunflowers, bamboo, berry bushes, juniper trees, and have several vining plants like beans, peas, squash, etc. to create effective wind dispersion while being pollinator attractors, delicious and beautiful!

Also, keep in mind that Kickstarter & Amazon takes a cut of the funds, and we’ll be spending a ton of dollars and time on rewards for you all.

Entoses, let’s keep the momentum going! Keep spreading the word and feel encouraged to connect with us on facebook and twitter. Hoping to create a “press page” this weekend as well.

The next update will include a timeline of what the rooftop buildout will look like.

Sincerely,
–Alex